How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A somewhat remarkable instance recurs to me. In Liverpool, now half a century ago, I saw under the shadow of the great dingy street-wall of Prince's Dock (an obstruction long since removed) a common sailor so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African of the unadulterate blood of Ham – a symmetric figure much above the average height. (1.2)
This description occurs on the very first page of Billy Budd. It has no other role in the entire story. Why on earth is it there? Why does the narrator compare the sailors' admiration of Billy to another group of sailors' admiration for an African sailor? How is his depiction of the African sailor different than his depiction of Billy?
Quote #2
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. (2.9)
How does Billy's apparent nobleness of birth set him apart from the other men? Do you believe that one can detect nobleness of birth even if a man is only an orphan? Why is Billy so often compared to animals, horses in particular?
Quote #3
Besides, in derogatory comments upon anyone against whom they have a grudge, or for any reason or no reason mislike, sailors are much like landsmen: they are apt to exaggerate or romance it. (8.4)
Why do people feel a need to exaggerate derogatory comments? What is the effect of such exaggerations in general? What aspects of the tragedy in Billy Budd can be traced to excessively derogative comments?
Quote #4
The verdict of the sea quidnuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were necessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality – a thief among the swinging hammocks during a night watch, or the man-brokers and land-sharks of the seaports. (8.5)
Note that it is the narrator who is constantly contrasting men like Captain Vere and Billy with the average sailors. On what authority does he call the sailors' natures "rude" and "uncultivated"? How might our narrator classify his own nature? Does he ever show us why he thinks so little of average sailors?
Quote #5
Such reiteration, along with the manner of it, incomprehensible to a novice, disturbed Billy almost as much as the mystery for which he had sought explanation. (9.14)
Here, the narrator describes Billy's reaction to the Dansker telling him that Claggart doesn't like him. Why is the Dansker so hard for Billy to understand or to get a handle on? Are there really people for whom meanness is a totally foreign concept? What do you make of the narrator so clearly marking Billy as good and Claggart as evil?
Quote #6
For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself? (11.2)
This is an excellent description of Claggart's envy of Billy and his innocence. How might you characterize Claggart's envy? If he doesn't understand it, is it really a part of him? Are there certain beliefs and desires and (in this case) hatreds that we know are part of us but also feel foreign to us? How does this question apply to the way that Claggart's hatred of Billy is depicted?
Quote #7
That is to say: Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound. These men are madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous, but occasional, evoked by some special object; it is protectively secretive, which is as much to say it is self-contained, so that when, moreover, most active it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above suggested: that whatever its aims may be – and the aim is never declared – the method and the outward proceeding are always perfectly rational. (11.10)
The narrator's description of Claggart here makes him sound very much like a sociopath. Are sanity and insanity black and white concepts? How does one tell one from the other? Why is it more comfortable to think of men like Claggart as incomprehensible and insane? What happens if we try to empathize with them, to think that they are just as human as we are?
Quote #8
Beyond the communication of the sentence, what took place at this interview was never known. But in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in that stateroom, each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of our nature – so rare indeed as to be all but incredible to average minds however much cultivated – some conjectures may be ventured. (22.2)
The narrator here admits that no one knows what happened between Billy and Vere when Vere went to tell him that he would be executed. At other times, though, the narrator clearly oversteps the bounds of possible knowledge. In some cases, he even narrates a character's internal thoughts. Why does he leave this one event un-described? What is it about the nature of Billy and Vere's meeting that is so hard to imagine or depict?
Quote #9
True, Billy himself freely referred to his death as a thing close at hand; but it was something in the way that children will refer to death in general, who yet among their other sports will play a funeral with hearse and mourners. (24.5)
Is the way that adults think of death really that different from how children think of death? Can one think of death as the ultimate other, the thing that it is absolutely impossible to imagine or relate to? Might the narrator be trying to undermine Billy's strength in the face of death by relating him to a child?
Quote #10
"The deed and the implement employed sufficiently suggest that though mustered into the service under an English name the assassin was no Englishman, but one of those aliens adopting English cognomens whom the present extraordinary necessities of the service have caused to be admitted into it in considerable numbers." (29.3)
These lines come from the newspaper article that appeared shortly after the events on the H.M.S. Bellipotent. They get everything wrong and claim that Billy was a traitor and that Claggart was an honorable man. To what extent are heroes and villains determined simply by how we relate events? How does narration determine what gets to seem familiar and what gets to seem foreign?