Billy Budd as a Modern Tragedy
As in the 20th century Arthur Miller's "the tragedy of the common man" became important. First of all he discards the high rank of the tragic hero. The culture and the social structure of modern time differ from the time of Sophocles and Aeschylus when they work tragedy. Not only the Athenian concept but also the Elizabethan standard became out of date. That is why Miller says; "It is now many centuries since Aristotle lived. There is no more reason for falling down in a faint before Euclid's Geometry, which has been amended numerous times by man with new inside… things do change, and even a genious is limited by his time and the nature of his society" (Draper 164-5).
Viewing this principle in Melville's Billy Budd, Billy is simple, innocence who possesses good quality. He is a normal man who is impressed in Bellipotent as a peacemaker. He is from a simple birth possess a high rank like in Aristotelian tragic heroes. Billy is a personification of simplicity and goodness; Claggart was a personification of evil and cunning. Billy brings tragedy down on himself, not by opposing the life, but by enduring and living it. According to Miller the tragic heroes must have choices upon to him, so that he can choose his course of action and the choices should be serious enough to change the course of his life. Billy, though, was suggested by Dansker to be careful from the evil man Claggart; he doesn't paid any attention towards his speech. He himself is wrong when he comes in this decision nevertheless he would have escaped from this victims. In modern tragedy, the hero's tragic victory needs to be related to his consciousness. Society is a trap and whoever lives in society is automatically trapped –he becomes a victim. In the novel, Claggart began to feel antagonistic towards Billy from the very start, and without any reason. It is the environment that gives the way out to pity and fear in the novel. Billy did not even become aware of this antagonism till Claggart brazenly made certain serous changes against him to Billy's very face. As Miller says that this tragic victory is more effective is "a society of faith" then in a secular society. He says that tragic victory must come out to the essential humanity of the character not out to the transcendental values which faith purposes. Since he is not conscious about potential danger of Claggart, he never believe that Claggart was inwardly hostile to him, because Billy felt secure in the know ledge that he had never done any wrong to Claggart. Billy did not believe the old Dansker when the latter told him that the corporals were trying to harass Billy because of some instigation by Claggart; and Billy didn't believe the old Dansker when the latter told him on a second occasion that the after guardsman who had offered a bribe to Billy if Billy would join a conspiracy against the authorities, had also been instigated by Claggart to trap Billy. It was Billy's simplicity, which presented him from believing the old Dansker's explanations on those two occasions. Billy did not feel the least inclination to believe that Claggart could harbour any feelings of ill will towards him. Billy could never imagine the existence in this would of nay man who would, without thyme of reason, and without any provocation whatever turn hostile to a fellowman. Billy's simplicity, and goodness could be compared to those of Adam before the fall. Being totally unsophisticated, Billy could never believe that any man could be achieved by nature. Being himself entirely good Billy could never believe that anybody could by nature be evil-minded. Billy's total innocence, total simplicity, and total goodness made of him an entirely exceptional kind of man.
Like many other modern tragic writers who avoided the ancient plot and insisted as the inner psyche of the hero, Melville, in Billy Budd follows the trend of portraying the life of common man that had already begun, The hero of the novel, Billy Budd doesn't possess the regal or majestic personalities of Hamlet, King Lear and Oedipus.
Modern man is in search of his existence as the society is full of absurdities and tortures. Since this novel based on the two mutinies in the British navy in 1797, which were proved a disaster for Britain as well as the disaster of Billy. As war is the prominent factor of the tragic and; Britain was at this threatened by Napoleon Bonaparte who had recently come to power. Conditions of service on the battleships of the British Navy were appalling. The food served to the sailors were often unfit fur human consumption, and the discipline was so harsh that man sometimes died an account of the flogging to which they were subjected for small offences. The fleet was manned largely by recruits pressed forcibly into service. In April 1797 the crews of the channel fleet lying at Spithead presented a petition to the Admiralty, seeking redress of their grievances, and refused to sail until something was done about them. After some hesitation, the authorities gave way, and the man went quietly back to work. But soon afterwards a far more serious outbreak occurred in the North Sea fleet at the Nore. Here, the men seemed to have been infected with the spirit of the French Revolution, which was a recent event. They took control of, blockaded the mouth of the river Thames, and threatened London with famine. But this time the government stood firm. The spirit of resistance of the men began to weaker, and in one ship after another the officers regained their authority. The revolt collapsed and the ringleaders where hanged. The mutinies had one permanent effect. They drew attention to the hardships suffered by the men on whom the nation depended for its safety, and some of the worst of these grievances were remedied. As it was already mention that in a way it is analogous to the operation of the revolution at large, the Great Mutiny, though by English men naturally deemed monstrous at the time. According to Allain Robbe-Grilled, tragedy already exists in a society. Here in the novel as Drabble says "Tragedy may here be define as an attempt to reclaim the distance that exists between man and things, and gives it a new kind of value, so that in effect it becomes an ordeal where victory consist in being vanquished"(515).
          To Hegel  "Tragedy is the collision of equally justified powers " (Draper 112). There is conflict between two goods, which bring tragedy like in Antigone. The novel also dramatizes the tragedy of Billy like in the Antigone. Here we witness the spectacle of goodness being crucified at the altar of discipline and law. But the novel is not only the tragedy of Billy; it is also the tragedy of captain Vere. Captain Vere's role in the story is most unenviable. He knows that Billy is essentially innocent because a false charge has been brought against him and because Billy has unintentionally and impulsively dealt a blow to Claggart, which kills him. But, though morally innocent, Billy is in the legal sense guilty of a capital crime. Even if Claggart hadn't died, Billy's giving a blow to his superior officer would have been regarded as a capital offence liable to the same penalty. Now, Captain Vere had to decide whether to take into account the mitigating circumstances or to concentrate only upon Billy's guilt. Captain Vere chose the later curse, ruling out all consideration such as private morality, Private conscience, and the feeling of mercy. However after the court martial had delivered its judgment in accordance with captain Vere's explicit demand, Captain Vere was overcome by his feeling of sympathy for Billy. Captain Vere now realized the enormity of the justice done to Billy in a moral sense. He therefore underwent indescribable mental torture caused to him by the recollection of what had happened. In facts, captain Vere continued to be haunted by thoughts of Billy's sad and, so that, even while dying Captain Vere was murmuring repeatedly the name of Billy Budd. Thus in terms of mental suffering Captian Vere's fate is even more moving than of Billy. The novel is a tragedy also in so far as we experience at the end that feeling of exhilaration and upliftement which a true tragedy produces in the readers and the spectators. The deification of Billy by the Sailors, who began to look upon him as a martyr and a great hero, has both moving and ennobling effect upon us. The ballad written by one of the sailor represents Billy a legendary hero worthy of love and adoration. However the glorification of Billy shouldn't put Captain Vere entirely in the shade. Captain Vere also possess exceptionally noble character even though he allows his nobility and his nobility and his humanity to be swamped and rendered ineffective by his excessive devotion to duty and his deal for discipline and social order. The victim of war falls upon him and he is destined to be the scapegoat of modern humanity. In the last pathetic scene of Billy after hanging is portrayed  through as a ballad, titled Billy in the Darbies.
Good of the chaplain to enter love Bay And down and his marrow- bones here and pray for the likes just o'me, Billy Budd- But look: Through the port comes the moonshine astray! It tips the guard's cutlass and silvers this hook; A jewel-block they'll make of me tomorrow, pendant pearl from the Yardarm-end like the eardrop I gave to Bristol Molly- Oh,' tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.
Aye, Aye, all is up; and I must up too early in the morning, a lot from a low. On an empty stomach, now, never it would do. They'll give me a nibble-bit o' biscuit ere I go.  Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup; But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay, Heaven knows who will have the running of me up ! No pope to those halyards:- But aren’t it all sham? A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am. A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go? The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know? But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank; so I'II shake a friendly hand ere i sink. But- no! It is dead then I'II be, come to think- I remember Taft the Welshman when he sank. And his cheek it was like the budding pink. But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease this derbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist. (31)
The sailors who had witnessed the execution wrote this poem both a tribute to Billy's character and an elegy on his death. Thus was Billy immortalized by a Sailor of him own rank. The glory and Sanctity of Billy is carefully portrayed through this line. War leads the innocent victim in which Billy is one who cannot escape the labyrinth of court justice. Situation is responsible for his tragedy. Though situation leads him to the tragedy we know how beneficial he was on the board the Bellipotant. The Sailors on board kept track of the Spar from which Billy Budd was suspended and executed. The Sailors regarded that Spar as something sacred. To them even a small bit of it was like a piece of Holy cross on which Christ had been crucified. The Sailor who had been witnessed the execution, and the Sailors who were recruited on the Bellipotent subsequently, regarded Billy Budd as a sort of men incapable of mutiny and incapable of deliberate murder. They recalled the fresh Youthful image of the Handsome Sailor, and his face, which was never deformed by a sneer or by any malicious feeling in his heart. On the gundecks of the Bellipotent the general estimate of Billy Budd's simplicity and innocence found expression in the above poem, which was written by another foretop man of the shop. The fate which Billy Budd had met was described in deeply moving in this poem. The world is full of chaos and disorders justice is rarely found. Melville writes in the letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne "But truth is the silliest thing under the sun"(65). How this world goes!
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.
(Keats, "Ode to Nightingale,"24-6)
John Keats in the above verse depicts the condition of man who is sad, diseased, pale and thin, and whose life is perpetually under groan, pangs and suffering. The same condition is of the modern man where Billy cannot escape. He is amid the suffering, groan and pang. His desires are paralyzed. His grief and despair are the product of world wars. Meantime Melville comes into this world and he depicts the theme of 20th century tragic vision in his stories and novels. He presents contemporary problems caused by the outbreak of the war. It is his age that provided the subjects maters for his stories and novels. He modified all these subject mattes with his personal experiences. His chief preoccupation has been the portrayal of hardship of the external world and his main character's excessive capacity of endurance and fortitude. Billy is the one who never tried to understand the Dansker's comment about Claggart attitude. He couldn't under4stnad the world is not like him who endure all sorts of accusation.
Melville brings another factor of tragedy, which Billy never understands. When Claggart applied the proverb "Handsome is as handsome does" to Billy's unintentionally spilling the soup. The psychological analysis of Claggart and Billy is clearly noticed in this context. Melville tells us that what had really stirred Claggart's antagonism towards Billy was Billy's personal beauty. Having observed Billy's handsome appearance and simple nature, Claggart had begun to feel envious of Billy; and this envy had given rise to an antipathy in him towards the young sailor. Envy and antipathy can certainly co exist in a man's heart. Melville says: "Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like chary and Eng in one birth" (38).
Thus Claggart began to hate Billy because he couldn't himself acquire either the good looks of Billy or Billy's innocence and Billy's simple nature, which was entirely free from all malice. In other words, Billy's very innocence and simplicity became the aboriginal sense of Claggart's hostility towards him. There was in Claggart what may be described as elemental evil which Claggart couldn't get rid of, but which he could certainly hide. Claggart saw the goodness of Billy and envied it; but he couldn't acquire it. Meantime an external cause for Claggart's antagonism towards Billy is now portrayed here. One of Claggart's corporals had feebly been felling him that Billy was in the habit of using bad language about Claggart when talking to his mates. This corporal's false report had prejudiced Claggart against Billy. Claggart's natural evil had thus been further encouraged by the corporal's malicious reports against Billy. However, there is no doubt that, even without this external reason, Claggart's hostility would have been strong enough to prompt him to do the maximum possible depravity to Billy.  For Claggart's conscience, it merely served to heighten Claggart's hostility instead of warning him against it.
Melville in Billy Budd, sailor comes across many generalization of a psychological character. In the novel Melville writes: "Passion and passion in its profoundest, isn't a thing earning a palatial stage whereas to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.
The Pharisee is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid chambers underlying some natures like Claggart's. And they can really form no conception of unreciprocated malice"(71).
Melville's letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne writes…. "there is a certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our option, was never more powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne. We mean the tragicalness of human thought in its own unbiased, native and profounder workings. We think that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the visible truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they strike the eye of the man would fears them not, though they do their worst to him –the man who, like Russia or the British Empire, declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself) amid the powers of heaven, hell and earth. He may perish; but so long as he exists, he insists upon treating with all power upon an equal basis. If any of those other powers choose to withhold certain secrets, let them; that doesn't impair may sovereignty myself; that doesn't make me tributary. And perhaps, after all, there is no secret. We incline to think that the problem of the universe is like the freeman's mighty secret, so terrible to all children. It turns out, at last to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an upon nothing more! We incline to think that God cannot explain his own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as he is. But it is this being of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say me, a God, a nature, so soon you jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary and you would have Him in the street…"(Tanner 85).
The letter to Hawthorne gives idea bout Melville's conception of " tragicalness of human thought" which he himself confesses. Melville stuffs Billy's mind an immature nature. Billy is so innocent about the reaction to the old Dansker's interpretation of the incident of the afterguardman's offer of two guineas to Billy. Billy could not believe that this incident had been manipulated by the master at-arms who had earned the nickname of "Jemmy Legs". Billy could not believe that there dwelt so much cunning in the master-at-arms. Here comes the tragic idea from the gap what man thinks and what is the reality. After all Billy did not have much knowledge of human nature. In this context Melville asks: " And what could Billy know of man except of man as a mere sailor?" Although Billy's intelligence had advanced with his advancing years, yet his simple mindedness had for the most part remained the same. Billy could be described almost as a "childman" so far as the ways of the world were concurred. Melville, here in this context comments:
The sailor is frankness, the landsman if finesse. Life isn't a game with the sailor, demanding the long head no intricate games of chess where few moves are made in straight forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor card burnt out in playing it.
Yes, as a class, sailors are in character a juvenile race. Even their deviations are marked by juvenility, this more especially holding true with the sailors of Billy's time Chapter 16. Melville further analysis the character of Claggart in Chapter 17. Claggart began to show a greater interest in Billy. His glance would often follow Billy with a melancholy expression in his eyes. To him Billy had the appearance of a cheerful Sea-Hyperion. ( Hyperion was a very handsome god in ancient Greek mythology). On such occasion, Claggart looked like " the man of sorrows". In other words Claggart had on such occasions a Christ-like perception of the misfortunes of human life. The melancholy in Claggart's eyes had in it a touch of soft yearning, as if he could even have loved Billy if fate had not ordained otherwise. Thus here Melville pays a tribute to Claggart for occasionally experiencing a deep affection for Billy and for showing a keen sense of tragedy of the human race. Claggart is here compared to Christ, the man of sorrows. However, that doesn't mean that the author is trying to dilute or mitigate our sense of the evil in Claggart. All that the Melville is trying to do here is to point out that even in the most evil-minded man there may be a touch of humanity, which, however, is swamped by the evil in him (Miller 197-210).
Billy was totally unaware of Claggart's deep antagonism towards him. Even when he observed something strange at times in Claggart's behaviour, he felt soon reassured when Claggart spoke a few pleasing words to him. This is what Melville says in this connection:
He (Billy) thought the master-at-arms acted in a manner rather queer at times. That was all. But the occasional frank air and pleasant word a went for what they purported to be, the young Sailor never having heard as yet of the "too fair spokesman."
Had the foretopman been conscious of having done or said anything to provoke the ill will of the official, it would have been different with him, and his sight might have been purged if not sharpened, as it was, innocence was his blinder (BBS 49)
In this chapter we know that because of his ignorance and his innocence rendered him totally incapable of perceiving any evil in the man. We are also told that the after guardsman, after having received a rebuff from Billy, did not much bother him again except for nodding to him as a mark of recognition or speaking to him a pleasant word or two. The after guardsman had surely realized that the very simplicity of the Handsome Sailor had rendered him formidable enough to resist all evil. Furthermore we know the psychoanalysis of Claggart. What is his mental state in this moment Melville further points?
As to Claggart, the monomania in the man-if that indeed it were, as voluntarily disclosed by starts in the manifestations detailed, Yet in general covered over by his self-contained and rational demeanor-this, like a subterranean fire was eating its way deeper and deeper in him. Something decisive must come to it.
            Claggart here appears to be a most unscrupulous liar. His accusation against Billy was a pure fabrication. He told the Captain that he had begun to suspect that some sort of movement was being prompted by Billy Budd among the sailors but hadn't thought it proper to report the mater to the captain till he had obtained some definite evidence to support his suspicion. Now he had thought it necessary to bring the mater to the captain's notice because he had substantial evidence in his possession. Claggart had merely concocted this story and was trying to incriminate Billy without any basis whatever. As for Captain Vere, he didn't feel unduly disturbed by the report given to him by Claggart. Capitan Vere did not have a high opinion about the character of Claggart because on one previous occasion he had felt that Claggart was capable of telling lies. Captain Vere therefore wanted to make sure if such a popular sailor as Billy Budd had really behaved in a manner that might expose him to the charge of disloyalty or treachery. "When Claggart reiterated his allegation, Captain Vere made up his mind to investigate the matter, but without giving it undue publicity. He therefore decided upon a course of action by means of which he could arrive at the truth of the matter" (Levin197).
Claggart now accused Billy to his face of having fostered discontent among the crew and having sown the seeds of mutiny among them. Billy overwhelmed by the gravity and the falsity of the charge, gave a severe blow to Claggart who fell down dead. Captain Vere thereupon decided to hold a court-martial for Billy's trial on a charge of having fatally assaulted his superior officer. The feeling of suspense is now intensified and the events of the story have reached a climax.
One being accused of serious misconduct, Billy found himself unable to speak because Billy could only stammer and stutter when under some emotional stress or pressure. Billy's vocal defect prevented him from putting up a defense of himself. Even though Caption Vere tried to encourage Billy to speak and defend himself, all that Billy could do was to produce a gurgling sound and make a few gestures. In fact, Billy found himself tongue-tied when Captain Vere made another effort to get some explanation form Billy, Billy suddenly turned towards Claggart and dealt a fatal blow to the master-at-arms even though Billy had absolutely no intention to kill the man. This, the impediment, for which Billy suffered so for as his faculty of speech was concerned, crated a situation in which he felt completed to use violent against his accuser. Billy's action was by no means a pre –meditated one. He was taken completely by surprise when Claggart brought a serous charge against him; and in that state of mind he found no alternative but to hit the master-at –arms (Ives 36).
 Captain Vere was, of course, shocked by Billy's impulsive action. His reaction to Billy's blow was to say, " Fated boy, what have you done!"