Billy Budd, Sailor

Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1924

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-12

Chapters 13-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The narrator reminisces about a type of man he calls the Handsome Sailor. Men with such a designation tended to be larger, stronger, and more attractive than their peers. Importantly, Handsome Sailors are magnetic and receive attention from everyone around them. Handsome Sailors make people want to follow them. He provides an example of an African Handsome Sailor who had been emulated in Liverpool by many who saw him. The moral and intellectual character of the Handsome Sailor usually matches his physical stature.

The narrator describes Billy Budd as the perfect example of the Handsome Sailor. After entering the British Navy at 21 years old, he is impressed into service on the Bellipotent after being taken off of his ship, the Rights-of-Man. Lieutenant Ratcliffe from the Bellipotent lowers Billy’s rank—and only Billy’s rank—as part of the reassignment, but Billy accepts this without complaint. Captain Graveling, his former commander, disapproves of Billy’s imperturbability.

Billy gathers his equipment on the Rights-of-Man before joining. Captain Graveling rebukes Ratcliffe for taking Billy, before telling a story about how Billy came to his ship. When Billy arrived, Graveling’s men were always fighting. Billy’s influence calmed them all, except for a sailor they called Red Whiskers. Red Whiskers hit Billy, who hit him back in turn, which then caused Red Whiskers to love him. Graveling thinks that if Billy leaves his ship, his positive influence will leave with him.

Ratcliffe says that the ship’s cannons will be better peacekeepers. He calls Billy upstairs and has him downsize his gear. Billy tells his former crew goodbye, which annoys Ratcliffe, who makes him sit.

Chapter 2 Summary

Billy adapts quickly to his new role as the foretopman. People pay less attention to him here, even though he is the youngest. The other sailors are all grizzled veterans, but Billy is not intimidated by them.

In an aside, the narrator says that Billy’s parents orphaned him and left him on a doorstep. Because so little is known about Billy’s parents, the narrator wonders if Billy might have nobility in his heritage. He also notes that Billy sings beautifully, which compensates for his illiteracy. The narrator is less enthused about Billy’s moral sense, which is he considers to be barbaric. He also mentions that Billy stutters sometimes, which is his only outward flaw. The stutter is, in the narrator’s opinion, an equalizer that renders Billy mortal, a tiny flaw in his perfection, and not the kind of flaw that characterizes a traditional hero.

Chapter 3 Summary

The narrator halts Billy’s story to recount a great mutiny from 1797, which is the year of the narrative. The Great Mutiny at Nore, a massive piece of anti-British propaganda, shook the British Navy. The mutinous sailors had protested their meager food stores, coercion to serve (impressment), and terrible wages. The narrator explains that these mutinies are anomalies. He writes that mutiny is not inherent in British soldiers, and many of the mutineers later redeemed themselves at the battle of Trafalgar.

Chapter 4 Summary

The narrator discusses Admiral Horatio Nelson, who commanded the British ships at the 1805 battle of Trafalgar. Nelson and his ship, The Victory, are relics of an elegant age that gave way to modern, crude warships. He says that Nelson’s romantic notions of valor and glory were more impressive than the advancements of military technology. Nelson wanted glory, which made him a good leader.

Chapter 5 Summary

The narrator continues the story of the Nore Mutiny. The British Navy conceded to some of the sailor’s demands, but they couldn’t end the impressment orders. Therefore, authorities couldn’t be sure that mutiny was impossible. They sent Nelson to helm a ship whose crew had mutinied, hoping that his presence could restore order.

Chapters 1-5 Analysis

Billy Budd is established as a pure character with a childlike innocence, historically beloved by his peers. Despite this inherent goodness, Melville spends the first two chapters also introducing the oddities of Billy Budd’s character. Billy is influential in that his cheer can improve the moods of his shipmates, and one officer refers to this influence as indicative of Billy’s status as a peacemaker, even though the idea of a peacemaker who resorts to violence—as in the blow struck against Red Whiskers—is ironic. Immediately after illustrating Billy as an avatar of the Handsome Sailor archetype, the narrator quickly explains the limits of his emotional, moral, and intellectual abilities. As well as resorting to violence, he is helpless and vulnerable to others despite his appearance as the eponymous hero. Billy’s character is the primary focus of the theme of The Vulnerability of Innocence and Naivety. This naivety is a major part of Billy Budd’s downfall, as well as his speech impediment and his tendency to freeze or be violent under pressure, both of which doom him to accepting a fate determined by others.

This lack of agency is immediately established when he is recruited against his will and does not protest: “Billy made no demur. But, indeed, any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage” (9). Billy’s impressment quickly cements The Tension Between the Individual and the Group as a major theme. The military chooses Billy’s physical location and his duties. He cannot exercise his individual rights against the impressment order, even if he desired to do so. Billy is not only unable to resist these orders, but this restraint extends to his former captain, Graveling. Despite the inconvenient and upsetting change, everyone recognizes that they must make this adjustment to participate in a larger group dynamic at play. This is reflective of the lack of individualism in the military, of which Melville was once a part.

The names of the two ships being which Billy moves hold additional meaning in the relation to the tension between the individual and the group. Billy departs the Rights-of-Man for the Bellipotent. The Rights-of-Man is named after a book by Thomas Paine, which is often cited as a rallying cry for individual rights and dignity that led to the French Revolution. The Bellipotent, on the other hand, connotes might in war. This transference from the first to the second ship illustrates a departure from individuality, the first ship referencing individual rights and revolution, to militant success at the expense of the individual. This concept is played out in full by the end of the novella with Billy’s death for the sake of a united peace and obedience.

Chapters 3-5 introduce a narrative tool that Melville—using the narrator—will deploy more than once in the novella. He moves away from Billy’s story to relate the historical context of the war, the mood of the British Navy, and the mutiny that helped make the paranoia on the Bellipotent possible—it was clear in the minds of officers that there are always more sailors than officers on a ship. Mutiny is always a possibility, and the numbers favor the mutineers, at least temporarily. It is unclear whether the narrator is to be taken as completely accurate, or whether his retelling of the story is yet another distortion that has crept into the narrative because of the sheer number of people who related the legend of Billy Budd.