http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Budd Billy Budd is a novella begun around 1886 by American author Herman Melville, (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) completed but not published before his death. The work has been central to Melville scholarship since it was
discovered in manuscript among Melville's papers in 1924 (33 years after his death)and published the same year.
... In 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. established what is now considered the correct text; it was published by the University of Chicago Press, and most editions printed since then follow the Hayford/Sealts text. One of the most influential twentieth century versions of the story was the libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier for the 1951
opera Billy Budd by Benjamin Britten.
[edit] Plot summary
The plot follows Billy Budd, a seaman pressed into service aboard the HMS Bellipotent in the year
1797, when the British Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by Napoleon's military ambitions. Billy, suffused with innocence, openness, and natural charisma, is adored by the crew, but for
unexplained reasons arouses the antagonism of the ship's Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny.
When Claggart brings his charges to the Captain, the Hon. Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, Vere summons both Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private confrontation. When, in Billy's and Vere's presence, Claggart makes his false charges,
Billy is unable to find the words to respond, due to a speech impediment. Unable to express himself verbally, he lashes out seemingly involuntarily at Claggart, killing him with a single blow.
Vere, an eminently thoughtful man whose name recalls the Latin words "veritas" (truth) and "vir" (man) as well as the English word "veer," then convenes a drumhead court-martial.
He then intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to argue them into convicting Billy, despite their and his belief in Billy's innocence before God.
("an angel of God, yet the angel must die.") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War, but
recent scholarship suggests otherwise. At his insistence, the court-martial convicts Billy; Vere argues that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir the already-turbulent waters of mutiny throughout the British fleet. Condemned to be hanged from the ship's yardarm at dawn the morning after the killing,
Billy's final words are, "God bless Captain Vere!"
The story may have been based on events onboard USS Somers.
[edit] Popular interpretation
A story ultimately about good and evil, Billy Budd has often been interpreted allegorically,
with Billy interpreted typologically as Christ or the Biblical Adam, with Claggart (compared to a snake several times in the text) figured as Satan. Part of Claggart's hatred comes not despite Billy's goodness, but because of it. Claggart is also seen to be thought of as the Biblical Judas. The act of turning in an innocent man to authority and the allusion of the priest kissing Billy on the cheek before he dies, just as Judas kisses 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 martial adherence to the Articles of War.
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In the 1980s, Richard Weisberg of Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law advanced a reading of the novel based on his careful research into the history of the governing law. Based on his mining of statutory law and actual practice 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 and proposes instead 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 [orig. ed., 1984; expanded ed., 1989].