Important Quotations Explained
1. Habitually
living with the elements and knowing little more of the land than
as a beach, or rather, that portion . . . set apart for dance-houses,
doxies, and tapsters, in short what sailors call a “fiddler's green,”
his simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral obliquities
which are not in every case incompatible with that manufacturable
thing known as respectability. But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers'
greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do
their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming
less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after
long constraint; frank manifestations in accordance with natural
law. By his original constitution aided by the co-operating influences
of his lot, Billy in many respects was little more than a sort of upright
barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been
ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into his company.
2. “And
now, Dansker, do tell me what you think of it.”The old man, shoving
up the front of his tarpaulin and deliberately rubbing the long
slant scar at the point where it entered the thin hair, laconically
said, “Baby Budd,
Jemmy Legs is down on you.””
Jemmy
Legs!” ejaculated Billy, his welkin eyes expanding. “What
for? Why, he calls me âthe sweet and pleasant young fellow,' they
tell me.””Does he so?” grinned the grizzled one; then said, “Ay,
Baby lad, a sweet voice has Jemmy Legs.””No, not always. But to
me he has. I seldom pass him but there comes a pleasant word.””And
that's because he's down upon you, Baby Budd.”
3. For
what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous
and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by
the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be,
if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?
4. With
no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough
he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it;
a nature like Claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures
almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil
upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is
responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it.
5. “Struck
dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”
