Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories

Rating:
Summary: An investigation of evil and innocence
Review: The nearby review by "brothersjuddotcom" is excellent, and will introduce you to many of the issues and opinions on this text. However, there is one more issue that I would like to draw attention to. Melville is concerned in "Billy Budd" with the human capacity for malevolence: doing evil for the sake of evil.

Some other 19th-century American authors like Emerson and Thoreau have fairly "sunny" views of human nature. Melville (along with Poe and Hawthorne) thought it was dangerous to ignore the other side of being human. In particular, Melville wants to address the question, Can a person do evil just for the sake of being evil?

Why does Claggart hate Billy Budd so much? Jealousy may be part of it, but that could not explain the depth of his hatred. Claggart is simply pure evil. His evil is motivated by nothing but the love of evil itself. Melville wants us to see that people like Claggart are a real possibility. And those who, like Billy Budd, are "innocent" will be helpless in the face of such evil.

If these issues interest you, you can pursue this topic through Poe's great short story, "The Black Cat," and St. Augustine's _Confessions_, especially "Book II" (really a chapter in length).

The other great story in this anthology is "Bartleby, Scrivener." It seems, on the surface, to be merely a story about mental illness. A clerk starts to simply refuse to do his work, until he cannot care for himself any more, and is committed to an insane asylum. But this is not a story only about depression. The key of the story is that Bartleby once worked in the "dead letter" department of the post office. Seeing the mountains of letters -- carrying the hopes, fears, and plans of so many people -- ending in a sort of clerical limbo, helped destroy Bartleby's sense that life has a point. Now, Bartleby suffers from the "deadly sin" of sloth (better described as "spiritual apathy"). He lacks the faith, hope and charity needed to find meaning in life. Consequently, he gradually sinks into inaction.

Rating:
Summary: An investigation of evil and innocence
Review: The nearby review by "brothersjuddotcom" is excellent, and will introduce you to many of the issues and opinions on this text. However, there is one more issue that I would like to draw attention to. Melville is concerned in "Billy Budd" with the human capacity for malevolence: doing evil for the sake of evil.

Some other 19th-century American authors like Emerson and Thoreau have fairly "sunny" views of human nature. Melville (along with Poe and Hawthorne) thought it was dangerous to ignore the other side of being human. In particular, Melville wants to address the question, Can a person do evil just for the sake of being evil?

Why does Claggart hate Billy Budd so much? Jealousy may be part of it, but that could not explain the depth of his hatred. Claggart is simply pure evil. His evil is motivated by nothing but the love of evil itself. Melville wants us to see that people like Claggart are a real possibility. And those who, like Billy Budd, are "innocent" will be helpless in the face of such evil.

If these issues interest you, you can pursue this topic through Poe's great short story, "The Black Cat," and St. Augustine's _Confessions_, especially "Book II" (really a chapter in length).

The other great story in this anthology is "Bartleby, Scrivener." It seems, on the surface, to be merely a story about mental illness. A clerk starts to simply refuse to do his work, until he cannot care for himself any more, and is committed to an insane asylum. But this is not a story only about depression. The key of the story is that Bartleby once worked in the "dead letter" department of the post office. Seeing the mountains of letters -- carrying the hopes, fears, and plans of so many people -- ending in a sort of clerical limbo, helped destroy Bartleby's sense that life has a point. Now, Bartleby suffers from the "deadly sin" of sloth (better described as "spiritual apathy"). He lacks the faith, hope and charity needed to find meaning in life. Consequently, he gradually sinks into inaction.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Get Lost In The Sea-Mists.
Review: Though this fine collection contains the justly famous work, Billy Budd, and the amazing story of Bartleby, I would like to focus on Benito Cereno. This story is less well-known than these others, but it is equally great. And I want to focus on it also because I noticed a review here that stated that this story reveals that Melville was indifferent to the horror of slavery. It is difficult for me to read such a view without distress. This is not only not true, but nothing could be further from the truth. A more compassionate and profound commentary on slavery and on human blindness has never been written and never will be. Please consider my view of this story:
First of all consider the seeming irony of the title, Benito Cereno. In the story itself all the direct focus is on Captain Amasa Delano. He is seen here endlessly as the embodiment of large-minded nobility and generosity. He seems to be the real hero of the story, (just as Babo, the negro who master-minds the mutiny, seems to be a stereotypical villain). But the story is not called, Amasa Delano, it is called, Benito Cereno. Why? Because the ultimate subject here is what happens inside Benito Cereno. The surface focus on Delano is a distracting screen that Melville deliberately and carefully constructs. Melville allows this screen to distract us because the type of 'decency' that Delano represents in real life is exactly what allows people who consider themselves 'civilized' and basically 'good' to be blind and distracted from the real horror of slavery or any other evil. Please recall that Delano " took to negroes, not philanthropically, buy genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs." And consider the scene where Babo is shaving Captain Cereno. Delano thinks he is watching an agreeable but basically simple-minded negro doing a job that perfectly suits his one-dimensional, inferior being. And in reality we are watching a charade devised by Babo's brain, a "hive of subtlety" that has Delano fooled. When Delano notices that Babo has used the Spanish flag as a barber towell to cover Cereno, he comments on it in a forgiving, playful way and Babo laughs and plays the clown, but in fact it is a revelation of how painfully aware Babo really is. Delano can not quite see the truth about anything. All of his confusion and uncertainty throughout most of the story, and the vaporous mists of the sea-scape, are meant by Melville to be reflective of Delano's deeper blindness. Delano has one moment in the story where he almost sees reality and says, "Ah, this slavery breeds ugly passions in man...," but he slips back again into his smug blindness. And his certainty and cheerfulness at the end of the story are part of this blindness. No, he is not the hero of this story. The real hero is the feeling/consciousness that rises in the heart of Benito Cereno. Delano thinks, and the reader may think with him, that what afflicts and almost paralyzes Cereno through most of the story is that he is simply afraid that if he makes the wrong move then Delano will be killed. But this is only a fraction of what really afflicts Cereno. Cereno, through his experience with Babo, sees the truth about slavery and he can never be blind again. Look at the last part of the story: After the mutiny has been crushed and the negroes are brought to 'justice' and Delano is then out of danger Cereno is still buried in shadow and pain.
Why? Please read very carefully the last conversation between Delano and Cereno here. Cereno explains so movingly how Delano is blind, but Delano still does not see. Delano asks why he, Cereno, is so melancholy. Cereno answers simply,"The negro." At the trial Cereno refuses to identify Babo and faints when he is forced to look at him. Three months later Cereno dies of inner pain and darkness in a monastery. The monastery is on Mount Agonia. Agonia gives us the English word, agony, and in Greek in means a wrestling contest. Here the struggle is between tuth and falsehood. Crereno dies in the struggle, but he dies on the right side. This is why the story is called Benito Cereno.