Billy Budd, Sailor 3

Study Guide Questions for Ch. 9-13

If you are looking for the beginning of the study for Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!

Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Ignorance, Envy

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What were “the topmen” like according to the text?

2. What did Billy see which horrified him and what did he resolve as a result?

3. What is “the Dansker” like and what does he think of Billy?

4. About what matter did Billy seek the Dansker’s wisdom and what did the Dansker tell Billy?

5. What incident had occurred which served to justify (at least in his mind) Claggart’s hatred of Billy?

6. On a ship like the Bellipotent, what was the case “every day among all the ranks?”

7. What did Melville say “had first moved [Claggart] against Billy?”

8. What did Claggart take the spilled soup to mean?

9. What role did Squeak play in facilitating the rift between Billy and Claggart?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. What did Melville mean by comparing the topmen to “the lazy gods?”

2. Why do you think Billy was so horrified by the corporal punishment he witnessed?

3. The Dansker wondered “what might eventually befall a nature like that [Billy’s nature], dropped into a world not without some mantraps and against whose subtleties simple courage lacking experience and address, and without any touch of defensive ugliness, is of little avail.” What does this mean?

4. The Dansker is the obscure wiseman of the story (perhaps kind of like the ship’s oracle), why is he able to see what Billy and others cannot?

5. At the beginning of Chapter 11 Melville asks, “What was the matter with the master-at-arms?” How would you answer that question based upon the supplied information? What is wrong with him?

6. What, specifically, do you think made Claggart hate Billy? Explain why you think so.

7. What distinction is Melville making between Plato’s and Calvin’s kind of “depravity?”

8. What did Melville mean when he said of Claggart (or men like him) “Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of atrocity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound.”

9. What did Melville mean when he said that “Claggart magnetically felt” Billy’s nature? 

10. What did Melville mean by saying “Claggart’s conscience” was “but the lawyer to his will?” 

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. It’s commonly said, “People are basically good.” For the sake of argument, how would you attempt to defend this claim? For the sake of argument, how would you undermine this claim? What do you actually think about the nature of man and why?

2. Have you ever met someone and instantly disliked them but have struggled to explain why? What kinds of things account for whether or not we like or dislike a new acquaintance? What kind of things should matter and which shouldn’t when it comes to the evaluation of a person’s character?

3. Melville wrote, “An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.” Offer a definition of the term prudence. Do you agree that prudence and depravity can be bedfellows (go together)? Why or why not?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Romans 9:6-23. How might we relate this passage of Scripture to the person of John Claggart?

2. Consider Proverbs 25:21-22. What does Solomon mean here and how might we relate it back to our present story?