Patterns of Resistance, Continued (Part Two of Three)

The scene proceeds to illuminate the extent to which the captain, having recovered his "good sense," is taken in by Babo s ruse. The black deliberately plays on the American captain s misconceptions about the temper and intellect of slaves. In so doing, he demonstrates an extensive understanding of the social assumptions that contradict natural law (page 212).

Here the servant, napkin on arm, made a motion as if waiting his master's good pleasure...There is something in the negro which...fits him for avocations about one's person...a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every glance and gesture...to this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind... like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to negroes...as other men to Newfoundland dogs.

Far from being submissive like a "Newfoundland dog," Babo possesses the kind of proud human nature that reacts violently against subjection. Harboring suppressed, yet boundless hatred for his captors, he adheres to a stereotype that contrasts markedly with Delano's benign bigotry, but connects up with the racist fears of many nineteenth and twentieth-century whites. Conversely, Babo's extreme form of resistance would likely be seen as virtuous by Marxist radicals and by literary mavericks like Oscar Wilde, who writes in The Soul of Man Under Socialism "that [all] progress has been made through disobedience and through rebellion" (Damrosch, 1875). Ultimately, however, the mutineer's unquenchable, and all-too-human thirst for revenge proves to be his tragic flaw. From a Shakespearean perspective, he changes from a cunning Iago to a reckless, bloodthirsty Othello figure near the end of the story, when he charges after his "master" with "a dagger in his hand" (232). By succumbing to such an overt and uncalculating form of resistance, Babo gives away his ruse and, like Billy Budd, opens himself up to death.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic