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

old Melville decided to reexamine the scene of his daring youth in
the light of all the wisdom he had gained since he first shipped out.
For the past three decades he had devoted himself exclusively to
writing poetry, which was mostly unread and unappreciated; but he
wanted his final work to be prose. He felt he had something more to
say about the drama of good and evil. And he felt he could say it
best in a novel about a ship, its officers, and its sailors.

When you read Billy Budd, you see how resoundingly Melville makes
his final statement. The story itself is so simple you can sum it up
in a sentence: A handsome innocent sailor, who is framed for a
mutiny he knew nothing about, impulsively kills the man who framed
him because a speech impediment keeps him from defending himself,
and the ship's captain decides the sailor must hang. Melville's
triumph is that he distills the passion and knowledge of a lifetime
into this simple tale.

Melville, perhaps more than any other writer, brought the conflicts
of our American way of thinking and feeling to the level of heroic
myth. When you look at his own career--the early burst of adventure,
fame, and success followed by the bitterness of failure and,
ultimately, the artistic triumph of Billy Budd--don't you think he
too has the quality of myth about him?


BILLY BUDD: THE PLOT

The year is 1797, a time of war between Britain and France, and also
a time when British sailors rose up in mutinies against the naval
authorities. Billy Budd, a handsome, naive, and good-natured young
sailor, is forced to join the British Navy aboard the man-of-war
Bellipotent (called the Indomitable in some editions of the book).
Billy was happy and liked by everyone on The Rights of Man, but he
doesn't protest the change; he's not a complainer, and he does what
he's told. Billy is assigned to the foretop (a platform up on the
foremost mast of the ship), and he soon makes friends with the other
foretopmen and becomes a popular member of the crew. Billy is so
virtuous that he seems almost too good to be true, but he does have
one defect: he stutters, especially when he becomes emotional. Both
Captain Vere, the commander of the Bellipotent, and John Claggart,
the ship's master-at-arms (which is really a police spy job), notice
Billy, but they each have different reactions to him. Because of his
good looks and innocent temperament, Billy reminds the captain of
Adam, the father of mankind, in the Garden of Eden before the Fall.
But Claggart, a sneaky, evil, and deceitful fellow, singles Billy
out because he's jealous and resentful of his popularity.

Billy, unaware of the attention he's attracted, applies himself to
his job. One day he sees a fellow sailor being flogged as punishment
for some petty crime, and Billy vows never to do anything that will