Essay About Billy Budd Sailor And Civil Government

Billy Budd Sailor
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Melville’s Testament of Resistance in Billy Budd, Sailor
Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor is about the necessity for law and order and
deciding whether to follow your personal beliefs versus following the laws that have been set by
your society. In the novella, there is a situation where Billy Budd strikes Claggart. Captain Vere
is trapped with the predicament in dealing with Billy. “The way in which Captain Vere deals
with the situation exemplifies how society requires the division of one’s internal thoughts from
one’s societal responsibilities” (Davidson 127).
“The deepest controversy over Billy Budd hinges upon our estimate of Captain Vere.
Unlike Billy and Claggart, Vere is an ordinary man of the world; unlike every other character in
the novel, he is called upon to make a moral decision –for even the members of the drumhead
court, after they have expressed their reservations , merely agree to accede to the verdict Vere
has directed. The central question, to put it as bluntly as possible, is whether Vere’s decision, that
Billy must be hanged, is the right one. Vere was seen as embodying Melville’s acceptance of the
tragic conflict between divine and human law, and of the horrible necessity, upon occasion, of
doing what goes against one’s natural feelings for the sake of upholding society’s demands”
(Richter 23).
Chapter 64 of Moby Dick gives us a very in depth look at how the world would be if laws
were not set for society to follow. “Fellow-critters: I’se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat
dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin’ ob de lip! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill
your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by God! You must stop dat dam racket! You is sharks,
sartin: but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is noting more dan
de shark well goberned.” (Melville, Dick, 251). Melville is trying to illustrate that without law
and order in our world, we would all be like the sharks. People would do as they please and not
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think of anyone other than themselves. Melville is also telling us that if you govern your urges to
go against the laws that have been set for you, you will be looked upon as an angel. Controlling
your negative urges is just like governing the shark in you to become the angel.
In Henry David Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government, he tells us “That government
is best which governs least” and “That government is best which governs not at all” (Thoreau
1857). Thoreau goes on to ask the question, “Can there not be a government in which majorities
do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?-in which majorities decide only those
questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Why has every man a conscience, then?
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a
respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume,
is to do at any time what I think right” (Thoreau 1858 ). Thoreau argues that people should do
what they believe is right or wrong. He states that people should not have to conform to what
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