Billy Budd: The tragedy of justice

Billy Budd: The tragedy of justice

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This demands to feel an intense and indelible sense of helplessness and agony.  A youthful sailor loved by his shipmates for his natural goodness, is put to death for the sake of seemingly formalistic insensate law. Law and society are portrayed in fundamental opposition to natural man.

The confrontation takes place in a stark and sombership board drama. Billy, the handsome sailor, is falsely and maliciously accused of muting by Claggart, the master-at-arms. Momentarily losing the power of speech while trying to answer, Billy strikes out at Claggart, and the blow kills him. Captain Vere, who witnesses the act must judge it, is caught in "a moral dilemma involving angst of the tragic", knowing full well Billy’s goodness, and that he didn’t intend to kill, Vere sees no choice but to apply the inflexible law of a military ship in time of war. Billy is hanged.

The problem of BillyBudd has produced many arguments. Some critics have considered it Melville’s “Testament Acceptance,” a peaceful, resigned coming –into –port after a stormy lifetime. Some have thought that Billy, though deed, triumphs because his sacrifice restores goodness to the world. Others have found the novel a bitter and ironic criticism of society. Most recently and persuasively, it has been called a Sophoclean tragedy, a contemplation of life’s warring values. All of these views have merit. But there is still more to be seen in Billy Budd.

            Melville’s last book seems clearly to be different from his earlier work. It is true that Billy and Claggart are archetypal Melville figures. But in Billy Budd neither of these characters is developed or explained, each remain static. Instead, the focus is upon a new kind of character the civilized, intellectual captain Vere. He is the only character whose feelings we are permitted to see, and his is the only consciousness; which seems to grow divining the action. In addition, the book’s focus is upon a new situation; not the old clash of good and evil, but an encounter of these natural forces, on the one hand, which society and law on the other. Significantly, Vere, and the dilemma of this encounter were, were the last elements to be added when Melville was writing, as if he had started out to repeat an old drama but ended up with something new and unexpected. Billy Budd is also different in that the central there is presented through the medium of a problem in law. And “law” is used not merely in the general sense of order as oppose to chaos. Instead, we are given a carefully defined issue. This issue receives an extra- ordinarily full treatment, which, together with its crucial position in the story, makes it the major focus of action and conflict.

            In approaching Billy Budd almost all critics whatever their ultimate conclusions, have started with the assumption that Billy is innocent, and that the issue is an encounter between innocence and formalistic society. But to say that Billy is innocent is a misleading start, for it invites a basic confusion and over simplification. By what standard is he innocent? Is it by law deriding from nature, from God, or from man? And to what is the concept of innocence applied-to Billy’s act or to Billy himself? Billy is innocent in that he lacks experience, like Adam before the fall, but he is not necessarily innocent in that he is not guilty of a crime. The problem of justice in the book is a profoundly difficult one; its possibilities are for richer than is generally recognized. In turn such recognition affects the reader’s view of Vere and, ultimately the understanding of the novel as a whole.

            Continued…