Biblical Parallels in Herman Melville's

In the movie’s account of Billy Budd, there is a strong inference to this father and son relationship. When Billy was brought aboard the navy ship and told his story where he was found in Bristol as a baby in a silk lined basket, the Captain’s face changes (Video). His face signified that he was aware of the occasion that Billy had mentioned. “Though Billy is young, his strong physique and fine features indicate a noble lineage,” (Bloom 21). Indeed Billy may have been from a noble lineage, if he was the son of Captain Vere.

but a virtue went out of him, sugaring the sour ones, (Leyda 642-643).

Before I shipped that young fellow, my forecastle was a rat-pit of

was worried to that degree my pipe had no comfort for me. But

As a parallel on the opposite end of the scale we have master at arms John Claggart. Charles Weir Jr. says, “there is an atmosphere both of distinguished birth and of a criminal past,” (Rountree 122). Basically stating a paradox between his criminal nature, for which he was sent to sea as punishment, and some nobility in his heritage. God created Lucifer "perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee," (Ezekiel 28:15). And after he sinned it states in Revelations 12:9 “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Lucifer, though created perfect by God was cast out of heaven and condemned to reside on the earth because his own sin. Claggart’s appearance suggests “something defective or abnormal in the constitution of the blood.” Though he hides it and appears to be “a man of quality, social and moral, who for reasons of his own was keeping incog,” (Bloom 21). The Bible states of Satan in 2 Corinthians 11:14 that “[He] himself is transformed into an angel of light”. They both appear outwardly to be respectable, but yet inside they are both pure evil. Claggart sees that Billy is everything that he is not, so he tries to destroy Billy, just as Satan tried to destroy Jesus because of Christ's divine nature. The reason for this hate towards Billy was his “significant personal beauty-it shows a nature that…[has] in its simplicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary bite of the serpent (Bloom 22). “For all his intellectual superiority, Claggart, like Satan is incapable of understanding the innocent heart,” (Chase, Herman 161). Claggart could not begin to comprehend Billy’s purity or innocence, the same way that no one could comprehend Claggart’s evil. After Billy strikes Claggart in the head and kills him, Captain Vere and Billy struggle to remove Claggart’s corpse, which was compared as to a dead snake (Bloom 23). This allusion suggests that Claggart was serpent-like before he died comparing him to Satan. Weir states that “All critics have seen that in some manner he represents Evil,” (Rountree 122)

Captain Edward Fairfax Vere has been paralleled to Pontius Pilot and also to God. Captain Vere must decide whether to let Billy live or die becaus

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