Billy Budd
Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were perfect. They were innocent and
ignorant, yet perfect, so they were allowed to abide in the presence of God.
Once they partook of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
however, they immediately became unclean as well as mortal. In Billy Budd, the
author, Herman Melville, presents a question that stems directly from this
original sin of our first parents: Is it better to be innocent and ignorant, but
good and righteous, or is it better to be experienced and knowledgeable? I
believe that through this book, Melville is telling us that we need to strike
some kind of balance between these two ideas; we need to have morality and
virtue; we ...
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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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Billy Budd. (2008, March 29). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Billy-Budd/81273
"Billy Budd." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 29 Mar. 2008. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Billy-Budd/81273>
"Billy Budd." Essayworld.com. March 29, 2008. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Billy-Budd/81273.
"Billy Budd." Essayworld.com. March 29, 2008. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Billy-Budd/81273.
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