Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Billy Budd, Herman Melville - John B. Noone, Jr. (essay date 1957)

Billy Budd, Herman Melville - John B. Noone, Jr. (essay date 1957)

John B. Noone, Jr. (essay date 1957)

SOURCE: “Billy Budd: Two Concepts of Nature,” in American Literature, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, November, 1957, pp. 249–62.

[In the following essay, Noone finds connections between Billy Budd and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Thomas Hobbes's version of the primitive man.]

Billy Budd, the last will and testament of Herman Melville, has long been a source of contention among his intellectual heirs. A simple story cloaking a complicated structure and spotted with apparent digressions, it inevitably stimulates the curiosity of the speculative intellect. In response to this stimulus a variety of interpretations ambiguously testifies to its richness, confusion, or both. This [essay], risking further confusion, proposes still another theory in the belief that within its framework other interpretations may find their justifications as elaborations of its several parts.

I

...

[The entire page is 5956 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass