Billy Budd, sailor: An inside narrative

General FictionLarge Print EditionIf Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in literature would have been assured by his short fiction. Billy Budd, Sailor is his last work and his masterpiece a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. In Bartleby the Scivener, a Wall Street law clerk takes passive resistance to a comic and tragic extreme. Completing the beautiful collection are: Benito Cerino, The Encantatas, The Plaza, and finally, Melvilles chilling science fiction parable, The Bell Tower.