The problem for Johnson with reading Billy Budd and reducing each character to the simple embodiment of an abstract quality is that it creates a disagreement over the meaning behind the story and a conflict between character and plot. Billy Budd begins with the description of three main characters. These characters are introduced as “the innocent, ignorant foretopman, handsome Billy Budd; the devious, urbane master-at-arms, John Claggart; and the respectable, bookish commanding officer, Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax (”Starry”) Vere.” This introduction emphasizes the qualities of each man and creates the intended nature of the character going forward. However, despite nature, good, evil, judgment, each character opposes their fate and acts in opposition to their described self. The reader sees this reverse as Billy kills despite being innocent. This discrepancy continues with the other two main characters. Claggart dies a victim but is introduced as the embodiment of evil within the tale. Vere, whose nature is one of justice, balance, and judgment, allows a man to be hanged even though he believes him to be innocent. The initial reduction of good, evil, and judgment sets the reader forth considering the actions of each man to be in accordance with their nature. This nature being pre-established determines the qualities and therefore the plot of the tale. However, since the reverse is in effect the plot suffers. Johnson determines the only course of action is ”to save the plot and condemn Billy (“acceptance,” tragedy,” or “necessity”), or to save Billy and condemn the plot (“irony,” injustice,” or “social criticism”).” The plot of Billy Budd and the characters is discordant because the nature of the characters is inharmonious to their actions. Johnson also notes that readers have to make the rationale that “each is more important for what he is than what he does. . . . Good and bad, they occupy the region of good and evil.” With this justification, reading each character as the simple embodiment of an abstract quality is a suitable course but the plot still suffers and is deemed unimportant. Billy Budd’s reduction of each character’s nature is reminiscent of Nietzche’s ideology that humans tend to reduce something to its simplest form so we can grasp the concept but in the end, it is an equation of unequal things. Billy Budd, to me, is an equation of unequal things because the nature of each character is in reverse to their actions. These unequal things, however, equate to the story but it is up to the reader to dissect it and come to the realization of what gets sacrificed due to the reduction and simplification.

Barbara Johnson takes us into this discussion in a piece, “From Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd”, that they traverse through three main protagonist characters. The three characters are Captain Vere, John Claggart, and Billy Budd which all are represented in a way the text states, but who’s to say that is how they should really be portrayed. Within these characters, one has been giving the better appeal whereas the other is the negative denotation of it. In this case, Billy would be the guilty; while Claggart would be the innocent. It intertwines with the Saussare’s concept of the signified and the signifier and as a result, getting to know the differentiations on an intimate level. From the text itself, Billy is represented as intelligent and handsome, while Claggart is described as evil and sophisticated. With this in mind, us as readers, the audience can understand that this may be a passage that has a good character and a bad character just by descriptive words, however, Johnson questions how the assumptions that us as readers make based on just connotation, that there will be jargon that will be missed since it is therefore just one piece of writing, accordance to Barthes’ reading where we know that from work to text, we go from unitary to interpretation. “In an effort to examine what it is that is at stake in Claggart’s accusation, it might be helpful to view the opposition between Billy and Claggart as an opposition not between innocence and guilt but between two conceptions of language, or between two types of reading” (Johnson, 2261).

Intertwining with Saussure’s notion, Johnson mentions that while Billy is the signified because of his inner self and is also the signifier which is his outer self. The readers must not simply rely on the text but on the “critical phenomenon” on both. Claggart accuses Billy that he is plotting against them, although the murder hasn’t happened just yet, he is stating that a mutiny will occur. The sign was the yearn for help and unfortunately Claggert was murdered as a result from the accusation, leading to the execution of Billy. Johnson takes that idea/part of the piece and describes it as a story that takes place between the “postulate of continuity between signifier and signified and how remarks can mean something”, but that doesn’t mean it is reality; almost like it’s a paradox of performative communication. The idea of being and doing infers to how something being said orally, is completely different from something being done. From the beginning, a distinction between good and evil was already assigned to characters, but the real evil was Billy while Claggart was the real victim. “…it is precisely the absence of knowledge that here leads to the propagation of tales. The fact that nothing is known of Claggart’s origins is not a simple…lack of information; it is the very origin of his “evil nature”. Interestingly, in Billy’s case, an equal lack of knowledge leads some readers to see his origin as divine” (Johnson, 2267).
In that case, does the signifier really mean the signified? Because in this case, the sign which is words and character descriptions don’t correlate with the actual relationship to the character. It’s an ironic approach; and that may be because we weren’t introduced too much of what the protagonists were about and what they mean. On the other hand, Vere is being described as the reader by committing action, which is judging. “It is Vere who brings together the “Innocent” Billy and the “guilty” Claggart” (Johnson, 2274). In this case, his judgment then becomes a situation of decision. All in all, Johnson mentions that it’s all in the idea of knowing and doing; whether the things that give meaning are the things that will be evoked and if the words we read are actually “preventing us from ever knowing whether what we hit coincides with what we understand” (Johnson, 2277).