Comparison between Billy and Christ in Billy BuddBilly Budd by Herman Melville provides us with a summary and a final comment on the ambiguities of moral rectitude and social necessity. The conflict that emerges by contrasting natural justice with military justice essentially deliberates on the necessity or otherwise of the sacrifice of the individual for the continuum and preservation of the social order. The profound allegorical theme of the passion of Christ that resides in Billy Budd illustrates Melville's judgment on this theme. Billy Budd's sacrifice for the upholding of social order is an illusory backdrop in which Christ offers His life for the forgiveness of humanity's sins. Melville implements this theological foundation of faith in making the argument for the decay of individual and moral justice to sustain order for the betterment of society. The initial description of Billy Budd is surprisingly Christian in nature. The only opening paragraph of the novel is an almost prophetic preamble to the coming of the Messiah, or in this case, the "Handsome Sailor": "In certain cases they would flank, or surround like a bodyguard, some superior figure of their own. class, moving with them like Alderbaran among the lesser lights of his constellation" (Norton 1486). Billy is the embodiment of the idea of ​​the Handsome Mariner and for this reason his contemporaries flock to him in an idolatrous way: "With every spontaneous tribute paid by wayfarers to this black pay of a companion - the tribute of a pause and a look, and less frequently an exclamation: the motley retinue showed that they felt that sort of pride in the evoker of what the Assyrian priests no doubt displayed for their great sculpture... middle of paper... ts of violence And militaristic in nature and does not exemplify the teachings of Christ. What these differences create is a defined line between the worlds of Man and that of God. The differences between Billy and Jesus accentuate Melville's argument for the separation of secular law and natural. Christ died for man's right to be judged by God for the prospects of eternal life, while, in contrast, Billy died for the perpetuation of man-governed social justice, drawing comparisons and contrasts between Billy and Christ and for what each man respectively dead, Melville makes us question our ideas of natural justice in its relation to socially imposed justice. Works Cited Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories. Ed. Federico Busch. New York: Penguin, 1986. The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Dallas: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1979.