Billy Budd, Sailor

Billy Budd is the novella’s protagonist. Melville spends more time describing Billy’s innocence—and by extension, his vulnerability—than any other of his traits. Billy is so innocent that he has never encountered evil and can’t conceive of a person acting maliciously. His name connotes a youthful innocence. His surname, Budd, likens him to the bud of a plant or flower. This is described to the extent that it almost seems satirical, particularly for a man who is involved on a warship. The narrator describes the archetype of the Handsome Sailor as “more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and beauty. Tales of his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion; afloat the spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost” (8). Billy embodies some of these characteristics, but he is not proficient or sophisticated intellectually: “He possessed that kind and degree of intelligence going along with the unconventional rectitude of a sound human creature, one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge” (16). Through these qualities, Melville critiques the military’s control of naïve young men.

Billy is 21 years old, attractive, and good-tempered, and he is the seeming embodiment of positive human traits.