Clara Jace Mr. Davis 9/4/2012 The Price of Innocence Innocence is a precious thing.

Thus, it is rare and, only a few, most commonly identified as babes, possess such a quality. In Billy Budd, Melville presents this vision of innocence, Billy Budd the sailor himself, and follows him through his clashes with an experienced, knowledgeable world. Melville therefore demonstrated the universal reality of how the world allows nothing pure to stay through the theme in his story of innocence vs. corruption. Early on in the novel, Billy Budd is described as a person who somehow has retained his original innocence, almost likened to Adam, For the rest, with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the wisdom of the serpent, nor yet quite a dove, he possessed that kind and degree of intelligence going along with the unconventional rectitude of a sounds human creature, one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge (16). So, Melville describes innocence as being untouched by the knowledge of good and evil, and when encountered with evil, innocence must either crumble or rise. Although created good, it is because of mans original broken state, materialized through Billy Budds flawed speech, that he is prone to falling (or rather being raised by a rope) and will suffer at the hands of the wicked. Although it is mans inherent goodness and innocence, as shown through Billys last moments with the chaplain and Billys last words, that will be the cause of ultimately setting his heart at peace. The natural question that arises from this is why? Specifically, why is innocence persecuted by the world? One must immediately grant that good and evil, personified by Billy

and Claggart with Vere somewhere in the middle, are intrinsically and wholly repulsed by each other. Billy Budd tried to fill the ship the Bellipotent with his goodness, as in the nature of good, and Claggart naturally fought it and it bothered him. Therefore not only is good warded off by evil, but evil is also kept away by good; it is inevitable. Also, good and evil, or one could say the innocent and the corrupt, have different tools for the clash at their disposal. Evil has deceit and lies and trickery in its hands while good simply draws from the natural beauty of goodness, To deal in double meanings and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature (13). And the final teaching on innocence is that it must always prevail. The real preciousness of innocence is found in its fearlessness, its characteristic unwavering trust in the good greater than itself. Melville writes of Billy before his death, Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what death really is. No, but he was wholly without irrational fear of it, a fear more prevalent in highly civilized communities than those so-called barbarous ones which in all respects stand nearer to unadulterated Nature (81). Innocence is spared because Nature herself is pure. Take a look at Billy, he did not overcome the ship with his goodness while he lived, but he also did not allow the ship to corrupt his thoughtless prize. He died as purely as walked, his last words resonating, God bless Captain Vere (84). The amazing thing about innocence is that one cannot get rid of it, because perfect innocence has no fear. Claggart and even Vere both demonstrated fear, and desperately attempted to remedy it through the death of Billy Budd but the real heart of the situation is that they did not escape, Billy did. At the end of the narrative, neither Vere nor Claggart had, or died with, a peaceful heart, but Billy did.