Billy Budd: The tragedy of justice

Billy Budd: The tragedy of justice

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There are at least three basic issues in BillyBudd. First, how and by what standards should Billy or Billy’s act, be judged? Second, how does Vere, the men committed to society, perceive the problem and respond? And third, how adequate are the standards which society has adopted? The structure of the novel is such that these problems, are presented in three overlapping, climactic scenes: the discussion of the law; Vere’s actions and feelings and the execution, at which society is present and takes its final action.

            Indeed if Billy is innocent, why not Claggart? Is it just to blame Claggart for evil that was not his choice but was innate and inborn? His nature, “for which the creator alone is responsible,” must “act out to the end the part allotted to it,” this antipathy was no more within is control than Billy’s fist was under Billy’s control. Billy’s very existence and nearness was an excruciating unbearable provocation to Claggart as D.H. Lawrence’s young soldier is to his superior in the Prussian officer.

Nature contains both Billy’s goodness and Claggart’s evil. But in times of stress and extremity, the low of nature offers no support to goodness, and no check to evil. It interposes no objection. And it allows Billy to hill a weatherman who was not immediately threatening his life. Human law must set a higher standard. To do so, it must look beyond the immediate theatre of action. Harsh though this may be, we must be judged by a universe wider than the one in which our actions are played out.

            Natural justice, as the drumhead court sees it, has a second aspect: the guilt or innocence of the mind. Billy did not intend to kill. He testifies, “there was no malice between us … I am sorry that he is dead. I did not mean to kill him”. Moreover, Billy’s whole character shows an innocent mind. The sailors all loved him. These virtues were “pristine and unadulterated”. He was the Handsome sailor, blessed with strength and beauty, of a lineage “favored by love and the Graces”, with a moral nature not “out of keeping with the physical make”, “happily endowed with the society of high health, youth and a free heart”. Vere calls him “a fellow creature innocent before God”. The chaplain recognizes “the young Sailor's essential innocence”. Even Claggart feels that Billy’s nature “had in its simplicity never willed malice”

            Of course Billy cannot escape all responsibility for the consequence of his blew. He intended to hit Claggart, although possibly not full an the forehead, Intending the blow, Billy took upon himself the responsibility for the possible consequences. But shouldn’t his responsibility be limited because this was an unintended killing? At first thought, we agree. The law doesn’t punish children, it doesn’t punish the insane. An accidental killing isn’t murder. The law recognizes the difference between premeditated killing and killing in hot blood, or by provocation, or in fear, shouldn’t Billy’s innocent mind be considered in extenuation? But although modern law is more flexible than the Muting Act, its basic approach is similar; primarily it judges the action and not the man or his state of mind. "The law stands at a distance from the crime and the criminal, and judges “objectively”. And while such an approach may not satisfy the demands of divine justice, it is the only possible basis for human law" (Reich 379).

           

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