Conscience Versus Law
Although a number of the characters in Billy Budd possess strong individual consciences; fundamentally, the people on the ship are unable to trust one another. Paranoia abounds. Consequently, life aboard the ship is governed by a strict set of rules, and everybody trusts the rules—not the honor or conscience of individuals—to maintain order. The mistrust that the characters feel, and that is likely also to affect us as we read, stems from the sense that evil is pervasive. Evil men like Claggart seem to be lurking everywhere. Because it is impossible to know for sure whether people’s intentions are good or evil, the evil men not only disguise their own insidious designs, they also impute evil motives to others. Most notably, Claggart misinterprets Billy’s intention in the soup-spilling incident and subsequently plots his downfall.
The Dansker understands this sort of dishonesty all too well, and as a result, he has acquired a cynicism in his dealings with other people. The Dansker’s reticence may be interpreted in different ways, but one plausible interpretation is that he fails to take direct action against evil men because he fears the consequences of confronting evil directly, thus leaving other good men like Billy to fend for themselves. He may represent people who play roles in order to fit into society, never fully acting on their own impulses and distancing themselves from the rest of society. In this reading, the Dansker confronts a dilemma similar to Vere’s. The Dansker likes Billy and tries to help him, but he ultimately sacrifices Billy to the claustrophobic, paranoid world of the ship, in which men are disconnected from their own consciences. In Billy Budd, men who confront the law and men who confront evil suffer similar consequences, suggesting the dark view that evil and the law are closely connected.
The Vulnerability of Innocence
Billy Budd does not represent goodness so much as he does innocence, and the conflict between innocence and evil in this novel is different from the conflict between good and evil. The narrator makes clear that Billy is not a hero in the traditional sense. Though he has the good looks and blithe attitude of the ideal Handsome Sailor, his defining characteristic is extreme naïveté, not moral strength or courage. Billy does not have a sufficient awareness of good and evil to choose goodness consciously, let alone champion it. Because he is unable to recognize evil when confronted by it, he ultimately allows Claggart to draw him away from virtue and into violence.
BILLY BUDD, SAILOR, BY, HERMAN MELVILLE
I, HAVE, TITLED, THIS, POST, 'BILI', BUDD...BECAUSE, 'BILI', WAS, A PAGAN, 'SKY GOD',
OF, INTEREST, TO, JUNGIAN, STUDENTS.....
MELVILLE,THE CANNABIS,[HEMP] SMOKER,IS, BEST, KNOWN, FOR, 'MOBY DICK',or 'THE WHALE'....BUT, ALL, OF, HIS, WORKS,HINT, AT, HIS, EXPERIENCE, OF, 'THE SELF', AND, HIS, ATTEMPTS, TO,RECONCILE, HIS,IDEALISTIC, CHRISTIAN, UPBRINGING, AND, HIS, EXPERIENCE, OF,....THE REALITY, OF,EVIL, IN, THE WORLD.
ITS THE VEGETATIVE THING...THAT, INTRIGUES, ME...BEING, AS, HOW..
CANNABIS....SHOWS, UP, IN,A DIFFERENT, GUISE?..
CANNABIS....SHOWS, UP, IN,A DIFFERENT, GUISE?..
Bile (bele; pl., bili)
Symbolic plant. A sacred tree, often found near a holy well or other honored site, is even today in Ireland decorated with offerings, especially strips of cloth called clooties. In ancient times such a tree would have marked an inauguration site, and its branches would have provided the wood used for the king’s scepter. There is also a god of this name, ancestral father to the milesians who were the last invaders of Ireland, but it is unclear if tree and god are connected; indications that Bile was an underworld divinity could be linked to the tree’s function as a symbol of the unification of the underworld (roots) and upper world (branches).
The term bile was used to designate a sacred tree or any genus, although certain kinds of trees, including oak, yew, and ash, were thought to have special powers. The Irish place-poems, the dindshenchas, describe five great trees of ancient Ireland, including an oak that bore nuts and apples at the same time as acorns, replicating the trees said to grow in the other-world. The second sacred tree was the yew of ross, described as a "firm strong god," while the remaining three were ash trees, most notably the mythic Ash of uisneach, which, when felled, stretched 50 miles across the countryside.
In addition to having totem animals, the ancient Celts may have believed in ancestral tree-spirits; we find one ancient Irish group going by the name of Fir Bile, "tribe of the sacred tree," while the Continental Eburones were the "yew-tree tribe."
The cutting of sacred trees was utterly forbidden among the Celts, a tradition that sometimes continued into Christian times. Weapons were not permitted around the oak of brigit in kildare, a tree that was probably sacred before the foundation of the convent at that site, for the town’s name includes the words for church (kil-) and for oak (-dare). The tradition of protecting such trees survived in folklore until recently; in the Irish village of Borrisokane in east Co. Galway, it was said that if anyone so much as burned a broken-off branch of the town’s sacred tree in his fireplace, his house would burn to the ground.
This reverence for trees is one of the most deep-rooted of Celtic beliefs. druids held their sacrifices in sacred groves called nemetons, the destruction of which by the Romans was a brutal blow to the heart of the people, as was the Christian demand that trees no longer be honored with offerings and prayers. Despite the heavy fines levied on those who broke these regulations, Celtic tree-worship continued, as is evidenced by the frequent fulminations against it, generation after generation, by churchmen. Martin of Tours, renowned for smashing idols, was unable to gain destructive access to a sacred pine tree in central France. Faced with such fervent devotion, the Church converted the trees along with their worshipers, declaring them sacred to the Virgin Mary or to lesser saints, decking them with saints’ images, and using them as sites for Christian ritual.
ALSO...
Bear
Symbolic animal. A dim-sighted but sharp-eared creature of impressive speed and climbing ability, the bear was feared and respected for its strength by all early people who encountered it. Perhaps because a skinned bear looks very much like the carcass of a person, and because the live animal can walk upright like a man, the bear was often imagined as nearly human.
The region where the Celts emerged, in mountainous central Europe, was supreme bear terrain. Prior to the Celts’ appearance in the archaeological record, we find evidence of a bear cult centered in Alpine caves; this ancient religious vision may have influenced the Celtic sense of the bear’s divinity. Swiss sites especially attest to the bear’s early importance, as at the city of Berne (whose name means "bear"), where the sculpture of the Celtic bear goddess artio was found; there is some evidence of a parallel bear god named Artaios, whom the Romans called by the name of mercury. The name of andarta, an obscure Gaulish goddess, may mean "great bear." Other mythological figures with ursine names include arthur and cormac mac airt.
No comments:
Post a Comment