Billy Budd, Sailor

Captain Vere’s introduction appears just after the background information on Horatio Nelson. This close proximity in description highlights similarities and differences between the two characters, positioning them as foils of one another, like Claggart and Billy. However good of a captain he may be, Vere is not glamorous in the same way as Nelson. Nelson, proudly decorated to a fault (it is implied that his death is in part due to his visibility) and a traditional leader, contrasts with Vere’s bookish, dry behavior and distant pensiveness. The story of Nelson demonstrates that a successful, charismatic captain can bind his crew together under terrible circumstances. At this point in Melville’s novella, there is no evidence of how Vere commands, or of how he will respond to the impending rumor of mutiny—only that he lacks the charisma of a typical captain, alerting readers to the possibility of other potential shortcomings in future chapters. Vere is also nicknamed “Starry Vere”—the eponymous Starry Vere was a notoriously draconian disciplinarian. Vere will not demonstrate harshness or cruelty. However, he will eventually give Billy the harshest sentence—death by hanging.

Claggart’s formal introduction brings the novella’s antagonist into the story. Indeed, referring to goodness, the narrator says: “a nature like Claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it” (42). He represents evil on the ship and the capacity for evil in human beings. Claggart allows Melville to explore the question of predestination, including whether Claggart could be rehabilitated or was he always doomed to be evil. The novella will show that Claggart is incapable of—and shows no interest in—personal growth or goodness. Worse, he hides his true nature from everyone, which makes him an even more insidious enemy. He is comfortable pursuing mischief and evil for their own sake.

Claggart embodies the traits that Billy lacks. While Billy is good and incapable of malice, Claggart is only capable of malice. Melville thus positions these two halves of a whole to depict a battle of good versus evil. Present in the novella is a biblical allegory regarding Billy as a Christ figure (who is ultimately killed despite his innocence and sacrificed for the greater good) and Claggart as a figure akin to Satan. Satan, like Claggart, is a product of his creation and can only behave as he was designed. This religious interpretation conflicts, however, with the satirical representation of Billy, who is good to a fault and who also deals with an inability to speak under pressure. In this way, the biblical allegory is limited, though it is clear in the comparison of these two characters.

Claggart’s physical description gives more evidence of his function as Billy’s foil. Billy is handsome, brawny, tanned, and always cheerful. Claggart is pale. His pale face connotes either poor health or an actual illness, although neither is verified. When Billy spills the soup, Claggart laughs it off, but he also makes a remark signaling that he is also aware of the significance of their physical differences: “Handsome is as handsome did it” (36), he says. This brief encounter, although it seems trivial, also contains an air of inevitability. Billy and Claggart will eventually reach open conflict. The claustrophobic setting of the ship begins to play a larger role at this point. Even if Claggart and Billy were overt, sworn enemies, it would be challenging to avoid each other forever on the Bellipotent. As is, Billy is always near Claggart, or near enough that Claggart can always count on chances to observe and plot against him without Billy’s knowledge.

Billy visits the Dansker hoping to get clarity on a situation that affords none—the issue at hand is both simplistic and nonsensical because it is rooted only in ignorant opposition. The Dansker is initially positioned as a long-suffering, venerable sailor who has seen the worst outrages that humanity can visit upon itself. He is also a thorough cynic: “Years, and those experiences which befall certain shrewder men subordinated lifelong to the will of superiors, all this had developed in the Dansker the pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading characteristic” (36). Despite his experience, he is unable to explain Claggart’s enmity to Billy in a way that makes it rational. He knows that Claggart’s dislike for Billy is real, but this does not mean that he knows its origin. The Dansker, and his vague answers to Billy’s questions, allude to several of Melville’s most-visited topics: predestination, fatalism, and epistemology. When he writes of the possibility of objective knowledge, the narrator states: “But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other” (39). Melville hence uses the Dansker to present philosophical questions about the possibility of knowing.