He also seemed obsessed with Billy’s good looks. It seems that Claggart could not accept Billy’s popularity and happy-go-lucky spirit. John Claggart, the master of arms aboard the ship, who believed that Billy had contempt for him, represents humanity’s evil and ugly side. He mistakes cruel comments for good-natured kidding and learns too late how cruel humans can be. He integrates symbols, allusions, and timeless themes into this novella.īilly is a foundling and wants very much to please his superiors on The HMS Indomitable (Bellipotent in some editions of the book), but does not have the wherewithal. Upon closer examination, Herman Melville has deliberately crafted the tale so that the characters represent important societal messages. On the surface, this novella is a simple story about a naive sailor on an English warship in 1797 who inadvertently kills a superior and gets his just consequences. “Now something such an one was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short “a depravity according to nature.” “To deal in double meanings and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.”
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