SOURCE: “The Protagonists' Rainbow in Billy Budd: Critical Trimming of Truth's Ragged Edges,” in ATQ: American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, June, 1993, pp. 97–113.

In the following essay, Yoder determines the ultimate meaning of Billy Budd by surveying critical studies of the novella.

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of telling the truth—even though it be covertly and by snatches.

(Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses”)

When Captain Vere's decision to execute Billy Budd generates debate among the sailors on board the Bellipotent about their leader's possible loss of his sanity, Melville's narrator cautions readers to resist the impulse to attach clarifying labels—sane or insane—to complex phenomena:

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet...