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

Billy Budd - Not about Divine Justice and Human Justice Some have misinterpreted Melville's Billy Budd as a story about the distinction between divine justice, on the one hand, and human justice, on the other. Here's a summary of the "incorrect" reading that leads to this conclusion: 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 Budd's face and when Captain Vere insists that Budd defend 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 bargain for. You see, he feels that Budd is innocent but he also knows that he has killed a superior officer, an offense punishable by death. Here's how Melville presents Captain Vere's 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 too feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest 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 King's 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, previously 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 much we ourselves that would condemn as it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this: That however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it. . . . "To steady us a bit, let us recur to the facts. - In war-time at sea a man-of-war's man strikes his superior in grade, and the blow kills.