Alternative Punishments in Melville's Billy Budd

Noted Herman Melville-scholar H. Bruce Franklin makes a convincing case for positioning Melville's novella Billy Budd as an artistic statement against capital punishment. It is likely that Melville was indeed against capital punishment. It is also evident that Captain Vere makes a morally questionable decision in his determination to hang Billy, but not one that oversteps his authority. Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (2000 edition) states that a person who offers any violence against a superior "shall be punished [...] by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct [...]" (IV-18). It would have been reasonable for Vere to turn Billy over to Vere's superiors and remove himself from the role of sole authority to key witness in the case. Nevertheless, Vere does act within his rights; any disobedience to a superior officer, let alone a physical threat, is potentially punishable by death, especially during war (true today as well as two hundred years ago).

To state, however, that Billy Budd is an anti-capital punishment novella is to reduce the story to a simplistic moral tale. What such a discussion tends to overlook is the fact that, punishment aside, Billy is guilty of a serious crime. Arguing that Billy Budd is determinedly against capital punishment, Franklin's essay omits possible alternative punishments. My argument will focus on alternatives that Captain Vere might have employed in the distribution of discipline and the punishment of Billy Budd. My reason for doing this is not simply to speculate on how uninteresting Melville's story would be without resulting in Billy's execution. Rather, I want to show how the focus of the story should not necessarily be centered upon attitudes concerning capital punishment, or upon its means, or even upon the ambiguous moral character of Captain Vere, although such studies can be worthwhile and important. Instead, the focus, or to use Melville's term, the "cynosure" (293) of our reading should remain upon Billy's action and behavior. If Billy is not executed he still must suffer some form of punishment. Through a speculative examination of what forms this punishment might take, I hope to show why Vere (and Melville) were so determined to execute Billy Budd.

Admittedly, capital punishment is an exceptional form of military discipline today, and even during the time of Billy Budd it was not likely pursued with vigor, as is illustrated by Vere's reluctant drumhead court: "Can we not convict and yet mitigate the penalty?" (363). Such an incident, even during wartime, would more likely lead to a fine and perhaps a brief period of incarceration. Contrary to Vere's argument, intention is always taken into consideration. If a blow accidentally led to the victim's death, the perpetrator could receive a commonplace sentence such as 5 to 20 years incarceration.

While it is true that execution was more common in the time of Billy Budd, it is also true that exceptions could be made. For Vere to turn the matter over to the Admiralty would not have been irregular and would likely have been greeted with commendation. Nor would it be unusual, even in the 1790s, to take intent into consideration. Vere's determination not to do this is certainly his grossest error. If he had taken into account Billy's lack of forethought or motive in killing Claggart, we can conjecture a sentence of up to 20 years imprisonment. We should not forget the strangeness, however, of Billy's fatal flaw, the "one thing amiss in him" (302). Upon his release from prison would not his "vocal defect" find cause to reappear? Without some form of rehabilitation, it is not unreasonable to surmise that when Billy inevitably again faced common, worldly maliciousness he would be compelled to strike, and even kill, again. Melville makes clear that this moral and physical "superior figure" (291) is "fated" (350) to die. It is quite practical to say then, that Billy's unintentional act of murder, even barring execution, would most certainly have ruined his life, at least as the charmed and charming "Handsome Sailor."

Consider also the possibility of Vere determining to do whatever he can to save Billy from any punishment and judge him not guilty. As the only witness and soon to be convinced of Billy's moral superiority and innocence, "I believe you, my man" (357), Vere, as sole witness, could have contrived with Billy a story to account for the murder of Claggart as self-defense. This would probably strike most readers as the just thing to do. Whether the crew would then believe the details of such a tale would matter little, as we know that most of them would side with Billy and with only great difficulty be persuaded of any malicious intent on his part. We are told that "they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as of wilful murder" (384). Again, the logical outcome would be that Billy, (without some kind of therapy), would at some future time find himself again forced to confront evil, or even an ambiguous morality, then lose his voice with his temper and violently strike out again. He might indeed find himself killing again, and it is not unimaginable that he might still at some point meet an early and violent death.

One incident that should not be overlooked is Vere's warning to Claggart as Claggart slanderously accuses Budd of planting seeds of mutiny amongst the other sailors. Already suspicious, Vere tells Claggart, "heed what you speak. Just now, and in a case like this, there is a yard-arm end for the false witness" (346). There is no doubt that Vere comes to believe that Billy is innocent of any charge of treason. But he had no way of anticipating Budd's unthinking physical response to Claggart's accusation. That his assault is enough to kill Claggart leads Vere to exclaim, "fated boy...what have you done!" (350) A possible defense for Billy can again be found in the Uniform Code: "a superior commissioned officer whose conduct in relation to the accused [...] departs from the required standards appropriate [...] loses the protection of this article." It is quite apparent that Vere will consider no such qualification. But that Claggart could indeed be hanged for false witness should again strike us as a severe form of punishment. It is true that Melville's inclusion of this detail serves to strengthen a characterization of Vere as a stern and unwavering commanding officer and disciplinarian while the memory of "the Great Mutiny" of 1797 is still vivid. But another interesting facet of this is the fact that if Claggart, found a perjurer, is doomed to execution anyway, then Billy could be seen as simply carrying out that promised sentence. It does seem strange that Claggart's impromptu execution receives more attention for its effect on Billy than its effect on Claggart. Of course, it was unintentional and Claggart is indeed a malicious man, implicated with a criminal past, "the London police were at liberty to capture any able-bodied suspect...and summarily ship him to the dockyard or fleet" (315). But an anti-capital punishment argument seems to contradict the implied contention that Claggart only gets what he deserves.

For Billy to assume the function of military executioner however, especially for the straight-laced Vere, would be unacceptable. As a stellar example of a Foucaultian disciplinarian, Vere cannot allow the function of power to be removed from his agency and made to perform merely serendipitously in the accidental termination of the more appropriate guilty subject. For Billy to perform what is rightfully Vere's duty is to remove and displace the function of state and political society. In a hierarchy of state power, regardless of a possible moral superiority, Billy is positioned on the bottom and therefore cannot be such a forceful agent of power's dispersal. Vere's condemnation of Billy can be seen as an act of state authority being set right again, and this is, of course, unjust in an abstract moral and philosophical sense.

This brings us to the long debated discourse surrounding Billy Budd about the impossibility of the survival of guileless goodness in an inherently evil world. It would seem that the innocent must become corrupt or else risk total destruction. Billy's act of violence to Claggart in turn violates Billy's innocence. At that point he can either lose his 'pure' goodness and become another tainted sailor, or he can gain redemption and immortal innocence by willingly submitting to giving his own life. Billy, "practically a fatalist," (298) rejects religion and resignedly accepts his impending death, "he was wholly without irrational fear of it" (372). Vere determines to punish Billy in order to reassert state and military order. Vere's overt motive is form: "'With mankind,' he would say, 'forms, measured forms, are everything" (380). It is almost a grand error, as following the execution it would seem that an actual mutiny is possible. But, discipline prevails and the murmurs of the men die down with the "drum beat to quarters"(379). Vere seems confident that "True martial discipline long continued superinduces in average man a sort of impulse whose operation at the official word of command much resembles in its promptitude the effect of an instinct" (379). Vere's command is effective, and later, when on his death bed he continually mutters Billy's name, his chanting does not contain "the accents of remorse" (382).

Vere's obsessive desire to maintain order and discipline, a corollary of his "settled convictions" (312), cannot help but lead to a biblical or otherwise religious interpretation to Melville's novella, a theme so prevalent in much of his work. The captain is almost a gnostic version of Yahweh, cut off from the fleet, or higher gods, and demanding sole authority over the imperfect beings beneath him. While Billy can be seen as a Christ figure, (he submits gracefully to death and forgives his judge, "God bless Captain Vere!" (375)), his comparison to Adam is even more satisfying. Like Adam, an "upright barbarian" (301) or even a noble savage, he is morally superior and yet, he commits a crime. The game appears rigged and the rules unjust, but nevertheless he broke them and, like Adam, he is on the bottom of the power hierarchy (excepting Eve, her counterpart being absent here-unless Billy can be read as an Eve figure).

Perhaps most applicable is Vere's reference to Billy as an angel. When he utters that Claggart was "struck down by an angel of God", it may be that he believes this rhetoric as more than merely poetic. The world is no place for an angel. Perhaps Vere executes Billy to save his innocence, to arrest it at the point of crisis in order to save it from corruption. He quite possibly desires Billy's death in hopes of immortalizing him. Cut down in his youth and effectively martyred, Billy Budd can remain the "Handsome Sailor" instead of inevitably spiraling downward into common corruption. The name Vere connotes 'truth;' as a Latin verb it means 'truly' or 'correctly.' His nickname is perhaps meant to direct us to the possibility of humankind's comprehension of heavenly truths, with allowance for irony. "Starry Vere" can look towards his bright star "Aldebaran" (291), a fixed point by which he can steer, if for only briefly. It is true that we should read Billy Budd with heavy suspicion for state discipline and its commanding agents. But it is also true that the story strives beyond social injustice to become a metaphysical meditation upon the gray areas of innocence, morality and the cruelties of fate.

Pagination refers to the Penguin Classics edition of Billy Budd and Other Stories.