Billy Budd
Why must absolute innocence so often be sacrificed within the laws and order of the secular world?
📝ONGO's Reflection
When I first watched the tragic trial of the simple sailor Billy Budd, I sank into a deep dilemma between the strictness of the law and human compassion. Herman Melville's insight lies in how sharply he probes the boundary of good and evil and the limits of judicial justice, through the clash of Claggart, an incarnation of malice, and the angelic Billy, and through the anguish of a captain who must enforce the rules. When the discipline that holds society together crushes the goodness of an individual, we are left to ask, in agony, what we can truly call justice.
"Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!"Herman Melville, Billy Budd
"순수함과 평화가 늘 함께하는 것은 아니다. 때로 순수함은 가장 큰 파멸을 부른다."
🌱Apply It Today
Look back and ask whether you've ever coldly turned away someone's pure good will or unavoidable, undeserved hardship by clinging only to principle and rigid rules. Choose to embrace others' mistakes warmly, with human compassion rather than a mechanical yardstick.
