Billy Budd Sailor
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Nancy Hill Engl 103
February 28, 2004 Wed 6pm
Short Analysis
Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville
The story of Billy Budd brings up some unanswered questions. One is the parentage of Billy and another is exactly what Captain Vere said when he told Billy the outcome of the court proceedings. These two questions, which are brought up in the text itself, bring more questions to my mind, including do these two questions have any common ground.
We were told that his natural mother did not raise Billy when he said, "But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silk-lined basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man's door in Bristol." In order for his mother to afford a silk-lined basket, her social status had to be above that of a common. This was reaffirmed in the statement, "Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse." Herein lies the question, was this noble blood from his mother or father, or both?
As readers, we are not privileged as to the thoughts in Captain Vere's mind when those thoughts take him somewhere far away. We do know that from his appearance one would think him "allied to the higher nobility" for he very well "might have taken him for the Kings guest"...