Claggart: Subverting Christian Hope In Billy Budd

Billy is considered to be the victim and Claggart the villain by the narrator's perspective. But by considering the facts, there is nothing in the novella that proves that Claggart is the villain, in reality he is the victim and Billy the villain. The narrator states that “...Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short ‘a depravity according to nature'” (Melville Ch11). Claggart is perceive as a someone with “an evil nature” who is “born with him and innate”, the narrator claims that he is malevolent nature is something that he was born with. However, Claggart does not directly portrays a malevolence nature because no where in the novella he

Claggart is another member of the ship that has been impressed and he only follows orders, and following orders does not makes him an evil guy. It is the narrator’s use of language that leaves a gap in between the actions of the characters, to let the readers understand the reality. In "Too Good to Be True": Subverting Christian Hope in Billy Budd, Lyon Evans, Jr. states that the narrator “Unable to prove that Claggart was either a criminal or a reprobate, the narrator cites the testimony of a grizzled old sailor called the Dansker to support his view of Claggart’s villany” (Evans 334). The narrator insistent to continue to describe Claggart as the villain, let him with no other option but to include someone else who will talk bad about Claggart. The “Dansker” is an old sailor aboard that claims that Claggart is malevolent because he demands that Claggart is in love with Billy. The narrator's desire to have an evil character and a pure character are the causes of binary opposition which indicates that the world is divided into good and bad or free and