One day Billy struck a single stunning blow and astonished the bully with his quickness. Earlier, aboard the Rights-of-Man, Billy had been bullied by Red Whiskers. This episode also foreshadows the confrontation in which Billy, a fighting peacemaker," will strike Claggart. There is irony and pathos in Billy's impulsive, sincere gesture in jumping up in the cutter and bidding farewell to "old Rights-of-Man." The lieutenant gruffly orders him to sit down, demonstrating that Billy is indeed departing from a world of peace and rights and into a world of guns and arbitrary military discipline. Acquainted with the procedure of impressment, he does not hesitate when Lieutenant Ratcliffe selects him for service to the king, George III. Captain Graveling, who values Billy's good traits, refers to him as his jewel and his peacemaker.īilly Budd lives during a time when order and human rights are threatened. From the beginning, Billy Budd manifests superhuman qualities, many of which suggest a mythic, or Christ-like, figure. Associating the term "Handsome Sailor" first with the African and then with the hero, Melville gives his work a universality which is essential to its meaning. The novel, a sea tale set in the age before steamships, opens with the overtones of a legend. Perfect as this Handsome Sailor might appear, he is handy with his fists when provoked and does have one innate weakness: he is inclined to stutter or become frustratingly speechless when provoked. To the question of who his father was, Billy replies, "God knows, sir." He explains that he was found in a basket hung on "the knocker of a good man's door in Bristol." Billy, whom the narrator describes as "little more than a sort of upright barbarian," replies that he doesn't know. As he is being formally mustered into service, an officer inquires about his background and birthplace.
He scarcely notes the change of circumstances. Bellipotent as he was on the Rights-of-Man. Captain Graveling, of the latter ship, tells the impressment officer that before Billy came, the "forecastle was a rat-pit of quarrels." Listening with amusement, Lieutenant Ratcliffe cynically replies, "Blessed are the peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers!" As the cutter pushes off, Billy jumps up from the bow, waves his hat to his shipmates, and bids them and the ship a genial goodbye.īilly is just as well received on the H.M.S. Bellipotent forcibly transfers from the English merchantman, the Rights-of-Man. Such a figure is the Handsome Sailor of this story, bright-eyed Billy Budd, aged twenty-one, a foretopman of the British fleet whom Lieutenant Ratcliffe of the H.M.S. Around his neck he wore a brightly colored scarf which fluttered against his dark, naked chest. Recalling the tradition of the Handsome Sailor, the unnamed narrator recalls seeing an example in Liverpool many years before - the striking figure of a native African above average in height.
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