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

BILLY BUDD: THE STORY

The noose is around the handsome sailor's neck. The whole crew is
standing by on the ship's deck. Captain Vere, the man who condemned
Billy Budd to death, looks on without a flicker of emotion or
movement as the sailor speaks his final words: "God bless Captain
Vere!" Every person on board, including Vere himself, knows that
Billy is an innocent man, and yet he must hang. The Captain gives
the silent signal, and the sailor ascends on the yardarm (the long
pole to which the top of the sail is bent). Billy dies as the sun
breaks through the dawn clouds, illuminating his rose-and-tan
colored face.

Why must Billy die? How does this hanging of the innocent, good-
looking sailor come about? Does Captain Vere make the right decision?
Why are Billy's final words a blessing of the judge who condemned
him? These are the questions you'll be asking yourself as you read
through this story. And the way you answer them will be the basis of
your interpretation of Billy Budd.


BILLY BUDD: CHAPTER 1

The story begins with a vivid picture of the Handsome Sailor, not
Billy himself, but the group to which Billy belongs. We learn right
away what sets the Handsome Sailor apart from other sailors. We see
them on shore leave, the "bronzed mariners" flanking this fellow
like bodyguards of an important personage. They are proud of him--
not only because of the way he looks but for his nobility of spirit.
He is like the first-magnitude star Aldebaran, the brightest star in
the constellation Taurus. And yet, despite his superiority to his
fellows, there is nothing vain about him. Rather, he has a "natural
regality" combining strength and beauty. So, right from the start,
we see that a very humble man like a sailor can have the qualities
of an honored king. The Handsome Sailor comes to these qualities
naturally. He is born with them, and all who know him recognize them
and honor him. In fact, the Handsome Sailor is a hero.

As we will soon see, this quality of heroism is crucial to
understanding Billy Budd and his story. And somehow, this heroism
seems even more grand because the story is set in an earlier time.
"In the time before steamships" is how the book opens. The year is
1797, the stormy era of the Napoleonic Wars. For Melville, writing
back in the 1890s, the time before steamships seemed like an age
when greater deeds and nobler actions were possible. The narrator
calls it a "less prosaic" time, a time when Handsome Sailors could
be kingly heroes.

NOTE: THE SUBTITLE, "AN INSIDE NARRATIVE" A clue that tells you
that Billy Budd is not a wholly realistic book is the subtitle--"An