Introduction
The novella, Billy Budd depicts a unique character of Billy and his struggle. The form of the narrative is generated by the memory of the narrator. Several features of his narration contradict the closed-form of legal judgment which he tells about.
Main body
The narrator thereby reveals the dilemma involving the relationship between outside and inside events, between history and individual happenings. Billy Budd claims to be filling in the historical background against which the story takes place. But once again he reveals the limitations of historical knowledge. He admits that he is selective because he is writing history with a bias towards his views. For him, form or process is not an aspect of content but a means shaped to convey a specific purpose. It is a tool of power. As such, his “conviction” is the thing to be conveyed. In the case of Billy Budd, it is a literal conviction, because it results in the death of the young sailor. But within the novel Billy Budd his “settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not inferior to his own” (Melville 62). The settled quality of legal judgment is opposed to the possibility of change embodied in the process of fiction. Thus a tension is established between settled convictions and novel opinions. Settled convictions act as dikes against the blank sea, while novel opinions rush onward. Therefore, according to the narrator’s version, the Captain’s vulnerable military position might have influenced his reaction to the shipboard conflict. Hence, his later claims about the demands of the law may not be neutral.
Thus Billy is seen as good while Claggart is portrayed as evil. Unable to unite the two oppositional forces, he collapses them by making them mutually destructive. Each exists for the sake of the other and each must ultimately negate its opposite. Vere’s legalistic mentality thereby results in reinforcing the power that he represents while at the same time denying that he has a personal interest in doing so. Thus he appears to be serving an abstract ideal, while in reality, he is subjectively reinforcing his specific position within a well-defined power structure. Vere’s initial error is his prejudgment of the case as evidenced in his exclamation: “Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang” ( BB, p. 101)! This statement embodies both Vere’s recognition of Billy’s moral innocence and the predetermined conviction of his legal guilt.
Billy could be viewed as insane since he appeared to act without knowledge of what he was doing and with no preconceived intent. What he displayed was close to Shaw’s idea of an irresistible impulse. It is Claggart who exhibits premeditated behavior. Thus Vere could have used a different legal charge for bringing Billy to trial as indicated by the substance of Shaw’s earlier ruling. Instead, Melville seems to have adapted Shaw’s questionable behavior in the Webster case as a model for Vere’s, thereby emphasizing how law can be manipulated. What appears inevitable because it is the law is a matter of expedient choice. Shaw’s prior legal rulings could have been used to exonerate but instead, Shaw’s questionable judgment is used to condemn. Shaw also drew upon the testimony of expert witnesses to define insanity, a concept that is treated skeptically within Billy Budd.
In sum, Billy is depicted as a heroic character and a strong personality. He emphasizes false use of his power and specialized discourse to manipulate his audience by considerately providing it with a story it needed to hear. Although the narrator accentuates the factual validity of his story, his narrative method undermines his claims to certainty.
References
Melville, H. (2000). Billy Budd. Blue Unicorn Editions; PaperBack edition.