Law: The Anti-Nature

Herman Melville was born in New York, 1819. His family went bankrupt and his father died when he was 12 years old. Then, after leaving school, Melville went to work many jobs including one in Liverpool as a cabin boy. Melville also spent 18 months on a whaling ship, but was jailed for mutiny, then was able to escaped to the Marquesas Islands; he spent time with cannibals until his rescue. He lived in Tahiti and returned home to his mother in 1844. Melville's stories are influenced greatly by his adventures at sea; his most famous was Moby Dick. In 1855, Melville stopped writing for 20 years. In Melville’s last novel Billy Budd, Billy represents good in a case against the evil Claggart, but the judgment lies in Captain Vere to carry out justice. “Necessarily crude and imperfect, the law cannot adequately assess a pure nature such as Billy's--or a purely evil one, such as Claggart's. Hence the tragic dilemma of Billy Budd: the law, though indispensable, may in the rare case destroy a representative of the very "Spirit" it was instituted to protect” (Shaw). The law cannot fully bring justice to everyone and in fact violates nature itself.

The character Captain Vere must rely on the law to bring justice to the case of Billy Budd and Claggart. “How can we adjudge to summary and shameful death a fellow creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so?—Does that state it aright?” (Melville 79). Vere put Billy to death by the Articles of War despite his feelings. In law, there is no justice for everyone because law is not natural. For Melville and transcendentalism, Billy is the essence of nature itself, but in the end, Vere must confine in the law and sentence Billy to death. By application of the law, humans are going against nature.

In the end the law controls and justifies what humans do. “…in receiving our commissions, we in the most important regards ceased to be natural free agents” (Melville 79). Vere as a human and sailor is a part of nature but at the same time must confine in something so unnatural as the law. Law takes away free will to make our own decisions. This can also criticize the act of war according to Melville because in war the law says humans fight then they fight regardless of the violent outcome. They fight regardless of their own feelings on the matter. In sum, when law is involved, human free will is of no effect.

While law claims to bring justice, it actually always brings violence to those it initially intended to protect. The laws of nature no longer hold when law is applied.

"Herman Melville." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 30 Nov. 2009 .

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and Other Tales. New York: Signet Classics, 2009.

Shaw, Peter "The fate of a story." American Scholar 62.4 (1993): 591. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 29 Nov. 2009.