Billy Budd Good Vs Evil Character Analysis Essay

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Good and Evil


Moral sensibility comes from awareness of the transcendent good, according to Plato (51). According to Augustine, evil—on the other hand—is the absence of good. While that definition might be insufficient to explain the motivations of characters like Iago and John Claggart, it does at least suggest that in imperfect people there can be degrees of good and evil: and this condition is exemplified in Captain Vere, who wants to do the right thing but struggles to know what that is. In Billy Budd, there is the contrast between what is noble—personified by Billy Budd—and what is evil—personified by John Claggart. Budd is loved by those around him who are also of good will; but Claggart is of an evil will: like Iago he seeks to destroy that which is good. When Budd strikes Claggart and kills him, Vere feels there is no choice but to convict Budd for killing the man—even if Claggart himself was guilty of lying and would have been hung for the crime anyway. Budd’s strike was a kind of self-defense against Claggart’s calumny—but Vere felt that the law had to be followed and so Budd was hung. Yet Budd’s goodness shines out to the end and his last words are “God bless Captain Vere!” (62). Budd has…

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…does Vere: neither have the full sense of the transcendent good that Budd has. Vere has it a bit more than Ivan in a way, but Vere’s issue is that he is a legalist, whereas Ivan’s issue is that he is faithless.

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Ivan is more like Nietzsche’s madman crying out, “Where is God gone?...We have killed him—you and I!” (100). Indeed, Nietzsche took after Dostoevsky’s faithless characters, seeing in them the romantic allure of shaking one’s fist in the face of God—like Milton’s Satan. Vere does not want to shake his fist in the face of God—he is better than that: but he lacks sufficient moral sensibility to acquit Budd, for he states that “Budd’s intent or non-intent….....

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