Short Fiction · Chapter
The Enigma of Claggart's Antipathy explained
The narrator delves into the mysterious and innate antipathy that Master-at-Arms John Claggart feels toward Billy Budd, exploring the concept of 'natural depravity' and the difficulty of understanding such an exceptional, evil nature throug
What happens
The narrator delves into the mysterious and innate antipathy that Master-at-Arms John Claggart feels toward Billy Budd, exploring the concept of 'natural depravity' and the difficulty of understanding such an exceptional, evil nature through ordinary knowledge of the world.
Themes in this chapter
Innocence vs. Evil
The chapter explicitly contrasts Billy Budd's harmlessness and innocence with Claggart's innate, intellectual evil, exploring the mysterious antipathy that evil can bear toward good.
Appearance vs. Reality
Claggart's outward respectability, even temper, and rational demeanor conceal a secret, irrational, and malignant nature, highlighting the gap between how he appears and what he truly is.
Characters to notice
- John Claggart
Revealed as possessing a 'depravity according to nature,' an innate, intellectual, and secretive malignity that is not continuous but evoked by specific objects like Billy Budd.
- Billy Budd
The innocent and peaceable Handsome Sailor who is the unwitting object of Claggart's profound and spontaneous antipathy.
- The Dansker
Referenced as the source of the expression 'Jemmy Legs' being 'down on the Handsome Sailor,' providing an early hint of Claggart's hidden animosity.
Key passages
“For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be?—if not called forth by that very harmlessness itself.”
Nothing is more mysterious than a deep, instant dislike that some unusual people feel just by looking at another person, even a harmless one—or perhaps because of that very harmlessness.
This captures the central enigma of Claggart's irrational hatred for Billy Budd.
“But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his soul’s recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.”
What marks such an exceptional character is that, despite appearing calm and rational on the surface, inwardly he is completely free from reason, using it only as a tool to carry out irrational and malicious aims.
This describes Claggart's 'natural depravity' and his use of reason to serve his hidden, insane malignity.