Billy Budd

Herman Melville

Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne's minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No visible blemish indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden provocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy, in fact more or less of a stutter or even worse. In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet Earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us--I too have a hand here.

In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not readily to be withstood.

Master of tangent, Mr Mellville also knows the sound of inevitability. Characters sinking in a quicksand unrelenting, that despite their struggles they still do sink deeper down. Are Melville characters' actions as futile as seem his tangents? Maybe neither is either.
The paradox, of course, is that futility is realized in the striving for it's opposite: how else could a captain justify the execution of an innocent man, if not in order to serve some higher purpose? So one life is turned futile, one career too, but the Navy remains meaningful, it is powered, like all institutions of man, by futilizing lives.
But what can we do? Can we give a man who kills another the clemency he does not deserve? Can we forgive the ill-fortune of a knight who leaves a wake of destruction, even though it is a rightful curse? Can we let an old politician die in peace though his death be necessary for the preservation of our ideals? When it comes down to it, the only way to meaning is the way that does not make sense. Mercy, forgiveness, compassion, humility--these are illogical and do not make sense. But if we be ruled by logic, we'll find we are futile. If we do what makes reasonable sense, we'll find ourselves stranded on the tip of a fast melting ice-berg.
Billy Budd dreams of eye-winks and yells God Bless the Captain.