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

than this. His appearance has a classical perfection that brings to
mind the gods and heroes of Greek mythology--Hercules, Apollo,
Agamemnon. Billy does, however, have one flaw, though it's not a
physical blemish: He stutters when he's upset, and the more upset he
is the worse his stutter becomes. If you want to view Billy as a
real person, you can point to his stutter as a trait that takes him
off his pedestal and makes him humanly believable. On the other hand,
some readers interpret the stutter symbolically, and say it
represents original sin, the inborn tendency to evil in our nature.

Billy is as good-natured as he is good-looking. When he worked on
the merchant ship The Rights of Man, he was the most popular man on
board, the ship peacemaker whom all the sailors loved and looked out
for. When he's forced to sign on the man-of-war Bellipotent as a
foretopman, he doesn't complain, and he soon wins the friendship of
the sailors on that ship as well. Billy's way of joking around with
his shipmates and worrying about getting flogged make him seem like
one of the guys. He sings songs, goes out of his way to be
respectful to his friend, the old Dansker, occasionally does clumsy
things like spilling his soup, and becomes violent when provoked.
All of these details help us to see him as a real person. The fact
that Billy hides the truth about a possible mutiny on board adds
another shade of complexity to his nature. Is he being honorable
because he won't squeal, or is he being stupid for endangering the
welfare of the ship?

Billy's most basic characteristic trait is his innocence, again,
it's up to you to decide whether to interpret it symbolically, and
if so, how far to take the symbolism. What exactly does innocence
mean in Billy's case? Partly, it means simplicity, honesty, purity,
and straightforwardness. Billy lives and acts from his heart; he's
not the least bit intellectual or self-conscious. He's incapable of
sarcasm or deceit. His innocence partly reflects a lack of
experience: Billy can't read or write; he knows little of the world
except what he's seen at sea. He's so trusting that he can't imagine
the presence of evil in anyone. His gullibility makes him an easy
mark for someone like Claggart, who sets traps for Billy in secret
but pretends to like him.

Is innocence of this magnitude possible in a real person? Readers
who see Billy as a symbol say no, and point to the many comparisons
of his character with Adam in the Garden of Eden before the Fall.

The symbolic view is also brought out by the vagueness surrounding
Billy's background and parentage. The guess is that he's the
illegitimate child of an English lord, and some readers even
speculate that Captain Vere (a bachelor) is Billy's actual father.
We're never told anything about his childhood, his relatives, or
really anything at all about his life prior to the events narrated
in the novel. Like Adam, he seems to have sprung full-grown out of