Chad Markowitz Mr. Griffith English, Period 1 November 19, 2008 Billy Budd Essay In the book Billy Budd and the movie, there are many differences between the two. There are differences in characters, events, and attitudes. In the book Billy Budd, Billy is a young boy sailor who has a cheerful, friendly personality. He is a seaman on the indomitable at the beginning of the book and is transferred to a new ship called the Bellipotent. Billy meets many new people who are instantly charmed by his handsome looks and his friendly personality. In the movie, it starts off very different. Billy, in the movie, comes from a ship called, the Rights-of-Man. When Billy gets on the ship, most of the men didn’t like him too much because he was new. Billy tried to keep his head up and be nice to everyone but most didn’t seem to mind. Billy saw a man being whipped, or in the movie called, flogged, and kept asking different people why he was being flogged. One man during dinner, by the name of Jenkins, got fed up with Billy asking questions and being so cheerful and wanted to fight Billy. Billy accepted and beat him and made him be quite. After that point is when everyone started to like Billy. Claggart, the master-at-arms in the book showed he didn’t like Billy in small ways through out the book, but Billy was too dull to understand that Claggart didn’t like him. Billy was always nice to him and Claggart just had a grudge on him because of envy and jealousy. Claggart in the movie showed no grudge against him at first, but later on you discover that Claggart was setting Billy up to get in trouble by messing his living space up so it looks like he didn’t clean up well enough. Billy didn’t notice that something was happening because Claggart was so discreet about it. In the book at about this time in the movie, Claggart sent his assistant, Squeak to bribe Billy with two gold coins to cry to get him to join the “rebels”. This is what happened in the book instead of seeing...