In Barbara Johnson’s essay “Melville’s Fist,” she analyzes and contrasts Billy and Claggart’s abilities as readers. She then proceeds to use Saussure’s theory of signifier and signified in order to help clarify this difference between the two. When it comes to Billy and Claggarts reading capabilities, they are complete opposites of each other in terms of how they interpret and relate to the external factors in the world. When describing both Billy and Claggarts as readers, they can best be described as simple (Billy) and complex (Claggart). When it comes to Billy, he believes that the world can either be black or white with no possibility of there ever being an in-between. When he reads, he always takes what he reads for face value with no deeper interpretation or level of understanding. His failure to dive deeper and analyze what he reads follow him into how he solves problems, deals with criticism and how he reacts to being questions. When it comes to Claggart, he is total opposite. He reads to better understand. He reads to find deeper meaning and does not just take it for face value. He, as a result, develops a “question everything” mentality. When it comes to Billy and Claggarts relationship to each other, Claggarts does not trust Billy and questions his intentions. Billy’s inability to express himself leads him to attack Claggart which only contributes to Claggarts feelings. Johnson uses Saussure’s theory on signifier and signified to clarify these differences between the two. In it, Saussure examines the relationship between sound-image and the concept. Through Billy, it represents a person who is unable to differentiate signifier and signified and only looks at it as something that cannot be distinguished while Claggart is able to differentiate between the both the signified and signifier and is able to understand signed system. Claggart also express a post structuralist view. As a post structuralist, it supports going against the grain of the world and pushes for the person to continuously ask questions.

When it comes to Saussure, his ideas on semiotics and the general linguistics, he has many abstract ideas. However, unlike Nietzsche, he takes his ideas and elaborates on it more. While Nietzsche describes an abstract idea on language and entertains the idea that language is a lie and deception that people collectively agree to be true, Saussure takes his idea and elaborates on it by breaking it down and explaining his ideas as opposed to Nietzsches venting. When it comes to Saussure’s beliefs in general linguistics, object and subject are fundamentally separate. Linguistic Language fits into a broader subject known as Semiotics/Semiology. Examples of semiotics are fashion, coding, music, dance, math. However, the most important of these is linguistics. In linguistics subtle change can have major complications. Language is the most arbitrary because it is often a removed version from the signs and where they are located. Language varies across different cultures and locations. Anything you say can describe anything in the world because language as arbitrary. In Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics (850-66),” he brings up a contrast between “Langue vs Parole”, Langue is compared to a chessboard and its rules. Langue is the grammar and the visual structure of rules that create “Parole.” What does Grammar and Rules have in common? Grammar is absent and rules are invisible. They aren’t a tangible thing that people can touch and feel. Grammar, Langue, is just there. Its Immaterial, Abstract, Social/Collective/Sparse. Parole refers to the specific moves and these moves consist of utterances which form words which create sound-image. While Langue is Absent and invisible, Parole is Present and Material. It is Individual and free within its own limits of Langue. Words are unlimited. Words can be created as long as people collectively agree on that word being part of language. The system of signs (language) is a construct where we agree to these signs where we agree to them as fact and true. Its nice to see here that Saussure takes Nietzsches idea and elaborates on this by breaking it down and understanding the why. Another idea that Saussure brings up is the contrast between the Signifier vs the Signified. They both revolve around the “sign” but the signifier refers to the sound-image as it relates to the signified concept. When it comes to the signified vs the signifier, the both have to mutually create each other as their cannot be one without the other. In language there are only differences without positive terms.

Nietzsche believes that deception is at the heart of language and cognition because people use language to conceal and mask the truth in an attempt to help amplify the basic human instinct of belonging. When it comes to the relationship between a mental picture of an object, the word, and the actual object, Nietzsche believes that the “thing in itself (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be)” is simply something that cannot be understood to the creator of language and is only made in relation to the things humans know. We can only compare these objects to thing that we know of. On page 768, Nietzsche asks himself, “What, then, is truth?” He later answers this by saying that truth is a combination of human interaction that has been changed altered, defined, moved which over time has been heavily intwined into how humans interact. The truth is an illusion of metaphors and other rhetorical devices that has lost meaning and effectiveness over time. Nietzsche later states that humans are “architectural geniuses.” This is due to the fact that humans can conceptualize the things they do not know wether it be a rock or a leaf or another object or idea into something that is easier to understand. This is due in part to the human minds ability to associate language and words that are understood to said object and formulate an idea based off of other concepts and ideas that give us a better understanding. This is despite (as Nietzsche stated earlier in his work) Nietzsches view that language is only a mask and that language is created to “give meaning” to object but in fact it only further entangles them. This implies that language does not build anything particularly new or true but rather it takes an object, connects it to a word or sound and categorizes it into something that humans grow to understand as that object and masks the true meaning of the object they see. Two types of humanities that Nietzsche got onto describe later in the essay is the intuitive mind and the logical mind. The intuitive mind and the logical mind are both tools for building  reality with “minimal dissimilation and maximal truthfulness.” However, something that’s “truth” is only what people agree on the truth to be. Nietzsche style questions the readers thought process and requires his readers to critically examine the way they view language as a construct that allows for true meaning to be lost in deception the of truth. He manages to describe interesting ideas that are broad and expansive yet focuses his thoughts in a manner that makes more sense the more the reader analyzes Nietzsche’s meaning.