Billy Budd - Not about Divine Justice and Human Justice
Some have misinterpreted Melville's Billy Budd as a story about the distinction between divine justice, on the one hand, and human justice, on the other. Here's a summary of the "incorrect" reading that leads to this conclusion: When John Claggart falsely accuses Billy Budd of inciting mutiny, Captain Vere (whose name suggests "truth") arranges a confrontation between the accuser and the accused. When Claggart shamelessly repeats the lie to Budd's face and when Captain Vere insists that Budd defend himself and when Budd is struck speechless (if you like) and, therefore, STRIKES Claggart who falls down dead, Captain Vere suddenly has a problem on his hands, a problem he did not bargain for. You see, he feels that Budd is innocent but he also knows that he has killed a superior officer, an offense punishable by death. Here's how Melville presents Captain Vere's argument at the drumhead court:
"How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so? - Does that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King. Though the ocean, which is inviolate Nature primeval, though this be the element where we move and have our being as sailors, yet as the King's officers lies our duty in a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that true that, in receiving our commissions, we in the most important regards ceased to be natural free agents. When war is declared are we, the commissioned fighters, previously consulted? We fight at command. If our judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in other particulars. For suppose condemnation to follow these present proceedings. Would it be so much we ourselves that would condemn as it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this: That however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it. . . .
"To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts. - In war-time at sea a man-of-war's man strikes his superior in grade, and the blow kills. Apart from its effect, the blow itself is, according to Articles of War, a capital crime. Furthermore -"
"Aye, sir," emotionally broke in the officer of marines, "in one sense it was. But surely Budd purposed neither mutiny nor homicide."
"Surely not, my good man. And before a court less arbitrary and more merciful than a martial one that plea would largely extenuate. At the Last Assizes it shall acquit. But how here? We proceed under the law of the Mutiny Act. In feature no child can resemble his father more than that act resembles in spirit the thing from which it derives - War. In His Majesty's service - in this ship indeed - there are Englishmen forced to fight for the King against their will. Against their conscience, for aught we know. Though as their fellow creatures some of us may appreciate their position, yet as navy officers, what reck we of it? Still less recks the enemy. Our impressed men he would fain cut down in the same swath with our volunteers. As regards the enemy's naval conscripts, some of whom may even share our own abhorrence of the regicidal French Directory, it is the same on our side. War looks but to the frontage, the appearance. And the Mutiny Act, War's child, takes after the father. Budd's intent or nonintent is nothing to the purpose." (68-70)
I hope it is clear from this long quotation that Captain Vere's position, eloquently as well as skillfully articulated here, is roughly the equivalent of Christ's injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. It is also the "origin" of the "incorrect" reading according to which the story is about a conflict between divine justice, on the one hand, and human justice, on the other. At this point I need to add only one more coda here and that is that Melville presents Billy's character in such as way as to imply that he is practically prelapsarian in his overall goodness while Claggart is presented in such a way as to seem most appallingly postlapsarian, or downright evil.Partner sites: Study Spanish in Quito, English Bulldog, and Free Hamlet Essays