Barbara Johnson’s analysis, “From Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd,” delves into the story of three major characters: Billy Budd, John Claggart, and Captain Vere. Each of these personalities represents something unique and possesses distinct characteristics, all of which contribute to their demise and troubles. First, we can look at Budd. “the innocent, ignorant foretopman, handsome Billy Budd” (2319). Budd is regarded as a good and innocent person. On the other side, Claggart is the polar opposite of him. Claggart is referred to as the devious, urban master-at-arms” (2319), and he is portrayed as nasty, cruel, and, in many ways, satan since he is always attempting to harm people around him. Billy’s good nature turns out to be his demise, which is ironic. As the evil becomes the innocent, the good becomes guilty. A fairly devastating conclusion to what can be viewed as both an ironic narrative and a natural tragedy. Captain Vere, in the end, sentences Billy Budd to death as he is battling his own sense of self vs. society. Johnson says that the signified is resembled by the inner self, whereas the signifier is resembled by the signifier outer self, based on Saussure’s concepts. Johnson employs Saussure’s theory of signifier/signified to explain the difference between Billy and Claggart as readers in terms of the traits and ideas that they share. Billy Budd is prone to gaps between purpose and action between signifier and signified, thus the comparison of being and doing comes into play here. Billy is a transparent sign with a required link between the signifier and the signified. Billy represents the difficulty of a “transparent” manner of meaning. Billy believes everything he reads and does all he says merely to preserve himself. “As a reader, then, Billy is symbolically as well as factually illiterate. His literal-mindedness is represented by his illiteracy because, in assuming that language can be taken at face value, he excludes the very functioning of difference that makes the act of reading both indispensable and undecidable” (2323). Therefore, Billy’s inability to see things at nothing else but face value put him in jeopardy of being good but guilty. On the other hand, Claggart “is the very image of difference and duplicity, both in his appearance and in his character” (2323). Claggart is the polar opposite of Billy in that he epitomizes wickedness yet, due to his untimely death, he depicts innocence. Claggart always assumes a gap between the signified and the signifier as he assumes the opposite. In essence, Johnson employs Saussure’s theory to demonstrate a distinction between Claggart and Billy. Johnson used the terms signified and signifier to show which character is capable of distinguishing between the two and which is not and how such distinctions create characterization.

Ray Nipper 

Blog post #3 

Barbara Johnson’s “Melville’s fist” seems to be about the gap between being and doing.  She chooses a novel essentially as a canvas for her argument. The characters Billy Budd and John Claggart  seemed to get into a quarrel in the story. In the novel Billy seems to be falsely accused by John of mutiny. They’re men at sea and John seems to find Billy untrustworthy. He even tells the captain to essentially keep an eye on him. Apparently it’s mentioned that Billy is good looking. It seems that bothers John. Billy sadly ends up shooting John after he makes these false accusations towards him. Johnson seems to argue that plots essentially are rebuttals to figures of authority. She says this because Billy gets swept into the story or plot by John’s accusations. John honestly just seems to have it out for Billy. It honestly seems like he thinks Billy is up to no good. He so much as even sends a guard to try to sell Billy on betraying the rest of the crew. Even though Billy rejects the false offer it doesn’t seem to slow John’s suspicion. Johnson relies heavily on what we would call “interpretations.” She believes that the story is not a fight between two characters but a fight between two readings. She claims Billy takes everything at face value and upfront while John seems more untrusting and to me a bit paranoid. Captain Vere though seems to be the one who has to judge Billy in the end. It seems the captain could care less about what may have motivated Billy to pull the trigger. It seems he’s only concerned about the fact that it happened and what that means in terms of the law. I’m actually not sure how johnson ties this into politics itself. What’s political about a murder at sea? Is it the motivation or is it what the captain is unaware of? She mentions that vere essentially has to go off the history of the two characters but that information is unbeknownst.I’m assuming that Johnson is trying to imply that the captain is judging from a place of ignorance. As if the judge must somehow know every detail of their lives in order to speak on the situation. It’s like Johnson seems bothered by the fact that no judge or captain is perfect.  She says judging is always a partial reading. Well that’s really too bad. All a judge can do is reach a conclusion with the information they’ve been provided. How is that political? Johnson says that this story reminds us that there’s a bridge between knowing and doing. It’s really too bad If Johnson doesn’t like the fact that judgements happen. It’s really too bad if she doesn’t like the fact that judges can have biases or not know every single detail of one’s life.