ellauri107.html on line 244: Claggart’s repressed, closeted attraction to Billy finds parallels with some interpretations of Hawthorne’s evident spurning of Melville’s too intimate attentions and Hawthorne’s character in The Blithedale Romance Coverdale’s similar rejection of the invitation from Holingsworth to be his “friend of friends, forever.” For Melville, Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale’s agonizing acknowledgement of adultery must have seemed a stunning parallel with what later generations would term “coming out of the closet.” Whether Hawthorne himself were a closeted gay man, it is clear that Melville was relatively open in his affections for the senior author and that those affections were somehow turned away and seem to have left a wound that never fully healed. The evils of the closet constitute a subtext in Billy Budd that may well have brought to its author’s mind the sad sundering of his closeness with Nathaniel Hawthorne.
ellauri107.html on line 510: In the living-room, in a corner of the davenport, Ted settled down to his Home Study; plain geometry, Cicero, and the agonizing metaphors of Comus.
ellauri156.html on line 333: Third, prosperity is as dangerous -- and sometimes more dangerous -- than poverty and adversity. We all get weary of the adversities of life. We all yearn for the time when we can kick back and put up our feet and relax a bit. We all tire of agonizing over the bills and not having quite enough money to go around. David certainly looked forward to the time when he could stop fleecing Saul and begin to reign as king. But let me point out that from a spiritual point of view, David never did better than he did in adversity and weakness. (In fact, he was quite like Ballsack's ung paouvre qui avait nom le Vieulx-par-chemins, another Iivana Nyhtänköljä.)
ellauri156.html on line 509: It must be an agonizing night for David, seeing that even drunk Uriah is a better man than he. But not a better pecker! And so in the morning, David acts. He writes a letter to Joab, which will serve as Uriah's death warrant. In this letter David clearly orders Joab to murder Uriah for him. He even tells him how to do so in a way that might conceal the truth of the matter. In so doing, David can honor Uriah as a war hero, and magnanimously take on the duty of being a husband to Uriah's wife, also taking care of the child she is soon to bear. Joab is to put Uriah on the front lines of battle, at the fiercest place of battle, no surprise for a man of his military skills and courage. Joab is to attack and then retreat in such a way as to make Uriah an easy target for the Ammonites, thus assuring his death. There is no mistaking David's orders to Uriah: he wants Uriah killed in a way which makes it look like a simple casualty of war. Joab complies completely with David's orders (why? Is Uriah a creep?), and Uriah is eliminated, no longer an obstacle to David's plans. In giving this order to Joab, David makes him a part of this conspiracy, making him share the guilt for the spilled blood of Uriah. David's sin continues to encompass more and more people, leading to greater and greater sin.
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