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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.

This quote, from Chapter 12, further describes the nature of Claggart’s evil. Here, Melville focuses on the innate quality of Claggart’s evil, a quality unusual among literary portrayals of villains. Most villains appear evil either because of events that have corrupted them or because of deliberate, avoidable choices they have made—evil resulting from a painful background or from a conscious decision to betray good. Claggart’s evil has no such antecedent. Claggart simply embodies evil. Melville makes this fact clear in this description when he writes that Claggart can understand goodness, but is “powerless” to embrace it, just as he has no power to overcome the “elemental evil” that lies inside of him. Claggart has one option in life: to “act out to the end” the part that he has been assigned, that of the devious villain. Yet, if Claggart is a prisoner of his own evil, and has no choice but to act according to his evil nature, then the question arises as to whether he bears responsibility for his actions.

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