Lecture Notes, Herman Melville

Questions to Consider:

• How does Thomas Paine view the French Revolution?

• What does it mean to be impressed into service?

• Why is Claggart envious of Billy Budd?

• Explain why it is important that the story is set in 1797.

• What type of “blood” does Billy have?

• Why is it important that Budd’s death is “a species of euthanasia”?

Discussion Quotes:

“The moral nature was seldom out of keeping with the physical make” (995).

“Ay, Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of ‘em; you are going to take my peacemaker!” (997)

“To deal in double meanings and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature” (999).

“Reasonable discontent growing out of practical grievances in the fleet had been ignited into irrational combustion as by live cinders blown across the Channel from France in flames” (1002).

“Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurking survived them” (1005).

“He [Captain Vere] had a marked leaning toward everything intellectual” (1006).

“His [John Claggart] brow was of the sort phrenologically associated with more than average intellect … to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood” (1008).

“Nothing was known of his former life” (1008).

“Claggart’s envy struck deeper” (1016).

“Then the other: ‘We are not the only impressed ones, Billy. There’s a gang of us.—Couldn’t you—help—at a pinch?’” (1019).

“This incident sorely puzzled Billy Budd” (1019).

“Experience is a teacher indeed; yet did Billy’s years make his experience small” (1021).

“As to Claggard, the monomania in the man … like a subterranean fire, was eating its way deeper and deeper in him. Something decisive must come of it” (1023).

“At this point, Captain Vere with some impatience interrupted him: ‘Be direct, man; say impressed men’” (1025).

“You say that there is at least one dangerous man aboard. Name him!” (1026).

“If Claggard was a false witness …” (1027).

“Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, ‘Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!” (1030).

“[H]e was no lover of authority for mere authority’s sake” (1032).

“Now why should he have so lied, so maliciously lied, since you declare there was no malice between you?” (1033).

“But in natural justice is nothing but the prisoner’s overt act to be considered?” (1035).

“Budd’s intent or non-intent is nothing to the purpose” (1036).

“Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what death really is. No, but he was wholly without irrational fear of it” (1041).

“God bless Captain Vere!” (1043).

“At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in East shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of the dawn” (1044).

“To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross” (1048).