Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Individual Versus Society
Melville is deeply interested in the ways in which society
forces people to curtail or limit their individuality. When the
warship Bellipotent extracts the unassuming Billy
from his former ship, the Rights-of-Man, the symbolism
is relatively explicit: society is all-powerful, it compels men
into participation in war, and in doing so it can readily dispense
with the rights of the individual. The names of the ships alone—Bellipotent
means “power of war”—suggest as much.
Captain Vere’s dilemma in dealing with Billy illustrates
how society requires the separation of one’s inner feelings from
one’s social obligations. In prosecuting Billy, Vere decides to
follow the letter of the law, despite his own sense that Billy personifies
goodness and innocence. Feeling the pressure of his position as
a leader with a responsibility to see that the men obey the Mutiny
Act, Vere forces himself to disregard his own feelings about Billy’s
situation and even urges the jurors in the case to do the same.
Laws, not the dictates of individual conscience, govern society;
in order to fill a social role well, it may sometimes be necessary
to act against one’s own impulses. To be a “good” captain, Vere
must do something that he instinctually interprets as morally wrong—condemning
an innocent soul. Being a good captain requires him to be a bad
friend to Billy, just as being a good friend to Billy would require
him to be a bad captain.
In presenting Vere’s dilemma, the narrator introduces
a lengthy discussion about the famous mutiny at Nore. The narrator
shows that most of the participants in the mutiny ultimately redeem
themselves in the momentous victory at Trafalgar, where they display true
patriotism. The narrator’s point seems to be that the impulses of
individuals are generally good and beneficial to society as a whole.
However, the outcome of the narrator’s story is more ominous. Although
the British war machine greatly benefits from the individual enthusiasm
and patriotism of its sailors, the more powerful the navy becomes,
the more it is able to squelch individualism. In fact, the harsh
legislation of the Mutiny Act is passed to suppress any further
murmurings of dissent. Melville seems to suggest that ultimately,
the individual’s attempt to assert himself in the face of society
will prove futile.
Conscience Versus Law
Although a number of the characters in Billy Budd possess
strong individual consciences; fundamentally, the people on the
ship are unable to trust one another. Paranoia abounds. Consequently,
life aboard the ship is governed by a strict set of rules, and everybody trusts
the rules—not the honor or conscience of individuals—to maintain
order. The mistrust that the characters feel, and that is likely
also to affect us as we read, stems from the sense that evil is pervasive.
Evil men like Claggart seem to be lurking everywhere. Because it
is impossible to know for sure whether people’s intentions are good
or evil, the evil men not only disguise their own insidious designs,
they also impute evil motives to others. Most notably, Claggart
misinterprets Billy’s intention in the soup-spilling incident and
subsequently plots his downfall.
The Dansker understands this sort of dishonesty all too
well, and as a result, he has acquired a cynicism in his dealings
with other people. The Dansker’s reticence may be interpreted in
different ways, but one plausible interpretation is that he fails
to take direct action against evil men because he fears the consequences
of confronting evil directly, thus leaving other good men like
Billy to fend for themselves. He may represent people who play roles
in order to fit into society, never fully acting on their own impulses
and distancing themselves from the rest of society. In this reading,
the Dansker confronts a dilemma similar to Vere’s. The Dansker likes
Billy and tries to help him, but he ultimately sacrifices Billy
to the claustrophobic, paranoid world of the ship, in which men
are disconnected from their own consciences. In Billy Budd, men
who confront the law and men who confront evil suffer similar consequences,
suggesting the dark view that evil and the law are closely connected.
The Vulnerability of Innocence
Billy Budd does not represent goodness so much as he does
innocence, and the conflict between innocence and
evil in this novel is different from the conflict between good and
evil. The narrator makes clear that Billy is not a hero in the traditional
sense. Though he has the good looks and blithe attitude of the ideal
Handsome Sailor, his defining characteristic is extreme naïveté,
not moral strength or courage. Billy does not have a sufficient
awareness of good and evil to choose goodness consciously, let alone
champion it. Because he is unable to recognize evil when confronted
by it, he ultimately allows Claggart to draw him away from virtue
and into violence.
