ellauri107.html on line 246: Billy Budd provides an implicit indictment of the culture, whether military or civil, that encourages the kind of closet where a Claggart so readily succumbs to his “depravity according to nature.” Captain Vere likewise shows a closed, perhaps also “closeted” mind as ready prey for the phenomenon of evil. In Vere’s presence, as Billy is struck dumb by Claggart’s accusation, Claggart is struck dead by a single blow from Billy’s fist, the only response he can muster to defend himself. Although Vere cherishes Billy as “an angel of God” and knows him to be innocent of Claggart’s charges, he resists any bending of rules to protect him against the harshest of consequences for his act of insubordination. Ruthlessly silencing the dictates of his heart, “sometimes the feminine in man,” Vere effects what Claggart’s malice alone could not -- Billy’s total destruction.
ellauri107.html on line 248: Although British naval mutineers as well as criminals ashore are explicitly shown in Billy Budd’s early chapters to have received forms of amnesty that ultimately contributed to the saving of the nation, Vere offers no such amnesty to Billy Budd. Claggart himself is rumored to have entered the service as an alternative to imprisonment, the navy’s need for manpower leading to frequent waivers of usual punishments; but Billy Budd receives no alternatives, no waivers. At Nelson’s triumphant Trafalgar, the thwarting of Napoleon’s invasion plans meant a “plenary absolution” for all the former offenders who had contributed to the victory. Billy, however, a “peacemaker,” neither a mutineer nor a criminal, makes a single misstep in retaliation against a known liar who seeks to manipulate the system to destroy him, and how is Billy to be absolved? Vere’s “vehemently exclaimed” answer: “the angel must hang!”
ellauri107.html on line 250: Billy is first the victim of Claggart’s closet, one with similarities to the Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover kinds that project self-loathing onto their targets. Vere’s condition, on the other hand, while containing degrees of benevolence, ultimately emerges as more deadly than Claggart’s. Associating his heart with his hated feminine side, Vere crushes down his capacity for love and compassion with a thoroughly brutal, Night-of-the-Long-Knives sort of intolerance. He, who would never have initiated Billy’s demise, will not permit his own ardor to soften his inflexible judgment, as that would evidently equate with irresolution and weakness. After all, he might rationalize, he is the Captain and the Captain has an image to uphold – right? Forget justice; forget humane treatment; maintaining machismo holds precedence over all! And the tragic result: mindless, meaningless, totally unnecessary suffering and loss on the altar of nothing less than evil itself!
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