Billy Budd

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recited.
Ashore he [is] the champion, afloat the spokesman; on every suitable occasion
always foremost"(9).
Despite his popularity among the crew and his hardworking attitude,
Billy is transferred to another British ship, the Indomitable. And while he is
accepted for his looks and happy personality, "…hardly here [is] he that
cynosure he had previously been among those minor ship's companies of the
merchant marine"(14). It is here, on the Indomitable that Billy says good-bye
to his rights. It is here, also, that Billy meets John Claggart, the master-at-
arms. A man "in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious
training or corrupting books or licentious living but born with him and innate,
in short ‘a depravity according to nature'"(38).
Here then, is presented a man with a personality and character to
contrast and conflict with Billy's. Sweet, innocent Billy immediately realizes
that this man is someone he does not wish to cross and so after seeing ...

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Through this
situation Billy now finds himself in, Melville has us ask ourselves a question:
Would it be right for Billy to heed the advice of experience and wisdom and tell
the captain about Claggart's conspiracy? Or should he instead keep his mouth
shut and try to work things out himself?
Being the good person that he is, Billy tries to forget about it and
hopes that it will pass, but it does not. And that is where the fourth of these
few characters comes in. Captain Vere, with his love for knowledge and books,
and "… his settled convictions [which stood] as a dike against those invading
waters of novel opinion, social, political, and otherwise, which carried away as
in a torrent no ...

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