Herman Melville's Billy Budd, a study guide
I will discuss this novella as part of the ongoing conversation about law and justice as a prominent part of literature and popular culture. But first I want to comment on Melville's style and the reading process.
In the introduction to the more recent Signet Classic publication of the novella, Joyce Carol Oates writes that in addition to Melville's "bleakness" of personal vision, " there is Melville's notorious stylistic difficulty, his lengthy and frequently graceless sentences, and his predilection for asides that impede the narrative momentum" (xiii). In other words, to enter Melville's world we must recognize that contemporary readers are not used to this kind of storytelling. If we were to pigeonhole Melville within the "reading process" outline, we might say that we lack the "cultural codes" of #7--issues of cultural literacy help define our difficulty with the text, especially when vocabulary (#8), syntax (#9), and discourse analysis (#10) also make access into Melville's world difficult.
Joyce Carol Oates helps us with the last category, discourse analysis. It seems that Melville has no interest in conveying experience to his readers as fiction in a way that invites participation. He is using short fiction but with a whole different intention than the more recognizable adventure novels of the time. Melville, by contrast, is basically "an essayist for whom drama is not an end in itself but a mere pretext for speculation" (xiii). What is Oates suggesting? As a major American writer, Melville is at times rebelling against the very principles of "storytelling" in favor of analysis of the human situation. Melville is philosophical and rhetorical, tending toward a moralizing allegory ( in the shape of fiction only) that, like Captain Vere, is "Starry," and faceless. For this reason that might be said to be embedded in the expectations of our own "cultural literacy," Billy Budd is, for many of us, a contemporary reader's nightmare. Still one thing seems certain. We will continue to set it beside Moby-Dick and that forces us, Americans, to sacrifice something of our taste to get at what might be central, a glimmer of Melville's heart stopping and brilliant tragic vision.
That aside. First as readers then we strive to make conscious the problems we face as part of the reading process itself. Consider the section # 3 from John Bean's reading process, which suggests that we as contemporary readers do not always consider the hierarchies within stories. Some parts map out upcoming sections. Some parts give evidence of main ideas. Some delve into opposing views. Try to see the discrete parts as having describable functions.
--Identify two discrete parts in the novella that in your opinion have little to do with the narrative sequence or the "drama" of the story. What is the function of each of these two parts?
--What according to Melville, is a literary sin? (Chapter 4)--Identify two parts of the story that confront your sense of what a story should look and act like? Explain why?
Literature and Law
Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper" or by arms?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.--Walt Whitman
It seems that despite what Whitman writes in Leaves of Grass, we still expect to be held together by law and lawyers. Yet at the same moment we hate lawyers, don't we? At least Carl Sandburg suggests as much in "The Lawyers Know Too Much." Yet the vast herds of lawyers continue to roam, occupying first and then migrating from center stage with far-reaching creativity to advance the threat of litigation in all areas. Simultaneously, the authority of the court appears to be in question, at least in Mary Shelley's world and Herman Melville's world. But this questioning is not totally allocated to the historical as contemporary novelists like John Grisham show us in texts like The Client.
Law certainly influences the direction of our society and law remains a prominent theme in much of literature because law is a quintessential dominant force that holds our political and economic structure together. However it is easy to misunderstand the nature and purpose of the system. Law's authority has a complex historical background. Consequently, works of literature have helped shape our thinking about law and society, illuminating legal expressions of the past, defining and describing the present, and providing a vision of the future. Our literature represents a "living history and analysis of the universal legal themes of order and disorder, individual and community, liberty and responsibility and their changes." This is the CONTEXT from which I want student s to proceed in the study of both Shelley and Melville.
Melville's Billy Budd
Questions for in-class study: True or False:
1. Billy Budd illustrates( dramatically) that legal decisions which fail to comply with the spirit of the law thus fall short of meeting reasonable expectations of fairness.
2. Literary works guide us as the absent voice of process, and offer a variety of viewpoints that are excluded in the letter of the law.
3. Billy's trial is illegitimate and Captain Vere exploits the system for personal gain.
4. Claggart becomes a "hero" of the empire, a true English citizen.
5. Melville appears to attack many facets of civilized life, including the accuracy of the press.
6. The story operates by juxtaposing the legal rights of individuals to the private codes that serve the rules and values of various groups within society.
7. Billy Budd becomes a legend among British sailors.
More Questions for in-class discussion:
What is the primary function of law?
What moral issues arise with the jury's decision to sentence Billy to death? Do you think the jury makes the right decision?
Ultimately, who bears the most responsibility for Billy's death: Claggart, Vere, or Billy himself?
How does war affect law?
In chapter 22, Captain Vere says that sea commanders are not authorized to determine guilt or innocence or justice in "that primitive basis." What does he mean?
The trial in Melville's novella begins in Chapter twenty-two. In that chapter, Billy is asked if he knows of any plot of mutiny. Why doesn't he tell he court about the incident with the after-guardsman?
One big question is downplayed during the trial. The officer of the marines asks Billy why the master-of-arms would lie if there was no malice between them. Captain Vere says that the officer's point is hardly material and that the court must confine its attention to the blow's consequence, " which consequence jusstly is to be deemed not otherwise than the striker's deed." Why is this moment so significant?
What role does irony play in Billy Budd?