Options can torture a person. When an individual has to make a decision, there is pressure to make the “correct” choice; however, who has jurisdiction over which course of action creates a better outcome? A grand decision lies in the indecisive mind of an individual. Decision making or a final judgment is an aspect of daily life. Whether a decision is reached in thirty seconds because a person has already established their favorite drink at a cafe or, the decision is reached in thirty days because a person can’t decide whether to date someone or not- my best advice would be to not, a human’s brain is constantly guiding an individual through their lives. Furthermore, a person’s mind is filled with different scenarios; people must wrestle with different possibilities to reach the best outcome. Let’s pull on the decision to date for a moment. An individual might create a pros and cons list to map out the multiple ways a relationship can go and if they are content with the inevitable uncertainty of dating.

This constant diving into scenarios is exactly what Captain Vere in the novella, Billy Budd, was faced with when a crime is committed on his ship. Billy Budd, who is a handsome and polite sailor, strikes Claggart, a skeptical higher official, and kills him. Claggart’s evil or highly analytical tendencies lead him to believe that Billy Budd was involved in mutiny. Since Billy Budd’s stutter prevented him from articulating his defense to Claggart’s claim, he resorted to violence. This violent act left Captain Vere in a difficult position. He is forced sit down with the “differences within” and the “differences between” to make an accurate judgment.

The text tells us that “differences within” are related to multiple traits that exist in a person. For example, “… (Billy as divided between conscious submissiveness and unconscious hostility, Vere as divided between understanding father and military authority) …” (Johnson 2274).  The traits that make up an individual are oftentimes selectively expressed. Even though a person’s righteous qualities are displayed to their peers, it does not mean that they always have good intentions. Differences within also emphasizes how one does not exist without the other. Goodness can only be produced from knowing and having evil traits. Furthermore, the text reveals that “differences between” are face value/ broad observations. An example of this would be known binaries such a masculine versus feminine or authority versus criminal.

Melville’s text reveals that these differences contribute to the act of judging. Through language and a person’s actions, the differences within become performative when they are differences between. Barbara Johnson writes, “The political context in Billy Budd is such that on all levels the differences within… are subordinated with differences between…” (Johnson 2274). Captain Vere recognized the differences within his own good and evil qualities to try and understand Billy Budd’s character. He knows that everyone has their excellent and deplorable qualities even if one is hidden away. Additionally, Captain Vere is Billy Budd’s father, meaning struggles with his duties as a father to protect his son and his responsibility to keep order on the ship. Further, he considered the differences between, which gave him the lens of seeing the actions as a victim and a perpetrator circumstance. Through this lens, he understood the horridness of one of his highest men murdered. The differences within laid out an understanding of his role as a captain and his role as a father and the differences between are the two routes that reach a final jurisdiction. He can either side with Billy (the murderer) and justify it with the notion that his evil qualities had been displayed, but he is generally a good person; or he can side with Claggart (the victim) and see it as a face value crime. His judging process is evidence of Veer considering the knowable (guilty or innocent/ differences between) and the questionable (everyone has just and unjust thoughts/ differences within).

Reaching a decision is completely arbitrary, because of the conflicting nature of humans. Humans must consider the knowable and the questionable and both provide keen information to plan. Why a person reached a decision is not of importance. The process of understanding how the differences within and the differences between influence a person, spits out a decision. In the end, those factors helped him prosecute Billy Budd.