The Serpent and the Whale: <i>Leviathan</i> in <i>Billy Budd</i>

In this essay I argue that Herman Melville’s celebrated novel Billy Budd, Sailor can fruitfully be read as a commentary on the theory of sovereignty laid out in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. After considering what the complicated history of the composition of Billy Budd reveals about Melville’s evolving intentions in writing it, I demonstrate that there are considerable and heretofore overlooked textual and extra-textual grounds for thinking that Leviathan was a key source for him. I then show how a Hobbesian reading of Billy Budd provides a satisfying way of accounting for the shape of the narrative, and conclude by considering what light such a reading can shed on the longstanding critical debates about the novel’s message, and on our understanding of Melville’s views about the relationship between authority, violence, and political order.