"Cliff Notes - Billy Budd" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

and evil symbolically and in the workings of the plot. It's a
parable (a symbolic story) about the Fall of Man.

2. RECONCILIATION, ACCEPTANCE, AND FORGIVENESS

Yes, Billy Budd reenacts the Fall of Man, but it goes a step further
to show the forgiveness and acceptance that follow. The crucial
scene in this book is the meeting between Captain Vere and Billy
after the trial (the scene from which we're significantly excluded),
when the judge embraces the condemned killer like a father embracing
his son. The father-son motif is a sub-theme within this general
interpretation. The key line in the book is Billy's resounding
blessing: "God bless Captain Vere!" Melville, who struggled with the
mystery of evil all his life, ends his career on a note of peace and
forgiveness.

3. IRONIC TRAGEDY

Billy Budd is neither a morality play about good and evil nor a
story of reconciliation, but an ironic tragedy with no neat and tidy
resolution. Vere's decision to execute Billy is totally legal and
yet totally unnatural. Billy accepts his fate, but does he
understand the forces that brought about his doom? The narrator
hints at many possibilities of meaning and many possible responses
to underscore the ambiguity of the case. Far from accepting evil at
the end of his career, Melville draws a chilling portrait of it and
asks the question: Why must we have this force in our world?

4. LAW AND HUMAN NATURE

The focus of Billy Budd is on the drama of how law deals with the
complexities of man's nature. While Billy is fundamentally innocent
and Claggart is guilty of evil, the law demands that Billy be hanged
for murder. Is the law, therefore, an instrument of Claggart's evil?
Or is Billy's sacrifice necessary to sustain justice overall? The
central character of this theme is Captain Vere and the central
scene is Billy's trial, when Vere argues the importance of upholding
the law, even at the expense of human feelings. Though law is never
perfect, imperfect human nature makes it necessary.

5. SOCIETY IN TRANSITION

The story of Billy Budd plays out the transition from a bucolic
world of simple values and innocent men to a cold, inhuman world
dominated by harsh laws, violent wars, and industrial mechanization.
Billy is the natural man destroyed by the rigidities of a civilized
society that cannot accommodate his goodness and trust. What do you
think of a world that believes it is necessary to condemn Billy to
death? Do we, in fact, live in a world that has become progressively
more brutal and inhumane? Billy Budd signals the transition of