Billy Budd, Sailor
Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor is evidently an extremely divisive text when one considers the amount of dissension and disagreement it has generated critically. The criticism has essentially focused around what could be called the dichotomy of acceptance vs. resistance. On the one hand we can read the story as accepting the slaughter of Billy Budd as the necessary ends of justice. We can read Vere's condemnation as a necessary military action performed in the name of preserving the political order on board the Bellipotent. On the other hand, we can read the story ironically as a Melvillian doctrine of resistance. Supporters on this pole of the debate argue that Billy Budd's execution is the greatest example of injustice. They argue that the execution is a testament of denunciation, deploring the shallow political order of a paranoid military regime. I do not wish to argue either side of this debate. I have pointed it out to illustrate that Billy Budd, Sailor is a text about principles of right conduct, or at least this view is held by critics. Is Vere's conduct right or wrong? This is the basic question at stake. In this sense it is a text about moral values and ethical conduct. However, considering that Billy Budd, Sailor
Punishment is ideally supposed to invoke feelings of remorse. We punish to make sure that the feeling of guilt is felt in the guilty person. As Nietsche says, "one seeks in it the actual instrumentum of that psychical reaction called 'bad conscience,' 'sting of conscience.'" Thus, in accordance to the action of Vere, ideally the punishment should cause a "sting of conscience" in Billy Budd. However, as Nietsche illustrates and as the text of Billy Budd, Sailor confirms, seldom, if ever is this the case. Punishment itself precludes the guilty party from experiencing remorse: "prisons and penitentiaries are not the kind of hotbed in which this species of gnawing worm is likely to flourish" Indeed, locking someone in a filthy prison for committing a crime seldom causes that person to really feel remorse for their crime. If you need evidence of this you need only look at the number of repeat offenders in our justice system. Punishment generally makes people hard and indifferent. In the act of punishing, the punisher (creditor) is placed in a position of power over the punishee (debtor). This power vs. powerless relationship alienates the guilty one and alienation strengthens the power of resistance. By resistance I mean the act of opposing the force which seeks to impose a feeling of guilt. Therefore, for someone to feel remorse or guilt, they must feel it from within themselves. The punishment inflicted by others (the injured ones) is nothing to the cause. In this sense, punishment and guilt are contradictory forces. Punishment impedes and precludes the emotion of guilt from being experienced. must see Billy as a transgressor and enemy of the peace of his ship. Billy's crime has upset the law, order and authority of his community on board the Bellipotent. As a result, Vere must requite the "debt" and employ punishment. Punishment as a declaration of war and a war measure against an enemy of peace, of the law, of order, of the authorities, whom, as a danger to the community, as one who has broken the contract that defines the conditions under which it exists, as a rebel, a traitor, and breaker of the peace, one opposes with the means of war After the hanging of Billy Budd, the narrative ceases to relate the events on board the Bellipotent. For this reason, we are never shown Vere's emotional reaction to his decision to hang Billy. The only reaction we are presented with is immediately before the death, when Billy cries out "God bless Captain Vere!" At this moment Vere "stood erectly rigid as a musket in the ship armorer's rack" Melville accounts for Vere's emotion at this point by describing it as "stoic self-control or a sort of momentary paralysis induced by emotional shock." Either Vere is completely indifferent or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure or pai
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Approximate Word count = 1875
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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