by Stefan Rudnicki, Herman Melville
After reading the introduction of this book, I was under the impression that it was about a mutiny. Therefore, my perspective was a bit skewed going in. So as a warning to future readers, this is not about a mutiny. It does not detail a mutiny. In fact, a mutiny does not happen at all. There is a ru...
I felt ambivalent about Moby Dick; I loved the grandeur of some of the language and beauty of some of the prose, but hated the lengthy digressions. With Billy Budd, a novella published after Melville's death, I also feel ambivalent, but here my problems are more integral, not just a matter of cuttin...
Not for me...
I think that I was one of the only students in my high school American Lit. class that liked Billy Budd. It's actually my favorite Melville story. It's just packed full of injustice and bravery in the face of unbeatable odds. Just the kind of thing that can really hit that nerve that teenagers ha...
Very glad I read it.
Melville, what are you about man? That's just too much telling for the story's own good!In Billy Budd, Sailor we have what could've been a grand, character-driven swashbuckling adventure. However, Melville apparently wanted to write about sailing and the early navy, and must have felt he needed to t...
The first half of the book was very very slow. *Everything* had to be explained with a long allegory, it seemed. And then, sometimes the allegory needed explaining. But after the half-way point, things got a bit better. Their was some more action.
Billy Budd adds to the evidence in Moby Dick that Melville was a master of the English language and a master of all things nautical. It's a great, short tale of good, evil and the sometimes harrowing injustice of circumstance. It was fascinating to see in Melville's last work, the dramatic differenc...
I like the Christ metaphor, but I found this one dry and hard to read. I had to force myself to get it read.
I am not a Melville fan, and I didn't care for this story. The only reason it gets two stars is because I had such an excellent college professor who took us through this, so I at least got something out of it.
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