Free Billy Budd Essays: Justice in Billy Budd :: Billy Budd Essays

Billy Budd - Not about Divine justice and Human Justice   Some have misinterpreted Melvilles Billy Budd as a story about the distinction between divine justice, on the wiz hand, and human justice, on the former(a). Heres a summary of the incorrect reading that leads to this closure When John Claggart falsely accuses Billy Budd of inciting mutiny, Captain Vere (whose name suggests truth) arranges a confrontation between the accuser and the accused. When Claggart shamelessly repeats the lie to Budds face and when Captain Vere insists that Budd reason himself and when Budd is struck speechless (if you like) and, therefore, STRIKES Claggart who falls down dead, Captain Vere suddenly has a problem on his hands, a problem he did not trade for. You see, he feels that Budd is innocent but he also knows that he has killed a superior officer, an offense punishable by cobblers last. Heres how Melville presents Captain Veres argument at the drumhead court   How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so? - Does that state it aright? You sign sad assent. Well, I to a fault feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear certify that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King. Though the ocean, which is inviolate Nature primeval, though this be the element where we move and have our being as sailors, yet as the Kings officers lies our duty in a sphere correspondingly natural? So little is that true that, in receiving our commissions, we in the most important regards ceased to be natural free agents. When war is declared are we, the commissioned fighters, antecedently consulted? We fight at command. If our judgments approve the war, that is but coincidence. So in other particulars. For suppose condemnation to follow these present proceedings. Would it be so ofttimes we ourselves that would condemn as it would be martial law operating by dint of us? For t hat law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this That nevertheless pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it. . . .   To unshakable us a bit, let us recur to the facts. - In war-time at sea a man-of-wars man strikes his superior in grade, and the blow kills.