In Billy Budd, the author Herman Melville portrays himself as a creator. Melville assigns Billy Budd certain heavenly or superhuman qualities, which portrays Billy as a servant to God or Christ. Melville assigns Claggart to the evil or devil role in the book. Claggart is an enemy of Billy’s, even though Billy does not fully understand that the whole time. This book contains a fight between a Christ-like figure and evil (devil) (Hove). In the beginning of this novel, Billy is aboard the merchant ship the “ Rights of Man “. The name of this merchant ship represents the peacefulness, friendliness, and the freedom of the shipmates. The “ Rights of Man” comes into contact with a much larger ship named the “H.M.S Bellipotent”. The name of this ship also represents something, the root word “Belli” refers to the act of war, and the end of the word “potent” means having great power. This name was given by the creator (Melville) to represent the ship as a big powerful ship at war. The “H.M.S Bellipotent” is one the King’s war ships and is vastly more powerful than the “ Rights of Man”.(Hove)
Billy Budd is one of the best crew
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After this incident, Claggart decides he want to carry out the act of destroying Billy Budd by getting him off the ship or having him killed. Claggart sent a shipmate to give Billy a certain share of money if he would take part in a mutiny attempt on the ship. Billy refuses aggressively and threatens to kill or throw the man in the ocean. This violence is very uncharacteristic of Billy. Melville uses this change in Billy’s attitude as a foreshadow of something is wrong, and he might continue to keep this aggressive nature up. Billy again goes to Dansker for his advice. Dansker already warned Billy that Claggart is out to get him. Billy’s nature of always seeing good in people did not allow him to see this in Claggart at