Billy Budd

Herman Mellville's Billy Budd is and extremely divisive novel when one considers the dissension it has generated. The criticism has essentially focused around the argument of acceptance vs. resistance. On the one hand we can read the story as accepting the hanging of Billy Budd as the necessary ends of justice. We can read Vere's condemnation as a necessary military action performed in the name of preserving order aboard the Indomitable. On the other hand, …

…man's need to punish and retaliate with injury through means that may be befogged. The reader may be upset with the death of Billy Budd not for the seemingly unjust killing of a sympathetic character, but for its illustration of a society coming apart at the seams; one which doesn't necessarily make sense considering human nature, but one that is so closely linked to social systems, it is doubtful that it could ever be changed.