Billy Budd & Typee

by Herman Melville

Forty years separate the writing of these books, and Melville's moral concerns are highly visible in Billy Budd , in which a young sailor willingly accepts his punishment after accidentally killing an evil man. In Typee , Melville romanticized his own adventures as a merchant seaman on a Polynesian island. Typee is generally considered nothing more than adventure and travel writing, whereas Billy Budd is open to interpretation and is considered a much more literary work.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Reference, Classic Literature

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

Reviews

[Hank Stuever · Rating 3 out of 5]

American Lit/Humanities, junior year of high school.

[Nate Niehaus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haven't read Billy Budd yet. Somebody once said Typee was 'perhaps not overly philosophical,' but good. I'd agree with that. A wonderful adventure.

[Rachel]

The conflict between two cultures comes to a head when the portagonist must decide to remain with the Polynesian Typee people and accept their religion and traditions or escape with the European traders. Tommo chooses to leave before he has a complete understanding of the kind people who had saved his life. He remains conflicted about the Typee culture throughout the book. He continually refers to them as savages, while in the same breath proclaiming that their culture is more civilized than any he as seen. I wish the author had remained long enough to really understand the language and the traditions of the prople. The great sadness behind the book is that this culture did not survive its contact with the west.

[Lisa Banik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I, like most people, hated this book the first time that I read it; the diction, syntax and literary allusions are so demanding that they can be irritating much of the time. However, if you've ever wondered what makes readers revere Melville's technique and have thrown in the towel about twenty pages into the interminable "Moby Dick", give this a try. It does amazing things with imagery and is probably the most concise approach to understanding the concept of allegoryever written. Expect the first eight to ten pages to be almost unbearably drawn out, but know that once Billy is introduced, you'll want to know how things turn out.

[Roberto Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

131 PAGES

I really enjoyed this book especially because i like the conflict between the two different cultures cultures which comes once the protagonist must choose to stay with either the Polynesian Type people which means by accepting all their religion and customs or either escaping back with the European traders. I dislikes that Tommo shoe to leave before he has a complete understanding of the kind people who had saved his life. That is guy this book i don't give it as perfect but I like because it is very realistic but not the type of ending I would put. I was a little disappointed with the ending.

[Jer Tecumseh]

Billy Budd is now on my must read list. The Project Gutenberg edition of Typee did not contain Billy Budd. I have a copy of Billy Budd from my local Martha Cooper library, but will not read it until Railsea is finished.

[Risa · Rating 3 out of 5]

billy Budd & Typee by Herman Melville (1962)

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bartleby the Scrivener is my favorite of the short stories collection.

[Rick Rapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting morality tale...

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like Billy Budd at all and found it a strange quick story. Typee however was an interesting tale of island life.

[James Violand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were very good - Typee, especially. I think it is better than Moby Dick and is a better representation of the author's talent than the other.