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billy budd: capital punishment doesn't work
Anjelica Freeman
Working the Waters
Bill Budd, Sailor
By Herman Melville
Rough Draft
Billy Budd: Capital Punishment Doesn’t Work
Billy Budd is a classic example of a martyr. A string of tragic events leads to his execution, meant to be made an example of he is instead turned from “Handsome Sailor” to a Jesus-like figure, “The spar from which the foretopman was suspended” (Melville, 126) was kept track of and “a chip of it was as a piece of the cross” (Melville, 126). From the introduction Billy Budd is described painstakingly, his attractiveness, youth and valor are made well known. In setting the hero up as Melville made sure to do, the harsh punishment at the end is made even more so and Captain Vere’s attempt to preserve order or make a strong stand in fact achieved the opposite. The severity of Billy Budd’s punishment made people disbelieve in the law and turned Billy into a martyr/hero.
“The ship was a “total institution” in which the captain had formal powers over the labor process, the dispensing of food, the maintenance of health, and general social life on board the ship. Such formal and informal controls invested the captain with near-dictatorial powers and made the ship one of the earliest totalitarian work environments” (Rediker, 211-212)
“For it was close on the heel of suppressed insurrections, an aftertime very critical to naval authority, demanding from every English sea commander two qualities not readily interfusable- prudence and rigor” (Melville, 87-88)
“Feeling that unless quick action was taken on it, the deed of the foretopman, so soon it should be known on the gun decks, would tend to awaken any slumbering embers of the Nore among the crew, a sense of urgency of the case overruled in Captain Vere every other consideration” (Melville, 89)
While it seems very clear that the autocratic, extreme power that the ship captains wielded over the sailors was a little bit overkill, it is not a mystery as to why. Running a “tight ship” was merely maintenance and the captain was afraid of upheaval and mutiny. But, the idea that the captain was the “head” and the seamen were the “body” (Rediker, 207) is a little misguided, because as the isolated, single-minded upholders of order there are many miscalculations and mistakes to be made. Billy Budd is a great example of how capital punishment actually undermines the order it is trying to preserve.