[Contains spoilers for Billy Budd, Atlas Shrugged, and The Thousandfold Thought.]
This short story by Herman Melville is about a young sailor, Billy Budd, who is impressed into the British Royal Navy. He was quite popular on the merchant vessel where he was previously employed, and his good-natured personality lets him adapt to life on the Indomitable easily enough, where he comes to work as a foretopman. His troubles start when, in the course of his duties, he encounters another sailor, John Claggart, the Master-at-arms, who attempts to frame Budd for involvement in a mutinous plot. When Claggart presents his accusations to the Captain, the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere, Vere calls a private meeting to allow the accused to refute the accusations. Budd, however, suffers from stuttering, finds himself unable to speak, hits Claggart instead, and through freak chance strikes him directly in the head and kills him. To resolve the case, Vere calls a drum-head court, whose members he prevails upon to find Budd guilty, and Budd is executed.
What, one wonders, about this incident – whether true, apocryphal, or entirely made up– enticed Melville to consider it worthy of writing about? True, executions are, by their very nature, interesting. And yet –
The true purpose and meaning of the story, then, can only lie in the subtleties; hardly surprising, since Melville, one notices quite quickly, is a subtle guy. He won’t come right out and tell you things directly, no – he tends, rather, to make long, winding digressions that when considered in their core significance and taken to their logical conclusions ultimately reveal his real point. But to get his points, then, one must have the patience and concentration to follow him down these considerable detours and apply their implications to the overall story. When people say they didn’t make it through Moby Dick, I imagine this sort of thing is why. However, Billy Budd is only a short story, which puts somewhat of a cap on how long any digression can be.
One of these digressions comes in the middle of a description of one of the central characters, John Claggart. Melville begins by posing a question which naturally arises out of the situation he has just related: why is Claggart attempting to frame Budd? Shouldn’t there be, well, some motive? Isn’t it bad style bad writing style, after all, for the antagonists to take actions for no reason but to forward the plot?
Well, that depends on whether or not the writer in question is Melville. In a way, Claggart’s lack of motive is the plot, in the same way that the various digressions are the story.
Melville tells us directly (well, over the course of a couple lengthy paragraphs, but by Melville’s standards quite concise), that Budd and Claggart had never met before both came to work on the Indomitable, and there was no especial event which happened to cause any grudge between them. It seems it should be impossible for any motive to exist. But there is some deeper force at work – a force you must read another ten pages to discover, as Melville circles around the point like a bear around a bag of campers’ supplies hanging in a tree just out of reach.
He begins:
What was the matter with the Master-at-arms? And, be the matter what it might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd with whom, prior to the affair of the spilled soup, he had never come into any special contact, official or otherwise?
After some more discussion in this vein, with references to Radcliffian romance and Jonah, he decides to really get down to business:
But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature, these hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must cross “the deadly space between.” And this is best done by indirection.
Oh yes, that most clear, precise, and candid of methods – indirection. He begins by referencing various second-hand things he once heard from people entirely unrelated to the story:
Long ago an honest scholar my senior, said to me in reference to one who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that against him nothing was ever openly said though among the few something was whispered…
And so on for the rest of the page, as he bats at the swinging supplies with a claw but can’t quite manage to get a good grasp with which to pull them down. But deciding in the end that the oblique off-hand comments of this honest scholar are still not explanatory enough, and after going on to consider but ultimately reject expressing himself in biblical metaphors (a resolution we will see later he does not quite manage to stick to):
At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Write were any longer popular, one might with less difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured with the Biblical element.
…after all this, Melville finally comes to the heart of the matter of Claggart’s true nature and motives:
In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this: “Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature.” …Not many are the examples of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate for notable instances, since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality, one must go elsewhere. Civilization, especially of the austerer sort, is auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability…But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational. That is to say: toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgement sagacious and sound. These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but occasional, evoked by some special object; it is probably secretive, which is as much to say it is self-contained, so that when moreover, most active, it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above suggested that whatever its aims may be – and the aim is never declared – the method and the outward proceeding are always perfectly rational.
Simply put, Claggart is a psychopath. He frames Budd out of pure will to evil, and the reason everyone else on the ship doesn’t notice this quirk of Claggart’s character is only because he’s too good at acting like a normal, rational person.
One might without incongruity note that that Claggart is much like a skin-spy. He acts human – but an act is all it is. One must, however, look very closely indeed in order to discern the cracks. In fact, as with skin-spies, a close enough look at his face itself hints that things are not all so below as they are above – physiognomy being popular in literature even now, more so when it was yet considered a science:
The face was a notable one; the features all except the chin cleanly cut as those on a Greek medallion; yet the chin, beardless as Tecumseh’s, had something of strange protuberant heaviness in its make…
Melville seems to consider people like Claggart unusual (“not many are the examples,” etc.). A real psychopath! How rare! And yet, a wider review of the literature (at least, the literature generally referenced here on LER) reveals that, perhaps, it is Melville who is unusual in believing this type of character uncommon.
Carrying out destructive acts against good people for no reason – why does this sound so familiar?
Because it describes a full half of Rand’s characters in Atlas. In Rand’s version of the world, at least half the people one meets are like this – like Claggart, out to get you for no reason at all. Jim Taggart, Floyd Ferris, Thompson, all make laws that destroy the very industry necessary to fund and fuel the country they wish to hold power over. And why? Not even for power, they already have that. No, they do it for the pure sake of destruction (even if in some cases their motives play out mostly subconsciously). Does Rand really believe this is a common mindset among the population? Or does she believe politicians in general are somehow worse than all the rest? But even the low-status characters in Atlas possess something of this mentality as well.
How do these two authors come to recognize such similar phenomena, yet differ so much in their estimates of its prevalence? Why does Melville seem to picture a world filled with mostly virtuous people though containing a few bad apples, while Rand partitions it into a small slice of good in an otherwise moldy pie? (Or has society itself changed in the hundred years between them? After all, one bad apple…)
Well, be that as it may – are either correct in believing that such people exist, people who have no motive but a desire for destruction and evil that the devil has placed in their hearts? Does this desire even make sense as an ultimate reason? Or are Melville and Rand, perhaps just – unable to fathom the real motives of such individuals?
Actually, Melville does posit somewhat of a guess about Claggart’s thought process, in his discussion of why Claggart chose Budd in particular to torment (and in which we see that, despite his earlier promises, Melville can’t quite manage to wholly steer clear of the bible metaphors):
But Claggart’s was no vulgar form of the passion. Nor, as directed toward Billy Budd, did it partake of that streak of apprehensive jealousy that marred Saul’s visage perturbedly brooding on the comely young David. Claggart’s envy struck deeper. If askance he eyed the good looks, cheery health and frank enjoyment of young life in Billy Budd, it was because these went along with a nature that, as Claggart magnetically felt, had in its simplicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary bite of that serpent…And the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming various secret forms within him, at times assumed that of cynic disdain – disdain of innocence. To be nothing more than innocent! Yet in an aesthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and-easy temper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he despaired of it…With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, tho’ readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted to it.
Claggart, Melville reasons, hates Budd because he envies him. This can be inferred, Melville tells us, because it is in the nature of evil to envy innocence. Compare this perspective to Rand’s: do Jim Taggart and Thompson resent Dagny and Galt because the former envy the latter? Perhaps Rand believes her villains would be more like her heroes if they could (the difference, when it comes down to it, except in the case of the few real psychopaths like Toohey and Ferris, seems to be IQ – but that’s a discussion for another day). But is that which the villains envy of the heroes actually their innocence? Indeed, is innocence, as Melville suggests, even desirable, much less enviable?
For an alternative perspective, consider The Thousandfold Thought. In Bakker’s world, what envying occurs is surely not of innocence. In Bakker, motives, even those of evil, take a much more practical angle. Eärwa is a continent where even the good side slaughters entire cities, a world that contains enough evil to dwarf anything dreamt of by Rand or Melville (though considering how familiar the latter is with the bible, perhaps his writing simply doesn’t encompass the full revolutions of his thought). Yet despite this, the beings in Bakker’s world always have motives for what they do, which make sense from a rational perspective. The Holy War kills for religion. Kellhus twists men’s minds to defeat the Consult and prevent the destruction of the world. Even the Consult are not summoning the No-God purely out of the malignity and hatred in their hearts – no, they’re doing it to escape eternal torment in hell. And what could be more rational than that? Really, in Bakker’s world, it’s the men and non-men running around, knowing they are damned but doing nothing to avoid their fates, that are acting illogically.
And yet, even Bakker allows that when making decisions more of aesthetic than practical consequence, or when acting out of overflowing passion, some beings have an innate tendency to choose evil over good. Similarly in Rand – Toohey and Ferris, at least, could consciously choose otherwise, but knowingly seek destructive ends. But are we to believe that the true core of this will to destruction could be envy? Not in Bakker, surely – I see no indication that the Inchoroi ever had any desire to stop raping and murdering to go live lives of peace and charity.
It stands to reason that true motives might sometimes be hard to discern, though, especially those of evil. Recognizing the practicalities of survival, certain beings, in particular those with an intrinsic inclination to malignity, might well close the fingers of their face and pretend to be something they are not. The only thing left to judge by, then, is said beings’ ultimate actions.
And yet, evil is not the only thing that has shrouded motives, nor that takes actions whose virtue is far from obvious. Good actions can be taken for evil ends – but so too can evil actions be taken for the greater good. How are we to distinguish between the two – if, indeed, there is even any difference there to be distinguished? And if one or the other were going to envy innocence, wouldn’t it more likely be – the latter?
After all, Claggart is not the only character in this story whose motives are occluded. We might in just as much confusion ask – why does Captain Vere decide to execute Budd, knowing that he is innocent of any willful commission of wrong? Recall, it is Vere who calls the drum-head court and convinces it to convict Budd, even when the lower officers comprising it might have felt inclined to forgive, or at least hand down a lighter punishment.
To answer this, one might turn instructively to the other lengthy digression Melville makes, that concerning the mutinies in the British fleet which resulted from widespread discontent due to the excessive practice of impressment. Why, indeed, does Melville make reference to this theme of mutiny so many times in the story, when in fact nothing in particular of the kind ever comes close to taking place on the Indomitable?
The answer is perhaps the key to understanding Vere’s perspective. Vere, we might surmise, knowing what is happening in the fleet as a whole, is very concerned about a mutiny taking place on his own ship. (And considering the scene where a circle of impressed sailors attempts to recruit Budd, perhaps rightfully so.) Vere’s main concern in the story, then, is less the pursuit of perfect justice, or even fighting the enemy, but merely the struggle to maintain control over his own ship and crew. Vere, then, unlike perhaps Claggart, is not just out to do evil – he’s out to keep command of his ship, but is willing to tolerate some evil in pursuit of that end.
Sacrificing an innocent in order to keep command over a military force? Does this situation not also seem – familiar?
And like Kellhus, Vere even feels sorry about it afterwards.
Is this, then, benevolence? To make calculated acts of evil in the pursuit of some greater goal? How does that make Vere and Kellhus, though, any different from Claggart or the Consult? And where is the desirability of innocence, in a world where the innocent hang? Justice? … Mercy? … Bueller?
There is no Vere-equivalent character in Atlas – perhaps because Rand didn’t want to force her characters to face such moral tradeoffs. Is this, though, because she doesn’t believe such trade-offs can ever exist in reality, or that high-level principles can ever come into contradiction? Or does she just not – want to conceive of it? It seems to go against her own principles to avoid facing the truth – but I digress. Manicheanism, it would seem, can only take one so far.
Morality emerges here, as always, in grey. What would Galt have done as Captain of the Indomitable? How would Vere have conducted himself in the Holy War? And what would Kellhus have made of Atlantis? Ah, how complicated integrity comes to be. The lack of it, on the other hand… How much easier, to answer what the Consult would do in Atlantis or on the Indomitable?
And yet, while like Bakker avoiding black-and-white morality, Melville still sides with Rand in sharing somewhat of her starry idealism, against all reverence of mere common-sense practicality:
For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory’s quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson’s ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but not military, nay, savored of foolhardiness and vanity…If the name Wellington is not so much of a trumpet to the blood as the simpler name Nelson, the reason for this may perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on the victor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of all time, tho’ in the same ode he invokes Nelson as “the greatest sailor since our world began.”
Or is, perhaps, desire for reputation just another calculated end, so that such actions are, in a sense, practical? What would be the difference? And how would one tell?
But why engage in all this fruitless guessing? We’ll find out soon enough, after all, when we all meet again in Hell.
Literal Explanation Required 