Self Reliance within the Story of Billy Budd - Essay Example

Self Reliance within the story of Billy Budd Herman Melville wrote Billy Budd in the late 1890’s and can be read as a political expression of the depravity of the nature of human beings and does much to define how people who can think for themselves are often destroyed by those who value evil. On the other hand, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Self Reliance to define his theories of self reliance within human nature and to illustrate how people need to rely on their inner thoughts to live as free and profitable human beings. A close look will be taken into the works of both Melville and Emerson to define how the characters within Billy Budd are personified by the writings of Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance is an exceptional and transcendent illustration of the ideology that people should think for themselves and work to become superior human beings—people who do for themselves and make effort to always achieve more in life without worry that others might keep them down. The importance of his ideology expresses the need for humanity to strive harder and to continue making achievements because without doing so, the human race will reach a level of depravity that is simply unacceptable. The tie-in to Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is a parallel to the personification of Melville’s characters by the writings of Emerson in Self Reliance. As their ideologies parallel, a reader could view either work as an examination and extension of the other. Where Self Reliance is a direct examination of the ideology of finding transcendence through self introspection, Melville’s work is the allegorical review of the same ideology. Billy Budd is the ultimate in perfection. He is handsome, strong, and fights for what he believes in—he is a man that many others want to be, and more, he is a man that people possessing of evil, like Claggart, seek to destroy. In Emerson’s work, Billy is personified by the virtuous nature of the human being, where “virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule…men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity” (Emerson 170). Men of virtue are not often found within society because the effort of being virtuous often far outweighs the deed itself. In this, Billy is an exemplary idol—he chooses to be virtuous because he sees no other option, in fact, he values no other option than that of being virtuous. As Emerson writes, men of virtue act “as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world…their virtues are penances” (170). Another character of importance within the story is Captain Vere who is personified by being a stand-up human being and an exemplary source of self reliance. Without compromise, he acts as defending counsel, and while he believes in Billy’s innocence, he believes in justice far more and condemns Billy for his actions. For, while Billy took the only course available to him at the time (in taking Claggart’s life) he is still responsible for the death of another man. The extremity of the case is that an argument can be made for both sides. One can believe that Billy, in acting out of self defense, took the only path available for himself—and, in protecting the future of mankind, struck down his enemy who sought to destroy him. On the other hand, Billy is guilty of taking another man’s life and therefore should be punished as defined by the justice system. Melville writes that “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…it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity” (69). These men appear normal within society, but their twisted nature has the tendency to trigger irrational or reprehensible behavior. The ultimate example of evil within Billy Budd is of course, the character of Claggart who Melville defines as the “mania of an evil nature” (Melville 69). He was born twisted, “not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short a ‘depravity according to nature’” (69). He is beyond evil because he believes in the power of his conviction. He is also the ultimate evil because while he truly believes in the righteousness of his evil path, he cannot be deterred by the actual righteousness in the world—though he understands that he must destroy such good forces at all costs. At this point in the story, the reader is introduced to the grand parallel being drawn between the character of Claggart and Billy, with Captain Vere as the arbiter of truth and justice sitting comfortably between the realms of good and evil. The difficulty of Captain Vere’s position within the story is that while he ultimately sides with Billy for his actions, he cannot truly take sides without choosing between good or evil—and more, to choose Billy’s side after he committed an atrocity (murder is still a crime against man) would be the same as choosing Claggart’s side for the actions he committed while believing in the righteousness of his path. In this, Captain Vere cannot be truly good or evil; he must be neutral when it comes to the law and justice. If he does not, then another sort of chaos could erupt in a world already subjected to the depravity of human nature, where the boundaries are not well defined and it isn’t difficult for a man of good moral standings to shift to the darker path. Emerson writes that “there is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil” (155). While Billy never comes to this conclusion himself, he lives a life within this ideology, without fail. He acknowledges that there is evil within the world that would choose to destroy him, and he has accepted his banner that he is the moral righteousness within the world. Moreover, “he who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself” (Emerson 276). Perhaps this is the reason that Billy chose to defeat Claggart in the manner that he did. Billy, righteous to the core, has viewed the world around him and seen the fallacy of human nature, the inherent depravity causing a sucking void that intends to consume anyone of virtuous intent. In so seeing, Billy took the only path available to him and defeated Claggart to save humankind from further destruction, all the while knowing that he would be punished for the crime. Further, “the power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried” (Emerson 155). For his potential alone, Claggart recognizes that he must destroy Billy because of his pure potential for choosing the righteous path. For his part, Billy is a beacon of goodness, ready to make the moral decision, and ready to accept any consequences that might befall him. He is the complete personification of Emerson’s ideology—to avoid conformity and to follow one’s own inner ideology that self reliance is of utmost importance. Emerson writes that people must “accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, [and] the connection of events” (156) to find transcendence through the spiritual enlightenment that comes from being an exceptional human being. In terms of defining Melville’s characters through parallel ideology of Emerson’s Self Reliance, one can read Emerson’s writing as a walkthrough for the story of Billy Budd. From the moment of inception, the characters are static and well-defined and achieve little growth other than that which they were designed to achieve within the structure of the plot. Using Emerson’s words, a reader can see that each character is personified within the writing; and more, that they achieve the ideology by being the static characters that Melville constructed. In other words, Emerson defines that “nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (277). This statement does more than merely define that man must believe in himself to find happiness, what Emerson has offered here is that the only path to true happiness is to face conformity and stand alone, to believe in one’s own values without consequence, and to achieve a transcendent happiness by following the morality of spirit that many humans are incapable of achieving. Melville offers the same for Billy, death by euthanasia which he defines as “something like your will-power: I doubt its authenticity as a scientific term…it is at once imaginative and metaphysical” (170). Billy Budd is the paramount characterization of the novel hero. His virtue lives on where he does not because people can see the value in what he has achieved, even though he was struck down prematurely for acting in a manner that protected them from further exposure to evil. From either work, a reader will begin to sense the internal enlightenment that Billy Budd achieved, and they might wonder at their own ability to choose virtue over moral repugnance. In truth, becoming a valuable human being means more than simply deciding to be a better person; however, in choosing to be a better person, the fundamental elements will also fall into place allowing that person to achieve a virtuous existence outside the traditional nature of human depravity all around them. In conclusion, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd can be read as an allegorical story, a political expression of the importance of self reliance and a strong faith in one’s own instincts for righteousness. His characters are personified by the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance and a reader can view both in parallel as a transcendent discussion of the power of nature in human beings and which path they choose to take. Both Emerson and Melville define issues such as good versus evil in society and the impact that the depravity of human nature will take on the human race as a whole. The importance, then, is for people to think for themselves and to stand up for what they believe in, without compromise, and without fear of being destroyed by an evil figure. Works Cited. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self Reliance. New York: Signature, 2005. Print Melville, Herman. Billy Budd. New York: Pocket Books, 1999. Print Read More