Rainbows, Fogs, and Other Smokescreens: Billy Budd and the Question of Ethics

“Let no man deceive you by any means”

“…Decisions, therefore – even, or especially, responsible ones – are always “mad,” suspended between the singular and the general, and, as Claviez puts it, they necessarily contain the attempt “to terminate the interminable, and to determine the indeterminable” (Claviez , 45). Thus, for Claviez, the question raised by the surgeon regarding the sanity of Vere's decision is generalized in the novella to apply to our own interpretation of that decision.…”