Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor was published in 1924; 33 years after his death in 1891. The book was incomplete when Melville passed and there have since been several publications of the work, each slightly different than the others. The story takes its reader on a journey at sea alongside Billy Budd, a strapping young man of outstanding kindness and child-like innocence. Billy endures various hardships aboard the naval warship Bellipotent that test his morality again and again. The narrative of Billy Budd is a religious allegory in which Billy acts as a Christ symbol, ultimately sacrificing his life as an innocent victim of a poisonous and unsympathetic society. It is a portrayal of the ongoing struggle between faith and rationality, as well as the vulnerability of innocence.
Melville’s writings are largely regarded as poetic in nature. In Billy Budd, this is evident through use of poetic devices in each chapter of the book. The sentences are long and saturated with detail, while the chapters themselves are short. The story itself from beginning to end is not an incredibly lengthy tale, but Melville’s use of vivid imagery and the presence of a sort of romantic rhythm throughout makes up the bulk of the work. The book ends with a poem that is said to have been written by another sailor aboard the Bellipotent to commemorate Billy’s life aboard the ship. Melville also includes the element of irony as a means of juxtaposition. Billy is hanged as a villain, yet he is immortalized as a saint. This irony closely mirrors that of the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus. (Te-hsing 14)
There is an obvious comparison of the life and death of Billy Budd to that of Jesus Christ in the Bible. The narrator rarely alludes to the Bible explicitly, but the many implicit references to the imagery and language of the Bible create a sustained parallel between the stories of Billy and Christ. John Claggart, the chief of police aboard the Bellipotent, acts as a satanic or evil figure. He tempts Billy into sin and consciously works to defeat him throughout the book. A more explicit piece of evidence for this symbolism can be found where Billy strikes Claggart dead in the cabin. The narrator compares his dead body to a serpent; “It was like handling a dead snake.” This connects Claggart and his character to the evil, deceptive serpent in genesis. Billy defeats the evil Claggart, but it ultimately costs him his life. Similarly, in the Bible, Christ had to die and leave his earthly body to defeat sin. (Te-hsing, 13) Another religious symbol in the novel can be found in the role of Captain Vere. Vere can be connected to Pontius Pilate in the Gospels. Pilate is best known as the official who permits Christ’s sacrifice by reluctantly choosing to follow the letter of the law rather than his own conscience. Vere was largely responsible for Billy’s conviction and, while done begrudgingly so, ultimately made his decision based on what he believed to be just and right. Vere feels guilty for sentencing Billy to execution, made evident upon his own death, as his last words were, “Billy Budd, Billy Budd.” The Captain can also be compared to God the Father when we consider his relationship to Budd and Claggart respectively. Both Vere and Billy are pointedly charismatic and have a father/son relationship. Vere tells Billy “There is no hurry, my boy.” The god-like father must sacrifice his innocent and beloved son for the welfare of Bellipotent as a whole, as the Christian God did for the peace and welfare of mankind as a whole. Billy’s similarities to Christ appear several times throughout the novel. Like Christ driving the moneychangers out of the temple, Billy’s innocent character can sometimes resort to violence under stress. This explains why he struck and killed Claggart, despite his kind and irreproachable depiction. When Billy is executed, he calls out his final words; “God bless Captain Vere!” (Melville, 1638) This proclamation bares some similarity to Christ’s own cry of forgiveness found in Luke 23:24 – “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Even in execution, Billy forgives and remains loyal to his captain.
One major theme that emerges from this literary work is the idea of faith versus rationality. (Goldman) Consider Captain Vere and his internal conflict during Billy’s trial. His thoughts reflect the common struggle that people experience when making decisions that intersect with laws and regulations. Vere’s conscience ultimately loses its battle against law as he chooses what he believes is the best option to maintain order and fairness on the ship. Maintenance of order often comes at the price of dishonoring the conscience, however, as his choice haunts him even on his deathbed. Another theme in the novel has to do with the ongoing battle between good and evil. In the case of Billy Budd, however, it would be more appropriate to approach the idea as one of innocence versus experience. Billy is not a hero in the traditional sense, and lacks an awareness of good and evil that would allow him to consciously choose to be good. He is characterized by his naiveté and is unable to recognize the evil that exists around him. For this reason, Claggart can draw him into violence that will ultimately spell demise for an ignorant Billy.
The theme of faith versus rationality is universal. When considering religion and spirituality, people often wonder whether they should live their live according to their religious faith, or their rational thought. While there are inevitable intersections between the two in almost any religious practice, people strive to find a sort of balance between them. At the end of the novel, the purser and the surgeon of the ship engage in an argument over how to explain ehy Billy did not twitch after he was hanged. (Melville, 1638) The purser interprets it as “testimony to the fore lodged in will power,” but the surgeon refutes, explaining that there is no medical possibility that Billy remained still due to power of will. Here, the purser is representative of the idea of faith, and the surgeon of rationality. The purser wants his reality to align with his exhalted view of Billy. The surgeon does not share with him this desire and dismisses the possibility of Billy’s willpower while simultaneously dismissing the role of human desire in explanation or understanding altogether. Similarly, all people experience the pull between innocence and experience, or good versus evil, as they mature and make conscious choices to do or not to do. In Billy Budd, Billy’s innocence makes him intentionally likeable and Christ-like. In the same way, Claggart is very clearly painted as the “bad guy” in the narrative. Claggart is consciously plotting Billy’s demise, but why? What has he experienced that made him this way? Would Billy have died if he were not the naïve young sailor Melville designed him to be? We place the idea of innocence on a pedestal, but innocence and ignorance go hand in hand. Billy’s ignorance is what killed him. Experience is gained through decision making and often hardship. There is an inevitable tradeoff between the two; when experience is gained, innocence is lost and cannot be recovered. People desire innocence because of its simple and untarnished nature, but the experienced person knows the evils of the world and can prepare themselves for tribulation.
Melville, as he does in his other literary works, dwells on biblical symbolism in Billy Budd, Sailor. The novel depends on this mirroring of the Christian crucifixion narrative as a means of understanding human nature in the contexts of innocence and experience, faith and rationality, and good and evil. We understand Billy’s execution as a sacrifice for the wellbeing of the ship as we do Christ’s execution as such for the salvation of the world. Though he is chiefly immortalized as a kind of saint, after his death there still exists ambivalence among the sailors about Billy’s intentions. Melville is attempting to exemplify the historical development of humanity with regards to episodes in which an expendable individual is sacrificed for a greater purpose. He views Christianity as an explanation for why things are the way they are, and as the center of an order. Billy Budd was Melville’s final work of literature, and as such, may have been written as a means of comfort and explanation for himself as he made his departure from the hostile and transitory world in which he lived.