Billy Budd and the Unfinished Novel
Billy Budd was not what Herman Melville considered “finished” when he passed away, and as such further work may have been done on it. What ideas, thoughts, and plans did Melville have for it when he passed away? These questions are quite significant, as the creation of the entire story branched off a song at the beginning, demonstrating just how far something can go and be changed given time and thought. What would Billy Budd be like if Melville actually managed to complete his story? Would it have the same overall narrative and message?
This idea drives a further question I am interested in. Can we truly look at a novel without possessing its final copy? Sure, we can analyze what is there, but if we do not have an actual final draft can we claim to actually know what the author was thinking or trying to say, since they may have not been done saying it or been able to convey their full thoughts? A single extra chapter could change the entire meaning of a story, as can a revision, so I cannot say for certain that just taking the most recent revision of an unfinished tale is enough for a full, comprehensive study. What is there can surely be analyzed for what it is, but the lack of completion grants a haze and fog of sorts over the whole ordeal, for what if Melville wanted his final chapter to have Billy Budd revealed as some kind of manipulative being? While I am not saying he would have done this, it surely would have changed a lot and changed the message the narrative gives to the reader.
How should we, as readers, consider the existence of unfinished stories and how should we go about analyzing them with this in mind?
The questions you raise are quite important Christopher. While I agree that we cannot claim to know what an author was thinking or trying to say about an unfinished novel, I believe that it is nonetheless possible to extract meaning from a story by analyzing the text as it is presented. In my view, the author should be removed the process of creating meaning, simply because it is readers who appraise a text and extract value from it. While I agree that an author may not have been able to convey his/her full thoughts in an unfinished work, readers can nonetheless analyze a work for what it presently contains and form their judgments of what to take away. This idea is supported by Roland Barthes, who points out in his critical essay “The Death of the Author”, that the origin of a work may lie with the author, but its destination is with the reader: “… [T]he birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” Hence, the meaning derived from a work is determined not by an author, but by readers. The fact that Billy Budd was an unfinished novel does not mean that we cannot obtain something of value by reading the story.