Billly Budd "Good vs. Evil"
...at first to get their guard down and then suddenly betray them. It’s not clear if that was Claggart’s intentions, but he soon becomes jealous of Billy’s innocence and perfect image. He seems pleased of Billy at first, but he soon becomes very tired and angry at any little mistake Billy makes. Billy caused a small accident one day, and it seem that Claggart was waiting for this opportunity make Billy look bad: “happened to be passing along the battery in a bay of which the mess was lodged, and the greasy liquid streamed just across his path. Stepping over it, he was proceeding on his way without comment, since the matter was nothing to take notice of under the circumstances, when he happened to observe who it was that had done the spilling. His countenance changed. Pausing, he was about to ejaculate something hasty at the sailor, but checked himself, and pointing down the streaming soup, playfully tapped him from behind with his rattan, saying in a low musical voice peculiar to him at times, ‘Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it, too!’ The evil guys always have a plan to get rid of the person that they despise of, and in Claggart's case he sends his ‘right hand man’ Squeak to try and bribe Billy in joining a group of sailors that are planning a mutiny. The plan of Claggarts to get Billy in trouble didn’t work it only provided evidence to the reader that Claggart is jealous of Billy and will do what he can to get him in trouble. Jealousy is proven because Billy has done nothing to Claggart to warrant the trouble that Claggart is trying to get him in. As part of Claggart's evil plan to get Billy in trouble by telling Captain Vere that he suspects Billy Budd of plotting a mutiny but in actuality Billy is not. Of Course the captain doesn’t believe the allegations because he believes Billy wouldn’t do such a thing. Captain Vere, doing his duty as the captain, calls a meeting between Billy, Claggart, and himself. In the meeting, Claggart states the allegations to Billy’s face. Then Billy does something that almost everyone who is fed up with someone’s lies would do, he strikes Claggart in the in the head. The action of striking his in the head was reasonable, but not killing him. As almost always when a “good guy” does something wrong, people feel sympathy for the good guy because they know he wouldn’t do such a thing if it were not warranted. Because of Billy’s action, Captain Vere is torn between his duties of the law and his feeling for Billy. Being the Captain, he has only one real choice, he calls the officers t...