『빌리 버드』를 통한 멜빌의 생의 지론 : 아리스토텔레스의 중용의 덕을 근간으로 한 생

Abstract

Melville's life journey was a series of hardships. The tough predicaments of life made his personality as extreme as projected in his works. However, in the declining years of his life he gained economic stability and could contemplate the order of the world: with self-denial to be able to get over bitter ordeals of life, and cast his eyes on the true happiness. Consequently, he might realize the wisdom of the golden mean after neutralizing in his own way the extreme and hazardous life he had to face in adolescence. The wisdom of life, ultimately cultivated by perseverance throughout his tough life, was embodied in the masterpiece of Billy Budd as a life theory for coming generations, which can be analyzed by putting Aristotle's virtue of the mean to practical use. As his extreme personality of adolescence resulting from life predicaments resulted in practical difficulties, the protagonists were to put into destructive destinies due to each of their extreme personalities, but the aftereffects of the finale were distinctively different. Billy's extreme innocence made him lose the ability to distinguish the dark and dangerous reality, and committed repetitive violence without realistic intelligence when defending himself. The extreme fury emerging from Billy's lack of virtue stood against the severe result the incident brought about, tuned in harmony in a private conversation with Captain Vere. This therefore bore the fruit of accepted death. Although Billy was superficially sacrificed by hanging, paradoxically, at least in his inner world, he was reborn a happy being pursuing the good. On the contrary, Captain Vere was a concrete leader who valued law-abiding above honor and dignity. He was seized with his own academic perception, neglecting practical wisdom of life in intellectual virtues that could enable him to consider what might be good for everybody, including himself. In the end, he died a pitiful death without realizing the virtue of the mean. Both Billy and Vere, featured by extreme personalities in the work, can be regarded as the writer's symbolic incarnations, who similarly met a tragic end in life. However, Billy could come into fruit of sincere delight in his own way of awakening through developing his personal fury out of original sin into acceptable death with the help of golden mean. It was by the dramatic contrast between them that Melville was solemnly carving the value of the mean in the mind of present readers.