Billy Budd's DilemmaBilly Budd by Herman Mellville is an extremely controversial novel when you consider the divisiveness it has generated. Critics have primarily focused on the argument of acceptance versus resistance. On the one hand, we can read the story as accepting the hanging of Billy Budd as a necessary end of justice. Vere's conviction can be read as a necessary military action carried out in the name of maintaining order aboard the Indomitable. On the other hand, we can say that Billy's execution constitutes the greatest example of injustice. The question has been asked whether Vere's conduct is right or wrong. In both cases, since Billy Budd is an ethical text, it is very strange that there is an absence of emotion and guilt. Billy Budd is the story of two murders. Billy kills Claggart and Vere (although indirectly the decision is ultimately his) kills Budd. None of the murderers demonstrate their guilt in the form of remorse. For a story that attempts to place the reader in a moral and ethical position, it is ironic that the characters themselves do not present what would seem the most ethical....... middle of paper...... Reading the story according to which it is a question of accepting or resisting an ethical dilemma is perhaps questionable. Perhaps the point of the story is to state man's need to punish and retaliate by hurting in ways that may be obscure. The reader may be upset by Billy Budd's death, not for the seemingly unjust killing of a sympathetic character, but for its illustration of a society falling apart; a situation that does not necessarily make sense given human nature, but is so closely tied to social systems that it is unlikely that it could ever be changed..