Billy Budd - Analysis and Interpretations

Analysis and Interpretations

There appear to be three principal conceptions of the meaning of Melville's Billy Budd: the first, and most heavily supported, that it is Melville's "Testament of acceptance," his valedictory and his final benediction. The second view, a reaction against the first, holds that Billy Budd is ironic, and that its real import is precisely the opposite of its ostensible meaning. Still a third interpretation denies that interpretation is possible; a work of art has no meaning at all that can be abstracted from it, nor is a man's work in any way an index of his character or his opinion. All three of these views of Billy Budd are in their own sense true.

Early critics discussed the novella in terms of good and evil, Billy Budd has often been interpreted allegorically in Christian terms, as Christianity and the Bible were important influences in American literature and western culture. Billy is interpreted typologically as the Christ or as Adam (before the Fall). Claggart, compared to a snake several times in the text, is seen to represent Evil. Part of Claggart's hatred comes because of Billy's goodness rather than in spite of it.

Claggart has also been compared to the Biblical Judas of the Gospels. He has charged an innocent man with a crime and turned him in to the authorities. Critics note that the chaplain kisses Billy on the cheek before he hangs, as Judas kissed Jesus on the cheek when he was betrayed. Vere is often associated with Pontius Pilate. This theory stems mainly from the characteristics attributed to each man. Billy is innocent, often compared to a barbarian or a child; while Claggart is a representation of evil with a "depravity according to nature," a phrase Melville borrows from Plato. Vere, without a doubt the most conflicted character in the novel, is torn between his compassion for the "Handsome Sailor" and his adherence to his own authority.

Other critics interpret Budd's character as the antithesis of Claggart, the fallen angel. Budd is naturally good, but also has the courage and ability to believe in his goodness to the point that it is not accessible to him as a concept. Vere represents the good man with no courage or faith in his own goodness, and is therefore susceptible to evil. Claggart is the archetypal fallen angel, a man who has abandoned his goodness for ego, and, knowing this, i.e. his own cowardice, seeks to seduce the flawed Vere and destroy Budd.

Some critics have interpreted Billy Budd as an historical novel that attempts to evaluate man's relation to the past. Thomas J. Scorza has written about the philosophical framework of the story. He understands the work as a comment on the historical feud between poets and philosophers. By this interpretation, Melville is opposing the scientific, rational systems of thought, which Claggart's character represents, in favor of the more comprehensive poetic pursuit of knowledge embodied by Billy.

In her book Epistemology of the Closet (1990/2008), Eve Sedgwick, expanding on earlier interpretations of the same themes, posits that the interrelationships between Billy, Claggart and Captain Vere are representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. She points out that Claggart's "natural depravity," which is defined tautologically as "depravity according to nature," and the accumulation of equivocal terms ("phenomenal", "mystery", etc.) used in the explanation of the fault in his character, are an indication of his status as the central homosexual figure in the text. She also interprets the mutiny scare aboard the Bellipotent, the political circumstances that are at the center of the events of the story, as a portrayal of homophobia.

In the 1980s, Richard Weisberg advanced a reading of the novel based on his research into the history of the governing law. Based on his study of statutory law and practices in the Royal Navy in the era in which the book takes place, Weisberg rejects the traditional reading of Captain Vere as a good man trapped by bad law. He says that Vere deliberately distorted the applicable substantive and procedural law to bring about Billy's death. The most fully worked-out version of Weisberg's argument can be found in chapters 8 and 9 of his book The Failure of the Word: The Lawyer as Protagonist in Modern Fiction . Weisberg's close reading of the book has confirmed the central role of Billy Budd, Sailor in the emerging field of law and literature.

H. Bruce Franklin sees a direct connection between the hanging of Budd and the controversy around capital punishment. While Melville was writing Billy Budd between 1886 and 1891, the public's attention was focused on the issue. Other commentators have suggested that the story may have been based on events onboard USS Somers, an American naval vessel; Lt. Guert Gansevoort, a defendant in a later investigation, was a first cousin of Melville.

Harold Schechter, a professor who has written a number of books on American serial killers, has said that the author's description of Claggart could be considered to be a definition of a sociopath. He acknowledges that Melville was writing at a time before the word "sociopath" was used.

The centrality of Billy Budd's extraordinary good looks in the novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as "the young fellow who seems so popular with the men—Billy, the Handsome Sailor," have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel. Laura Mulvey added a theory of scopophilia and masculine and feminine subjectivity/objectivity. (Quote from Billy Budd, Sailor, Penguin Popular Classics, 1995, p. 54). This version tends to inform interpretations of Britten's opera, perhaps owing to the composer's own homosexuality.

The book's concluding chapters raise a question that is implicit throughout Melville's story: How can one know the truth? The focus of chapter 21 on the court-martial impeaches that court-martial's attempts to establish "the truth." The book's multiple endings, and the doubt and confusion pervading the "inside narrative's" account of events aboard this ship, provoke doubt about whether the truth can be known, even from an "inside narrative."

The legal scholar Robert Cover suggests in the preface to his book, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process, that Captain Vere may have been modeled after Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Melville's father-in-law, Shaw was an abolitionist who was known to apply existing fugitive slave laws in his decisions, in spite of his beliefs. Although Cover admits there is no direct evidence to suggest this interpretation, he says there are parallels, such as Billy's "dumbness" and the rule that prohibited fugitive slaves from testifying in their own defense at trial. He believes that such a subtext was intentional.