Cognition of Conflagration in H.

G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Herman

Melville’s Billy Budd

Introduction

About the Authors

Herman Melville was an American novelist as well as a short story writer of the
American Renaissance period best known for his romantic ideology in Polynesian life
shown in Typee, where Moby Dick draws a wide range of exploration of philosophy
and literature, also an immense sense of rhythm that elaborates the mystical and ironic
imagery with an abundance of Biblical scriptures. Despite many difficulties in his life,
Melville did his work extensively of his own that shows mythology, anthropology and
historical where he was much fascinated by Shakespearean poetic ideas. Later
Herman Melville’s posthumous novella Billy Budd got published in 1924.

H.G. Wells was an English prolific writer who worked upon many genres, social and
satirical commentary including autobiography on war. One of them is The War of the
Worlds got published in 1897, where the ideology of fate and free will shows the
similarity of the invasion of The Martians broadly towards the conflict of despair and
war. This is a first person narrative where British imperialism and generally a
Victorian superstitions that made the Martians invasion as fictional and a scientific
romance.

Scope and Objective

This work is designed to analyze and determine many of the ideologies came insight
whether Humans would ever be similar to The Martians. Broadly Wells is
conceptualizing the ideology of fate, free will and imperialism. On the other side,
Melville caught within the conflicting loyalties in a way of being civilized who owes
fidelity to propriety and priority. There is a sense of annihilation of esoteric spirit
quelled evil with involuntarily actions. The aim of this paper is to elucidate an
affordable opportunity based on many critical interpretations which is progressive and
consecutive. The basic intent of this novella is a way to expressionism towards the

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ideology of homosexuality and the thematic concern of psychosis and conflicts. This
interpretation inquires Melville’s as well as Wells’ agitation is with the philosophy of
despair and war. Basically, this work also examines the concern of the narrator and
the proximity of idle way of madness simultaneously the homoerotic and as the
critique of repression in this composition.

Methodology
The methodology used in this paper is a qualitative one. This paper will make use of
several theories like Expressionism, Colonialism, Reconciliation, Imperialism,
Biblical Allusions to study expressionism towards the ideology of homosexuality
annd thematic concern of psychosis and conflicts.

Topic and Terms

The idea of conflagration and despair in relation to H.G. Wells’ The War of the
Worlds and Melville’s Billy Budd points out the abhorrence of war and war machines
where the execution of a sailor during the wartime can be seen as an argument against
the British colonialism where H.G. Wells wanted to demonstrate the evilness of
colonialism. The British had been an imperialistic atmosphere of misunderstanding
and scientific speculation by the end of 19th century.

Literature Review

Joyce Sparer Adler’s demonstrated the idea of war and class in Billy Budd and
‘Melville’s philosophy of war’
The major aspect of this research is to essence the cognition of conflagration within
the Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and H.G Wells’ The War of the Worlds. And it is
necessary to delve the imagination of the Christian and civilized world, which is an
abstract of war and evil. Man of war where Melville shows universality with reference
to ‘handsome sailor’, which are both as an African and as a hero to him. There is also
a mythic cipher, according to Melville where Billy manifested qualities of
superhuman as shown within chapters one to three from Herman Melville’s Billy
Budd. Within this major Mutiny, Spying, wages and insubordination enumerates
about the conflicts within the private and public which is atrocious for the civilized

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society who owes fidelity to order and propriety. Irony behind Billy Budd is
impersonating the laws where Billy’s crime calls for his death. Joyce Sparer Adler
demonstrates the great mutiny during the time of Napoleonic wars. At the same time
Billy Budd imparts a vast representation of class.

Negativity and Cannibalism in the Polynesian life with the superiority of the natives
from ‘Typee’
With reference to the idea of shipwreck during the war time William Shakespeare’s
The Tempest shows the similarity with the wreck of the warship that has invigorated
Billy Budd, to this simultaneously shows an effect of alienation and isolation with
reference to the protagonist Miranda. Alongside the idea of cannibalism which
validates the negative effect of European civilization in respect with “Typee” shows
Polynesian life with the superiority of the natives. Most of Melville’s work, say Moby
Dick is dedication to Nathaniel Hawthorne where he exemplify the metaphysical
elements.

J. Anderson, Kevin’s ‘The Martian war and H.G Wells’ The War of the Worlds’
This elucidates the similarity of the invasion of the aliens or Martians from outside the
Earth in relation to the exploration of Mars as a quest for knowledge instead of being
prosaic in nature. The war of the worlds depicts the invasion of dovish Victorian
England by superior and authoritative technology and unsympathetic Martians who
caused havoc in central London and succeeded in the envenoming the population with
the unfamiliar rays which is far more worst than the bacteria alive on the Earth and
called these aliens as analogical aliens.

Ingo Cornils’ in ‘The Comparative Literature, The Martians are Coming! War, Peace,
Love and Scientific Progress in H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds’
Coming of the Martians also depicts the arrival of War, Peace, Love and Scientific
progress evaluated the cognition of conflagration with the help of the war of the
worlds. It is immaculately the nineteenth century myth of the war which is
imaginative in nature. To this Wells is overcome with an idea that the violence within
the colonial wars reinforcement of the idea of Darwin, “The survival of the fittest”.
It’s been an alacrity to realize that the martial technology has already been developed

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to such an extent that not only the combatants but also the civilians later get involved
in any particular war either nuclear or some unwanted invasions. Alongside there is a
construing extraterrestrial invasion in Wells’ work shows the analogical alien.
Simultaneously wells pointed out a presage war in central Europe after the
consequence of the militarization and consolidation of Germany. There is another
aspect of the or issue of love that is homosexual love as a gay fantasy figure which
shows the level of intellectual between the characters of Billy Budd as some feminine
in man and physical loveliness. This novella is nevertheless bided even animated and
darkened with the idea of mutiny and repression to the thought of feminine within
man as of war and law. This feminine of man shows the absence of women where a
ship aboard without a single woman which indicates womanless man of war.

Still query arises towards Melville’s mystery is that either Billy was black or not.
Many scholars including John Bryant’s assumptions talked of cognitive evidence in
the Melville’s manuscript. The main objective behind it was that the scribe had played
with the idea of making protagonist an African heritage. As Billy is adored by the
crew members and spectated as blue-eyed and blond. Alongside many such
descriptions about the sailor profoundly a thematic concern of homoerotic desires that
implicated and depicted goodness and evilness as combined frames with an
altercation.

Dana Sliva as in Exploring Homoeroticism in Herman Melville’s Novella Billy Budd,

sailor
This as an altercation with Ingo Cornils where she is declaiming societal attitude
towards homosexuality in mid-nineteenth century, proves a sight of Victorian code of
morality. Melville himself discussed the attitude of accommodating tolerance towards
the sexual activities and similar sex desires among the sailors. From Eric Goldman’s
“Studies in the novel, Bringing out the beast in Melville’s “Billy Budd”: The dialogue
of Darwinian” where metaphorically Goldman pleaded Darwin deceitful gesture in
respect to human beings in “The origin of species” where there is a combination
between the element of the nature of human and animal later with a result of
excruciating proximity. The Bellipotent, the Goldfinch, the Horse, the Dove, the Dog,
the Heifer and the Nightingale majorly are some of the animals which Melville
metaphorically portrayed Billy’s character. Claggart is drawn as a Serpent, Scorpion

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and Torpedo fish and even rest of the crew is compared with the rats whereas Moby
Dick is dramatized as an external affairs but Billy Budd transubstantiates the war in
an internal affair. There is a deep sense of transcendentalism within the Darwinian
theory. Although both Billy and Claggart assimilated to biblical references which say
Billy with Adam, “an angel of God” or Christ and Issac where Claggart with Satan
and Ananais.

Edward. H Rosenberg in his work ‘The problem of Billy Budd, PMLA’

According to his anticipation as of Melville epitomizes differently. As Melville
already stated that “the man who lived among the cannibals” with reference to
“Typee” where Toby’s disappearance is the realization that the Typees were the
cannibals after observing a panoramic view with three human heads. Therefore, this
showed an adversary effect of the European civilization basically a superiority of the
natives. Thematically it shows of cannibalism sexuality in a way to be referenced
from Melville’s work “Yankee Doodle Magazine”, where public and readers reacted
to his experimentation with satirically, allegorically and symbolically. For R.H. Fogle,
Billy Budd is an ironic in the perceptions of the Aristotelian ideology where it delivers
the idea of reversal of fortune or the irony of fate but in a rhetorical touch it doesn’t
deal with the ironic perceptions in other words reversal of meaning or the irony of
satire.

Apocalyptically, the final episode of the Billy Budd related with the parricide of King
Oedipus and built an Aristotelian ideology of irony where Billy also had killed an
officer who was on his duty and proves the similarity of the co-existence of anti-
Platonism and romantic idealism. Criticism must connote only if to reach to its actual
meaning as per being Sophoclean Melville in Billy Budd. Moreover the critics, who
plotted the style of Melville’s social thought suggested that he finally attained the
placidity, basically a reconciliation to life in Billy Budd, sailor.

Charles A. Ellwood in ‘The social problem and the Present war’

The critical theory that shares the concept of the present social tendencies having an
eminent ideology preceded the French revolution. The enigma of our civilization is
not only a threat to political structure but also an industrial institution which
exemplifies the present European war (1914) by drawing a parallelism within the

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existing western social conditions and pre-revolutionary France. The brutality of these
conflicts is always beyond the proletarian social disorder and dissolution,
simultaneously between the social philosophies and ideals of life on the one side and
societal reconstruction and progress on the other side. The essential problem of
humanity is neglecting the ways of solving the conflicts rather by maintaining it as
familiar. Contrarily, if the problem of society is the problem of human living, then it
as spacious as human nature and humanity.

Charles A. Ellwood’s definition of civilization is that anything which at sunken the

creation and the transmission of hypothetical values by which human regulate their
leadership. Civilized human beings in other phrases, won’t stay together mellifluously
without some mutual understandings and acceptances that could measure the
administration. Not only the habits, emotions and feelings but also the ideas which are
accepted for the achievement of societal order worthy to be called civilized.

Therefore, western civilization is not a series of irreparable conflicts within nations

and classes, there must have a renascence of humanitarian ethics. The general
acquiesce of such an ethic would surely have prevented the presented war.
Nevertheless the major issue of present struggle is only the earnest acceptance of
humanitarianism by the foreman of the future civilization can save the world from the
boundless conflicts within races, classes and nations.

Chapterization

The current study is organized within chapters that hereby explicated:

Chapter I
Introduction- The work introduced with an ideology of homosexuality and the
thematic concern of psychosis and conflicts. There is an interpretation of the
philosophy of despair and war.

Chapter II
The imagination of the Christian and civilized world as an abstract of war and
evil during mid-19th century which is an abstract of war and evil. Man of war where

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Melville shows universality with reference to ‘handsome sailor’, which are both as an
African and as a hero to him.

Chapter III
The demonstration of the mutiny during Napoleonic wars imparts a vast
representation of class system - Irony behind Billy Budd is impersonating the laws
where Billy’s crime calls for his death which demonstrates the great mutiny during
the time of Napoleonic wars.

Chapter IV
The portrayal of homoeroticism and cannibalism in Herman Melville’s Billy
Budd - The idea of cannibalism which validates the negative effect of European
civilization in respect with sexuality in a way to be referenced from Melville’s work
Yankee Doodle Magazine.

Chapter V
The evolution of dystopia as a sub-genre to science-fiction and magical realism in
Europe as well as in USA

Chapter VI
Aristotelian ideology of irony with a progress to the reconciliation to life -
It delivers the idea of reversal of fortune or the irony of fate but in a rhetorical touch it
doesn’t deal with the ironic perceptions in other words reversal of meaning or the
irony of satire.

Chapter VII
Advancements to the ideology of Anti-Platonism and Romantic Idealism -
Relation with the parricide of King Oedipus and built an Aristotelian ideology of
irony where Billy also had killed an officer who was on his duty and proves the
similarity of the co-existence of anti-Platonism and romantic idealism.

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Chapter VIII
Conclusion- This concludes with the idea of western civilization where it is not in a
series of irreparable conflicts within nations and classes, there must have a renascence
of humanitarian ethics. Present struggle where being a major issue is only the earnest
acceptance of humanitarianism by the foreman of the future civilization can save the
world from the boundless conflicts within races, classes and nations.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Print, (1924)

Melville, Herman, Billy Budd. Sparkpub, (2002)

Wells , H.G The War of the Worlds, Print (1897)

Secondary Sources:

J. Anderson, Kevin. The Martian war, Print (2006)

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest, Print (1610)

F. Hamilton, Peter. Pandora’s Star, Print (2004)

K. Le Guin, Ursula. The word for World is forest, Print (1976)

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(published Duke university press), 2003. Print.

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