Quick Write

• Think of someone you know who inspires affection and loyalty in others. What qualities does that person have? Describe someone you know who possesses these qualities.

• OR• Create a list of qualities that contribute to a

magnetic personality.

Billy Budd

By Herman Melville

1819-1891

Background• Written during the last few years of his life,

the manuscript was left unfinished upon his death in 1891.

• First published in 1924, the work of scholars who acquired the manuscript from Melville’s descendants

• The novel explores two major themes important to Melville: man’s desire for social justice and man’s capacity for evil.

Influences on Melville’s Life and Writing • Born in New York, Melville’s childhood was

fraught with adversity brought on by family circumstances that forced his mother to declare bankruptcy ( the failure of his father’s business, his father’s death, and the Depression of 1837)

• Melville’s home was charmless, his mother cold and domineering; he left at age 17.

• Melville, age 18, had to enter the work force, the only job available being a teaching job (1 yr.)

• 1839: merchant seaman-roundtrip to Liverpool. Jobs hard to come by upon return.

Adventure on the High Seas• This voyage instilled in him a love of the sea.• 1841: Melville was at sea again onboard the

Acushnet, a whaling ship on an 18-month voyage in the South Seas—inspired Moby Dick

• While on board the whaling ship, he witnessed terrible conditions-jumped ship in Marquesas, living a month among cannibals-inspired Typee, his first novel. Escaped on another whaler headed to Tahiti-inspired his next novel Omoo.

• Ended up on a frigate United States in Boston-inspired White Jacket.

Effects of these experiences:

• He saw firsthand the poor conditions of the docks in Liverpool and the dismal conditions created by the Industrial Revolution.

• He also witnessed “sinister violence” on ships where sailors were flogged in the U.S. Navy.

• Melville considered the whale ship to be his Harvard and his Yale.

Melville’s Career as a Writer• He became wealthy early in life (in his

twenties) for adventure tales, which were bestsellers:– Typee: or a Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)– Omoo (1847)

• Critics were not kind with the publication of the following: White-Jacket and Moby Dick

• Publication of Billy Budd in 1924 renewed interest in Melville’s writing, establishing him as a major writer of American literature.

A Writer of Romance• At odds with the critics and audience of his

time-stories of realism were popular• Reason for his failure as a writer in his own

time: what critic Julian Markels calls a “bleakness of vision” at a time when Americans were optimistic about “progress”

• In Billy Budd, the plot is subordinated by analysis, summary, and philosophical rhetoric.

• Language is “elevated, ponderous, didactic . . . static”

• Beyond social injustice and political injustice, Melville witnessed an evil in others that could not be easily explained.

• Melville calls the evil in Claggart the “mystery of iniquity.”

• Billy Budd is an allegory in which the doctrine of original sin and the struggle between good and evil is played out.

• Because of the presence of original sin, argues Melville, all are capable of being “agents of injustice.”

Civil Law vs. Natural Law,a Theme Melville explores

• Melville understood the Constitution of 1789, that it makes everyone equal under the law and functions to protect all from injustice. BUT. . .

• What about mitigating circumstances? Should the law in its strictest form be carried out, or should each case be examined to take into account the individual? If the law accounted for the individual, might the law be mitigated and carried out differently than it would be for someone else?

Questions posed in the study of Billy Budd:

• Can a man be morally innocent and civilly guilty?• What would happen if a man were not held

accountable to the law but excused based on moral intentions?

• Should the court consider the “inside narrative” in cases in which a capital offense has occurred? Is there, in other words, justification for a capital offense if all the facts were considered?

Zeitgeist

• The general moral, intellectual, and cultural climate of an era; Zeitgeist is German for “time-spirit.” For example, the Zeitgeist of England in the Victorian period included a belief in industrial progress, and the Zeitgeist of the 1980s in the United States was a belief in the power of money and the many ways in which to spend it.

More Questions:

• Was the zeitgeist of the time the real culprit in the case of Billy Budd?

• Why does evil seem to win over good? Why do those bent on evil desire to bring down good?

• Does good always eventually win, despite its apparent defeat?