How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Billy, though happily endowed with gaiety of high health, youth, and a free heart, was yet by no means of a satirical turn. The will to it and the sinister dexterity were alike wanting. To deal in double meanings and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature. (1.15)
Is dexterity, a facility for double meanings and insinuations, somehow linked with evil in the text? Does the fact that Billy is such a "simple" creature suggest that his relationship with morality is not as complex as other peoples'? How do Billy's moral obligations differ from those who have a knack for producing double meanings?
Quote #2
His simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which are not in every case incompatible with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. (2.12)
The narrator is pressing pretty hard upon us the point that Billy is some sort of special moral being, completely natural and almost incapable of conceiving of evil. Leaving aside the moral question for a second, is it possible for Billy to be respectable if he's incapable of "manufacturing" such a thing? What is the difference between "respectable" and "respected"? What relation does being respectable bear to morality and to ethics?
Quote #3
At the least, we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will be. (4.1)
In apologizing for his divergences, the narrator invokes a sort of literary morality, one aspect of which seems to be sticking to the story. Is there such a thing as literary morality? Is how you tell a story a moral choice? A series of moral choices?
Quote #4
Of this the maritime chief of police the ship's corporals, so called, were the immediate subordinates, and compliant ones; and this, as is to be noted in some business departments ashore, almost to a degree inconsistent with moral volition. (8.7)
In order to be a moral creature, you need to have some sort of volition. Is it possible, then, for "doing one's duty" to be a moral action? Separately, can Billy be a moral creature if he lacks as much volition as a normal man?
Quote #5
And the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming various secret forms within him, at times assumed that of cynic disdain, disdain of innocence – to be nothing more than innocent. Yet in an aesthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and-easy temper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he despaired of it. (12.3)
We here get some of the narrator's speculations as to why Claggart dislikes Billy so much. It's not too hard to understand why he should have spite for Billy's innocence when he himself has to struggle with good and evil within him. Can you equate innocence with moral good? Is an informed morality better than a naive one?
Quote #6
For though consciences are unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not excluding the scriptural devils who 'believe and tremble,' has one. But Claggart's conscience being but the lawyer to his will, made ogres of trifles. (13.4)
What does it mean for one's conscience to be "but the lawyer to his will"? How does one separate one's conscience from one's will? Are the two things actually distinct? If so, are they opposed or can they be made to work together?
Quote #7
In the legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought to victimize a man blameless; and the indisputable deed of the latter, navally regarded, constituted the most heinous of military crimes. Yet more. The essential right and wrong involved in the matter, the clearer that might be, so much the worse for the responsibility of a loyal sea commander, inasmuch as he was not authorized to determine the matter on that primitive basis. (21.4)
What does it mean to be "authorized" to determine a matter on the basis of right and wrong? Who would ever give this authorization in the first place? Can such a moral constraint come from anywhere but within ourselves?
Quote #8
At that question, unintentionally touching on a spiritual sphere wholly obscure to Billy's thoughts, he was nonplussed, evincing a confusion indeed that some observers, such as can readily be imagined, would have construed into involuntary evidence of hidden guilt. (21.19)
Here, the men have just asked why Claggart hated Billy. We again get an overwhelming sense of Billy's naiveté and innocence? Should Billy be held accountable for his confusion? How has he managed to keep this spiritual sphere obscure from his thoughts? Is there evidence in the story to suggest that the narrator is portraying this inaccurately, that perhaps Billy was more of a thinking moral creature than the narrator gives him credit for?
Quote #9
"But your scruples: do they move as in a dusk? Challenge them. Make them advance and declare themselves. Come now; do they import something like this: If, mindless of palliating circumstances, we are bound to regard the death of the master-at-arms as the prisoner's deed, then does the deed constitute a capital crime whereof the penalty is a mortal one. But in natural justice is nothing but the prisoner's overt act to be considered?" (21.28)
Captain Vere is asking awesome King Kong-sized questions here. But all of his hostility seems to be directed at the men's moral scruples. He tells them to "Challenge them." Should it not be the other way around? Shouldn't the men use their moral scruples to challenge what the law is telling them to do?
Quote #10
[Captain Vere:] "Would it be we ourselves so much who would condemn as it would be martial law operating through us? For that law and the rigor of it, we are not responsible. Our vowed responsibility is this: That however pitilessly that law may operate in any instances, we nevertheless adhere to and administer it." (21.28)
Notice how these questions already anticipate their answers. It's like Captain Vere is playing jeopardy. He already knows the answer and it's just for presentation's sake that he is framing it in terms of a question. Does this suggest that the law is already embedded in his mind? That he can't but think in terms of it? In a moral sense, is there anything to his notion that they are not responsible for the law and the rigor of it?