Billy Budd, Foretopman (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Herman Melville
- First Published: 1924
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Symbolic realism
- Time of Work: 1797
- Setting: Aboard a British man-of-war
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Eighteenth century
- Locales: Oceans
Characters Discussed
Billy Budd, a youthful member of the crew of the merchantman Rights-of-Man, who is impressed into service aboard H.M.S. Indomitable during the last decade of the eighteenth century. Billy is twenty-one, “welkin- eyed,” and possessed of great masculine beauty; he has no idea who his father and mother were, having been left a foundling in a basket on the doorstep of a “good man” in Bristol, England. Billy was a cheerful, stabilizing influence on the rough crew of the merchantman; when he is taken aboard the “Indomitable,” he is...
[The entire page is 926 words long]
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