Billy Budd, Sailor 4

Study Guide Questions for Ch. 14-17

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)

Goodness, Deception

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What occurred which woke Billy from his sleep?

2. What “weakness” was “inseparable from” Billy’s “essential good nature?”

3. What did Billy say he would do to the man in the night if he didn’t go back to where he belonged?

4. What did “Red Pepper” say he would prefer to be done to “such sneaks” as the man who had talked to Billy?

5. How did the man who had woken Billy behave the next few times he saw Billy?

6. Concerning Billy’s interaction with the man, what “never entered his mind” to do?

7. How did the Dansker (Board-her-in-the-smoke) interpret these events when Billy told him about it?

8. What distinction(s) does Melville make between the “sailor” and the “landsman?”

9. What does Melville say might have been the case about Claggart’s attitude toward Billy “but for fate and ban?”

10. What did men with whom Billy “had never exchanged a word” begin to do when they encountered him?

11. What would “shrewd ones…opine” and “think” about Billy’s situation?

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

1. What should be inferred from the fact that the man requested to meet Billy in the night and in a secluded part of the ship?

2. What was the man trying to get Billy to say he’d be willing to do?

3. Why did Billy stutter in his interaction with the man during his nighttime meeting?

4. Why might the man who had met with Billy in the night have begun to nod in a friendly way toward Billy or “offer a flying word of good-fellowship?”

5. What might account for there being such differences between sailors and landsmen as those which Melville describes?

6. What does it mean for someone to be a “too-fair-spoken man?”

7. What did Melville mean when he wrote, “But something more, or rather something else than mere shrewdness is perhaps needful for the due understanding of such a character as Billy Budd’s?”

8. What did Melville mean by describing Claggart as having a “subterranean fire” dwelling below his “self-contained and rational demeanor?”

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

1. Concerning the Dansker Melville wrote, “Long experience had very likely brought this old man to that bitter prudence which never interferes in aught and never gives advice.” In Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary he defined prudence in the following way:

PRU'DENCE, n. [L. prudentia.] Wisdom applied to practice.

Prudence implies caution in deliberating and consulting on the most suitable means to accomplish valuable purposes, and the exercise of sagacity in discerning and selecting them. Prudence differs from wisdom in this, that prudence implies more caution and reserve than wisdom, or is exercised more in foreseeing and avoiding evil, than in devising and executing that which is good. It is sometimes mere caution or circumspection.

Prudence is principally in reference to actions to be done, and due means, order, season and method of doing or not doing.

In light of this definition, do you believe the Dansker’s “bitter prudence” was really prudence? Why or why not? Be thorough in explaining your answer.

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Proverbs 6:12-19. How might we relate this passage of Scripture to our present reading?

2. Read Psalm 140. Why might this have been an appropriate prayer for Billy to pray?