Free Billy Budd Essays: A Structuralist Reading :: Billy Budd Essays

A Structuralist Reading of Billy Budd . . . truth is revealed only when formal order is destroyed. - Dryden, p. 209 Not on your life, says Edgar A. Dryden (though not in so many words, of course) to the above in his splendid Melville's Thematics of Form. His argument is essentially to show that while most readers (erroneously) assume that Captain Vere is the story's tragic hero, the fact of the matter is that a "better" reading will reveal him as Melville's target, if you want to know the "truth." I want to emphasize at the outset is that EVERYTHING DRYDEN SAYS IS SUPPORTED BY THE TEXT he is analyzing. In other words, he cannot be accused of reading-into! Well, how does Dryden denormalize (as it were) the reading above? Rather simply even if rather spectacularly. Here's as brief a version of Dryden's argument as I can possibly give you: Captain Vere's argument is very formally ordered and highly symmetrical. Furthermore, it is in keeping with this compassionate and wise man's philosophy according to which (as Melville's text tells us) "with mankind forms, . . . measured forms are everything" (84). Interestingly enough, Dryden points out, the published report concerning the whole Budd affair at the end of the story, which is taken from a "naval chronicle of the time," and which thus represents an "authorized" version of the whole affair (85), is also formally ordered and highly symmetrical. The trouble is that this "authorized" account is totally false. According to this versi on Billy Budd was evil while John Claggart was good, etc. Perhaps, Dryden argues, we may find something in Melville's text that would confirm a suspicion we may already be entertaining - namely, that formally ordered and highly symmetrical arguments may themselves be suspicious. Dryden finds the text in question very close to the one where Captain Vere makes his claim about "measured forms." It reads as follows: "The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. TRUTH UNCOMPROMISINGLY TOLD WILL ALWAYS HAVE ITS RAGGED EDGES" (84; capitals mine). In contradistinction to Captain Vere's argument or the naval chronicle's "authorized" version, then, Dryden asks us to examine Melville's own way of telling his story. Is it formally ordered and highly symmetrical? Free Billy Budd Essays: A Structuralist Reading :: Billy Budd Essays A Structuralist Reading of Billy Budd . . . truth is revealed only when formal order is destroyed. - Dryden, p. 209 Not on your life, says Edgar A. Dryden (though not in so many words, of course) to the above in his splendid Melville's Thematics of Form. His argument is essentially to show that while most readers (erroneously) assume that Captain Vere is the story's tragic hero, the fact of the matter is that a "better" reading will reveal him as Melville's target, if you want to know the "truth." I want to emphasize at the outset is that EVERYTHING DRYDEN SAYS IS SUPPORTED BY THE TEXT he is analyzing. In other words, he cannot be accused of reading-into! Well, how does Dryden denormalize (as it were) the reading above? Rather simply even if rather spectacularly. Here's as brief a version of Dryden's argument as I can possibly give you: Captain Vere's argument is very formally ordered and highly symmetrical. Furthermore, it is in keeping with this compassionate and wise man's philosophy according to which (as Melville's text tells us) "with mankind forms, . . . measured forms are everything" (84). Interestingly enough, Dryden points out, the published report concerning the whole Budd affair at the end of the story, which is taken from a "naval chronicle of the time," and which thus represents an "authorized" version of the whole affair (85), is also formally ordered and highly symmetrical. The trouble is that this "authorized" account is totally false. According to this versi on Billy Budd was evil while John Claggart was good, etc. Perhaps, Dryden argues, we may find something in Melville's text that would confirm a suspicion we may already be entertaining - namely, that formally ordered and highly symmetrical arguments may themselves be suspicious. Dryden finds the text in question very close to the one where Captain Vere makes his claim about "measured forms." It reads as follows: "The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. TRUTH UNCOMPROMISINGLY TOLD WILL ALWAYS HAVE ITS RAGGED EDGES" (84; capitals mine). In contradistinction to Captain Vere's argument or the naval chronicle's "authorized" version, then, Dryden asks us to examine Melville's own way of telling his story. Is it formally ordered and highly symmetrical?