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).

In the reading, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense by Nietzsche he elucidates the idea that everyone is an intellect through their own lens, guided by their own intuitions. So when one is faced with either their own truths or lies, they’ll think it’s correct simply because that is just how they perceive and understand it. Deceptions are more common than we’d think and normally, telling the truth is more deemed as moral; but one’s truth is not the truth of another.
“As a means for the preservation of the individual, the intellect shows its greatest strengths in dissimulation. Since this is the means to preserve those weaker, less robust individuals…” (765). Nietzsche implies that everyone has their own little ambience, their own world of what they believe is the truth and the lie and when they show others their own self, it’s almost like they show a piece of themselves in which they aren’t being completely honest with themselves.

Nietzsche mentions how metaphors are the type of language that humankind can communicate and perceive each other and perceive things. So if an individual was to say a remark, they internalize that statement and push it onto the world so that it can become true. “We divide things up by gender, describing a tree as masculine and a plant as feminine  – how arbitrary these translations are!” (766). He discussed how there are borders put into place and become a concern for what is true or not. He states that truth is merely just a “mobile army of metaphors , metonymies, anthropomorphisms” that have been subjected in rhetorical language; that truths are illusions that are not necessarily illusions to people. So while one person may believe one thing, the other thinks of it differently.

It is closely related to subliminal perception, where people will disguise and construct truths and lies to make it so that people wouldn’t question or be aware of their persona/cognition. “By these standards the human being is an architectural genius who is far more superior to the bee; the latter builds with wax which she gathers from nature, whereas the human being builds with the far more delicate material of concepts which he must first manufacture from himself” (769). For example, hypothetically speaking, if there was a person who states that she is the best at the game chess, then she herself will believe it and others can believe it as well, but it comes down to how people perceive her with what information she puts out into the world. One can think she’s the greatest player while another peer can think she’s not the best. Nietzsche describes how human beings themselves have an urge to let themselves be deceived in the way they want, even if they aren’t true.

This is how everyone simply has their own ambience of belief of truth and lies; because as “just as the other did in the midst of happiness: he does not wear a twitching, mobile, human face, but rather a mask” (774). Regardless if a person is telling the truth, there are so many points of views but the most primary thing is how oneself can interpret and perceive themselves and others.