Billy Budd

Billy Budd, by Herman Melville

Aboard the warship Bellipotent, the young orphan Billy Budd was called the handsome sailor. Billy was tall, athletic, nobel looking; he was friendly, innocent, helpful and ever-cheerful. He was a fierce fighter and a loyal friend. All the men and officers liked him...

All but one: Master-at-Arms Claggart. Envious, petty Claggart plotted to make Billy's life miserable. But when a fear of mutinies swept through the fleet, Claggart realized he could do more than just torment the Handsome Sailor...He could frame Billy Budd for treason...

Herman, Herman, Herman. What are we going to do with you? I'll be honest here, I am not Melville's biggest fan, unless by "fan" you mean "someone who badmouths his writing style every chance she gets and constantly bemoans the wasted hours she spent struggling through Moby Dick, which is, let's face, pretty much the textbook example on why ignorance is bliss". Let's just say I was happier not knowing every minute detail of how, say, the hump back differs from the razor back from the sulphur bottom, and on and on, until I have lost not only the thread of the plot, but my sanity as well. However, now let me speak of Billy Budd, handsome sailor and all-around pretty boy.



This book is certainly mellifluous - if nothing else, Melville does know how to string a pretty group of words together, often at the loss of any sense, but still. The introduction to my book states that towards the end, Melville become increasinly upset at the inability of readers to understand him. I can only say that those readers have my utmost sympathies, because Melville seems to have written Billy Budd in some maniacal fit of pique, with an outdated thesaurus, carefully running on all sentences and obscuring all rational ideas with bizarre word choices and startling similes. Here's a sample:

From his chief's employing him as an implicit tool in laying little traps for the worriment of the foretopman - for it was from the master-at-arms that the petty persecutions heretofore adverted to had proceeded - the corporal, having naturally enough concluded that his master could have no love for the sailor, made it his business, faithful understrapper that he was, to foment the ill blood by perverting to his chief certain innocent frolics of the good-natured foretopman, besides inventing for his mouth sundry contumelious epithets he claimed to have overheard him let fall.

So, it's not quite enough to be mad babbling, but it is enough to make you wish for Melville in person, so you could shake him and scream, "Get to the point!" The story itself is pretty straightforward: Billy the Handsome (there is a fair amount of gay subtext in this novel, not the least of which appears to stem from Claggart's jealousy of Billy for being too. . . pretty. For real.) is accused of mutiny by the master-at-arms. Billy's method of dealing with the accusation is about as sensible as Melville's writing style, i.e., garaunteed to end in misery. There are good themes hidden in the story, of the battle between the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Compounding Billy's dire situation, and my headache, Melville treats us to an exhaustive (not extensive, perhaps, but certainly exhausting) treatise on the circumstances surrounding the plot - a period of dangerous unrest and mutiny in the British Navy. The atmosphere lends itself to urgency, while the players are left in the end to the worst fate of all: living with their own actions. Thought-provoking, but skimming will do just fine.