Ideas of the Enlightenment in Billy Budd

During the Age of the Enlightenment, Gay (1993) maintains that "the men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program, a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom" (3). From a growing reliance on science and reason over faith and emotion to formation of political philosophies that asserted a balance between individual and State rights, many of the ideas associated with the Enlightenment can be found in a reading of Herman Melville's Billy Budd. In Billy Budd we discover a young and innocent soldier condemned to death by the State for the inadvertent homicide of master-at-arms, John Claggart. Echoing Rousseau's ideas put forth in his theory of the social contract, Melville's plot revolves around the need of the State to maintain law and order to prevent chaos and disorder, even if this means individual rights must be undermined to a certain degree. By discussing the themes, conflicts, characters and symbolism in Billy Budd, this analysis will demonstrate how ideas of the historical movement known as the Enlightenment are embedded within the work.

The plot of Billy Budd (1962) revolves around the experiences of a young sailor named Billy Budd. Billy is described as having a "virtue" that can "sugar the sour ones" and he is viewed as the ship's "blessed peacemaker" (Melville 1962, 47-48). Billy is symbolized as the embodiment of the "good" in the novel as is Captain Vere, the man who condemns him to die for inadv

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lly being the individual and Captain Vere representing the State. Vere understands that in a time of war, with so many men already impressed into service, to allow Billy Budd's actions to receive any punishment less than death would be to invite mutiny among the other sailors. Despite Claggart's role in prompting Billy to deliver his fatal blow, Billy does kill a superior officer and, therefore, must be put to death. Without such a rigid code of law and order, strictly enforced, chaos would reign. The danger of the relationship between the individual and the State is that a more powerful state is often in the position of superceding the rights of the individual. Billy is arbitrarily convicted of inciting men to mutiny, partially through the machination of Claggart, even though we are told that "Budd proposed neither mutiny nor homicide" (Melville 1962, 111). Ray Browne (1964) argues that the "political evil" that is necessary within the social contract against the individual is symbolized by the sentencing and death of Billy Budd. However, if others are encouraged to act out violently against their superiors, chaos would reign. As such, Billy Budd must meet the legitimate punishment for homicide, even inadvertent homicide

Category: Literature - I