Billy Budd, Sailor

Unpublished in Melville's lifetime, BILLY BUDD is considered one of his greatest works. It began as a ballad, but grew into a short novel with an ambiguous plot that raises more questions than it answers, about good and evil, justice and injustice. Billy Budd, a handsome, angelic, and beloved young sailor, is wrongly accused of inciting mutiny. He lashes out in a rage and accidentally kills his accuser, the demonic Claggart, with one blow. The ship's commander, Captain Vere, a conflicted man of principle, cries, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang." And a court martial does indeed condemn the saintly Billy to death. His last words are, "God bless Captain Vere." Billy Budd is widely interpreted as a Christ figure, the victim of a kind of ritual sacrifice, after which order is restored. He is also seen as an innocent, Adam-like character who is destroyed by the evil that is inescapable in the world. When it was published, one critic called this novella "Melville's last will and spiritual testament."