Here are questions to guide your students through Melville complex and challenging novella. My classes had intense debates on the nature of Billy action and the wisdom of Captain Vere's response..

Study Guide for Billy Budd, Melville’s posthumously published novella

Assignment 1: Read chapters 1-8.

1. How does Billy Budd react to his impressment (the forceful taking into naval service)? How does Captain Graveling feel about losing Billy?
2. Billy leaves the Rights-of-Man, a merchant ship, for the H.M.S. Bellipotent, a war ship. What’s significant about these names? How does Billy “fit in” with the tars (sailors) on the Bellipotent?
3. To what biblical character is Billy compared at the close of chapter 2? How is the comparison appropriate? What mark has the “envious marplot of Eden”--Satan--left on Billy? (A marplot is someone who interferes, or meddles, after a character of that name in The Busy Body, a 1709 British comedy.)
4. Why was 1797 such a tense year for the British navy? How might the historical background described in chapter 3 affect the men and officers on the Bellipotent?
5. You will have noticed, no doubt, that these pages are full of many allusions and seeming digressions; for example, before beginning the story proper, the narrator discusses the

“Handsome Sailor” (chapter 1), and in chapter 4 he touches on recent naval history. What themes are hinted at in these digressions?

1. What characteristics of the Bellipotent’s Captain Vere does the narrator stress? We read that “His settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not inferior to his own” (chapter 7). What does this observation mean given the historical context of the story?
2. As with Billy, little is known of the background of John Claggart, the war ship’s master-atarms. What are some of the rumors circulating about him?

cynosure: 1. a center of interest or attraction. 2. anything that serves as a guide. (From Ursa Minor, the dog’s tail.)

factitious: 1. artificial, contrived. 2. sham.

oblique (as in “moral obliquities”): 1. deviating from the vertical. 2. not straightforward, evasive. 3. devious.

incumbent: 1. resting on something else. 2. obligatory.

infraction: violation.

temerity: bold or heedless disregard of danger.

Study Guide for Billy Budd, Melville’s posthumously published novella, continued

Assignment 2: Read chapters 9-20.

1. How does Billy feel about obeying authority?
2. Who is the old Dansker? What is his distinguishing characteristic? What “philosophic interest” does he take in Billy?
3. In chapter 11 the narrator says that he won’t explain Claggart’s character by referring to Holy Writ and then does. What do you make of the narrator’s coyness? What does the narrator suggest is Claggart’s motive for his antipathy toward Billy? What does the imagery at the close of the chapter (“recoil upon itself,” “scorpion”) hint about Claggart?
4. How and why does “Squeak” aggravate Claggart’s ill-will toward Billy? What does the relationship between Squeak and Claggart suggest about the relationship between inferiors and superiors on a British war ship circa 1800?
5. Who tempts Billy in chapter 14? How? Who do you think is behind the tempting? How does Billy react?
6. In chapter 15 what simile is used to describe Billy’s encounter with evil? What mistakes does he make in dealing with the surfacing of evil aboard the ship? (What “Miltonic” wisdom does he lack?)
7. How does Captain Vere initially react to Claggart’s insinuations about Billy and Claggart’s “purposed allusion” to the Nore Mutiny?
8. Upon learning about the incident in the captain’s cabin, the ship’s surgeon is “[f]ull of disquiet and misgiving” and thinks to himself that any action against Billy should be postponed and referred to the admiral. Why? What concerns him about Captain Vere’s ability to handle the affair?

punctilious: attentive to fine points of etiquette or formal conduct.

dereliction: willful neglect, as of duty.

athwart: from side to side; crosswise.

sapience: wisdom.

equivocal: capable of two interpretations; ambiguous.

laconic: terse; concise; succinct.

pithy: meaningful; cogent.

lexicon: 1. a dictionary. 2. a stock of terms of a particular profession or subject.

ambidexter: 1. an ambidextrous person. 2. a deceitful or hypocritical person. iniquity: 1. moral turpitude or sin. 2. a grossly immoral act. inordinate: immoderate; unrestrained.

gravel (v): to confuse or perplex.

castigation: punishment.

interloper: intruder.

sententious: 1. terse; pithy. 2. fond of using aphorisms; given to pompous moralizing.

evanescence: fleeting; transient; short-lived.

immitigable: incapable of being mitigated or relieved.

clandestine: secret.

peremptory: imperative; urgent.

feigned: pretended; fictitious.

adroit: 1. deft; dexterous. 2. skillful under pressure.