Barbara Johnson’s mode of criticism notably stems from the postmodernist ideas and Melville’s text has elements that can be drawn to the postmodernist era by looking into the relationship between the signifier and the signified, or rather the distinction between “doing” and “being” exemplified by his symbolic characters. By understanding how the text works through allegorical functioning, she is also able to identify the disconnect between the signifier and the signified. This distinction between “being” and “doing” she brings forth by explaining the ways in which Melville describes the characters of Billy Budd, John Claggart, and Edward Fairfax Vere, sound like expectations of what they should be like and how they should be perceived. However the counteracts of these characters display the irreconcilable relationship between the two concepts.

The most prominent example being that of Billy Budd’s character who should represent the Handsome Sailor stereotype, but in being mute is unreliable in communicating his actual identity and so it is unforeseen when he becomes the flawed character. From a psychological perspective, it is possible to “be” one person implicitly and “do” contradictory actions based on what is perceived as acceptable behavior at individual versus social levels, and so I argue further that it is in “human nature” to embody acts of both “good” and “evil” such that there no fully moral or fully unmoral person, leading to what seems to be counteracts of the characters’ personalities. In this same way, different modes of communication can be misinterpreted, especially in literature. There is a consistent uncertainty between the messages being conveyed.

Billy Budd’s lack of intelligence provides an absence of his character, leaving an ambiguity of who his character is by only leaving what is said of him and his expressions. Ironically, though his character cannot understand double meanings of things Billy embodies the very idea that what something looks to be is not necessarily what is. Therefore, his character makes it difficult to read motivation and intention by simply looking at his actions. It is then surprising when he is accused of murder of the “evil” character, Claggart, who had previously warned Captain Vere to avoid falling into the handsome act. Though Johnson exclaims Billy as a transparent character, I argue that he is not easily read simply by the descriptions Melville provides because the narrative is missing. I also argue that Claggart’s speech could have been misinterpreted and disregarded as “good” because his “very pleasantness can be interpreted as opposite” (2262). He is said to uphold a “duplicity, both in his appearance and in his character” and so he personifies the difference between the signifier and the signified. I think that instead, his character is misread and represents a truthful and honest character. The personalities of these characters intertwine, leading me to believe that the nature of man is the same as the nature of literature. It is almost always left up to interpretation. What is at one moment, will not be the next, as there is almost always a duplicity in human nature. Handsome is, is therefore not always what handsome does.

The reading that is up for discussion and interpretation is called Semiology and Rhetoric. First and foremost let’s first look up the definitions of semiology and rhetoric. Semiology is defined as the study of signs and symbols. So what is Paul De Man’s purpose of the discussion on semiology? And why is semiology so important for his argument of language and grammar? Before we get to that we first need to also define rhetoric. Rhetoric is defined as the ability to use language effectively. So the purpose of Paul De Man’s writing is to study the signs and symbols  of language and how to use it. First Paul De Man uncovers the past famous works on language and grammar and criticize their theories because even though they explained language in an accurate manner some inaccuracies were at play. The main problem was that they explained a system for language where as there is more to the theories crafted by the past theoretical works of the 19th century.  Paul De man instead believes that there are a connection to both rheteric and semiology which we can not really seperate from one another. He even explains that metaphors are even more tenacious than facts! This is true considering the impact metaphors have over traditional factorial information. He then brings up examples of semiology with different quotes from French literary writers. They all state that rhetoric language bring symbols upon symbols. In fact symbols give birth to new symbols. This is intriguing to me because so far what we learned from the past few readings was how we learn language with images and our understanding of language is related to the human idea of objects. The difference in belief from Naiditch’s and Paul Da Man’s belief is that words have and symbols have their own meaning. We created meaning through semiotic and rhetoric relationships not through human ideas of objects. After he exemplifies his main ideas behind the relationships of rhetoric and semiology he uses a famous poem as an example of his argument. The peom states as follows:

“O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the hole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer form the dance?”

This famous line came from Yeat’s poem “Among School Children” and Paul De Man makes his most important point about his arguement. That words that impact people do so in an extroadinary way in which semiology and rhetoric reasoning makes the reader grab the words and a blissful manner which is strong than factual sentences.

Language, for me, has always been an interesting subject matter.  On a daily basis, I interact and speak with many people, in the only language that I’ve known—or thought I did— English.  New York City, being the epicenter of global finance and trade, attracts people from all over the world that are in search of opportunity and growth.  Accompanying the constant stream of citywide diversity, are the ways of which these diverse peoples communicate amongst each other: and in America, everyone speaks English.  In a crowd of English speakers, one that speaks English should be able to comfortably relay their thoughts in English, Yes?  Not exactly, and the discomforts lie in the different ways in which a single language can be expressed and interpreted.  People, sometimes think, act and express themselves in ways that are often misunderstood by others.  The English language can also be, often, misunderstood because of its ambiguity in being relayed and received.  Users of the language all agree to the fundamental guidelines of English, which structure sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages.  Pages written by Paul De Man, in the form of an essay, describe certain confusions caused by grammar and rhetoric using late 1970’s sitcom characters as examples.

Edith and Archie Bunker, share a long marriage that is not strictly derived from intense verbal interactions with one another; but one with the values (and issues) of the average, working class household.  Edith understands her husband’s locution after many years of marriage, but fails to understand his rhetoric when he asks the question ‘“What’s the Difference?”’(1370) Pertaining to Archie’s bowling shoes being laced over or laced under, Edith receives his message in grammatical context, only; rendering her completely absent from the substance of his statement.  Archie relayed a message that was simultaneously literal and figurative, or rhetorical.  In transmitting such a message (and for effectiveness) the receiver must be able to understand both the literal and the figurative nature of the message relayed.  Archie also asks his question in a metonymical sense, which infers that both options offered by Edith are the same in value toward the subject of bowling.  Had he chose a preference amongst the options, Archie would be agreeing to Edith’s grammatical approach; instead he choses rhetoric—or an implied meaning— as a response.

“…Grammar allows us to ask the question, but the sentence by means of which we ask it may deny the very possibility of asking.”(1370,71)  By addressing a question, the context is unknown to the addressee—unless they are familiar with the subject matter.  The addressee is as foreign to the subject, as two people attempting to conduct a conversation in two totally different languages.  More times than often, this collapse occurs with people that are speaking the same language.  A (hypothetical) British gentleman and American gentleman are sitting in a bar, sometime in the present, engaged in deep political debate; when suddenly the British gentleman asks the American, “Are you taking the piss?”  The American—if unfamiliar with British rhetoric— will be confused with the question and respond with a polite grammatical retort, “No. But the bathroom is in that direction.”  This response indicates the unfamiliarity of the Brit’s syntactic mode, causing confusion with the American.  The British gentleman was definitely not inferring that the American was impolitely urinating during their discussion; but that he was being mocked by the American for his, drunken, political views.  They both are using the English language to communicate; however, the syntactic bridge, which once allowed the conversation to effectively prevail, has now been severed (causing confusion).  If the American is familiar with British figurative speech, the bridge may still be intact: potentially offering both gentlemen another round of pleasant debate, along with another round of beer.

Paul de Man’s essay, “Semiology and Rhetoric”, is a critique of the structuralists and their paradigms. In order to avoid the ineluctable conclusion of literary criticism, de Man condemns structuralism as a house of cards. The inside-outside model that they had touted assumed that the language of the text was a concrete referential from which to draw, and structure, meaning. Following this logic, in order to comprehend the referential, a reader must understand the context which produced the referent. Context meant an understanding of the time: social, political, economic, etc. Such an approach is evident in Barthe’s writing: a photograph is analyzed as a set of composed symbols that are meant to identify the politician as a leader with whom the voter can identify. The effect of such an analysis is twofold. First, history is the victim of the same inside-outside paradigm as the literary text hence there can be no elucidation of the inside via the outside. Second, the reader thus reads himself into the reading, creating what de Man terms a “solipsistic category” of form (1366). However, the effect of this consideration is manifold. In this instance, the paradigm has shifted so that the author has replaced the outside, ergo: the text is a referential to understand the author. These considerations create an absolute reading that allowed de Man to illustrate a single counter-example thereby toppling the structure of meaning.

Although both structuralist and deconstructionist adhere to the principles set by Nietzsche and Saussure, they diverge on the reliability of the sign as a determinant of meaning. De Man tackles the structuralist tradition that began with Jakobson. Grammar is treated as the structure of meaning. It is conceived as “tending towards universality and as simply generative” so that there can be no “true proposition” that exists beyond a properly grammatical system (1369). In this mode of thought, meaning is derived from metonymy, which can emulate the form of any logic. De Man, however, fails to criticize this fallacious relationship, for logic logically accounts for the existence of a sound illogical system, while grammar existentially relies on the meaninglessness of its opposite. Regardless, de Man finds fault in the definition of rhetoric that the structuralists have established. In their sense, rhetoric is an act of persuasion, so it is a perlocutionary form of language that is distinct from the illocutionary. The effect of this definition is the discontinuity established with grammar, thereby allowing both systems to coexist within structural theory. For de Man, this is the key to the unraveling of structuralism’s reliance on metonymy. De Man, relying on the theoretical support of Kenneth Burke’s deflection, which accounts for the discrepancy between sign and meaning, and that of Charles Sanders Pierce’s interpretant, the third element that interprets the sign’s represented meaning thus creating a perpetual cycle of interpretation, is able to produce his Archie Bunker example. The example of Archie deconstructs meaning as it fundamentally challenges the foundation of the structure. The meaning inherent to Archie’s rhetorical question is explicit to its grammatical composition. Thus, two meanings are coexists, the literal and the rhetorical, that are at odds with one another. By way of another example, the above title, “whatever”, can have disastrous consequences depending on its rhetorical flourish. It can mean a disinterest expressed to a question that has no implications regardless of the decision made: “Would you prefer a donut or a croissant?” “Whatever.” Or, with a perfunctory shrug and a roll of the eyes, the term is indignation expressed not only at the statement (not necessarily a question), but also at the questioner: “Your working this Friday night.” “Whatever”. The latter will cost you a job.

De Man uses an example from the classic tv show, All in The Family to highlight the critical role rhetoric plays in conjunction with grammar. De Man’s argument until this point has been focused on shifting the current trend of extrinsic analysis back to intrinsic analysis. This shift also involves a new realm of analysis with what he calls a “new grammar”, rhetoric. Standard grammar involves syntax and sound but not the relationship between the people speaking. This leaves a huge gap of understanding the language missing, a gap De Man believes rhetoric can fill given that rhetoric is “conceived exclusively as persuasion, as an actual action upon others” (pg 1369). He uses the Archie Bunker example as way to show “the tension between grammar and rhetoric” (pg 1370). The example itself involves Archie’s wife Edith first asking him how he would like his shoes tied. Archie, who is presumably indifferent, responds with “What’s the difference?” to which Edith rambles off the different styles of shoe tying. This only makes Archie upset and follows with him telling her off. To the audience this was just a funny moment between husband and wife. For De Man, this captures the pitfalls of grammar when rhetoric is involved. There is no way for Edith to distinguish whether or not the question is literal or figurative within the question itself. Of course, if she followed the emotional signals her husband was giving her; she could have guessed his meaning.

This is something we, as socialized humans, do everyday. As I think about it, there is a song on the radio now about topic. Even when I was a kid and mother would ask me “Do you really want to do that?”, she wasn’t asking me anything at all. She was telling me not to what I was doing. In the movie Devil Wears Prada, there is a funny scene where the main character is being interviewed by her tough boss and being asked several questions. The boss finally follows up the questions up mentioning something along the lines of “and you have no sense of fashion”. The main character takes it as a question but is hilariously corrected. I also think of the tv character Rose Nyland from The Golden Girls. Rose’s roommates would always use very dry sarcastic humor that Rose never understood because she took their conversations literally. She didn’t follow the social queues, to tell her whether or not the questions were rhetorical. Her roommates, like Archie would only respond with hilarious frustration. De Man brings up this frustration mentioning “the very anger he displays..reveals his despair when confronted with a structure of linguistic meaning that he cannot control”(pg 1371).  De Man calls these moments rhetorical because it’s impossible to see which meaning is actually correct. As viewers we know what Archie is saying with his vitriol-filled response to Edith. But if he hadn’t given that reaction and we hadn’t known the characters it would be impossible to decipher the “right” meaning.

Given all of my encounters with this confusing topic I would have to agree with De Man’s argument. It’s re occurrence in pop culture also tells me that it’s something that everyone has encountered and can relate to. Saussure isn’t entirely right when he refers to language as contract, with which people can be perfectly understood among an infinite amount of sentence combinations. If anyone, I think De Man’s argument best agrees with Jakobson’s. As Jakobson pointed out the addresser and the addressee play an impactful role in verbal communication. Rhetorical statements could even be part of the emotive function because it calls most attention to the emotional state of the addresser. Both men try to show how language itself can’t  account for all aspects of communication, it’s impossible. Sometimes language itself isn’t enough in a regular conversation or maybe a Yeat’s poem and a better literary analysis involves looking at rhetorical meaning.

In her essay, “Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd,” Barbara Johnson notes how many readers interpret Melville’s text as an allegory of good vs. evil. More specifically, Billy Budd is “good”, while John Claggart represents “evil” – with Captain Vere representing judgement of the two characters. Johnson asserts that such binary thinking of the thematic/semiotic relationship between Billy and Claggart is problematic, arguing that the actions (“doing”) of the two men contradicts their respective character (“being”).

Before exploring the symbolic repercussions of Claggart’s demise to Billy’s hands (no pun intended), Johnson goes into more detail the differences between the two men. She states that Billy is, “remarkable for his ‘significant personal beauty,’ his ‘reposeful good nature,’ his ‘straightforward simplicity,’ and his ‘unconventional rectitude.’ But Billy’s intelligence…is as primitive as his virtues are pristine. He is illiterate, he cannot understand ambiguity, and he stutters,” (2259). Evidently, Billy’s wordview is simple and innocent, without an ounce of nuance. To him, the truth of what people say and do is clear on a pure contextual level – no difference between what someone says and what they mean. In relation to semiotics, “his [Billy’s] inner self (the signified) is considered transparently readable from the beauty of his outer self (the signifier),” (2261). Billy’s character as innocent, simplistic, and otherwise “good” is translated through his physical appearance. However, Billy’s character as a sign loses its foundation when he accidentally strikes Claggart to death. Conversely, Claggart is, “presented as the very image of urbane, intellectualized, articulate evil,” (2259). To contrast Billy’s forthrightness, Claggart is duplicitous in relating to signifier vs. signified. As Johnson argues, Claggart’s dialogue in Melville’s text is littered with nuance and deceit – little sincerity comes from Claggart’s mouth. It is almost by nature that Billy and Claggart are set against each other, until their roles are seemingly flipped.

The climactic (and ultimately ironic) scene in Billy Budd directly undoes the allegorical narrative that Melville developed. As Johnson states, “Billy is sweet, innocent, and harmless, yet he kills. Claggart is evil, perverted, and mendacious, yet he dies a victim. Vere is sagacious and responsible, yet he allows a man whom he feels blameless to hang,” (2260). Billy is supposed to symbolically represent innocence by character, yet his action starkly contrasts this. At the same time, Claggart – an evil man – falls victim to an act of evil (murder). This is described by Johnson as a “chiasmus”, or otherwise in this case a reversal of character and sign: “reversing the relation between personifier and personified, positioning an opposition between good and evil only to make each term take on the properties of its opposite,” (2260). This discontinuity between “being” and “doing” is a result of this chiasmus. Furthermore, Vere is unable to see the inherent innocence in Billy to vindicate him following Claggart’s death. As Johnson notes, “in Vere’s courtroom reading, both these alternatives are irrelevant: ‘Budd’s intent or non-intent is nothing to the purpose’ (p. 389). What matters is not the cause but the consequences of the blow,” (2270). Considering he is the critical lens for the reader in Melville’s text, Vere’s refusal to judge based upon the “doing” creates the “good vs. evil” allegory problematic in logic. Ultimately, it’s hard to have much of a binary allegory when the good commit evil and the evil suffer from the cruelty of the good.

“For what is the use of asking, I ask, when we cannot even authoritatively decide whether a question asks or doesn’t ask?” (1371, deMan). This line in Paul deMan made me laugh out loud on the six train.

Let’s talk the semiotics of the New York subway and, later, delve into the semiotics of subway signs.

Perhaps the green bulb and railing are for New Yorkers what the Eiffel tower is to the Parisians; the subway steps, the tower’s elevator; the subway’s underground muffling of the city, the tower’s panoramic vista. You cannot escape the subway in New York, not really, unless you are in upstate New York, but that is obviously not the New York to which I am referring. This, you find that you already know because the word subway has already subjected you to picturing a geographical, topological location which may or may not include Staten Island. You can escape the Empire State Building, however, which is our, perhaps, immediate go-to equivalent to the Eiffel Tower that can be seen from everywhere in Paris. The metal grids, the vibration below your feet, the loud rumbling, and the homelessness stench all remind you of the subway through more senses than simply sight, which is the only sense Barthes mentions in discussing the Eiffel Tower’s dominion of the Parisian or tourist (12). Even when you are in the NYC subway system, you cannot visit it or “escape” it like you can the Eiffel tower; the subway does not have a defining interior or exterior. One can conceive of an inside or an outside, but the exits are not doors (for the most part); instead, there are just steps into the sunny or lamplit unknown. One need not push or pull anything. Therefore, like the Eiffel Tower, the subway system cannot have an interior or exterior since it does not have concrete borders between its innards and outers, but the New York subway becomes more difficult since it does not occupy a single location. The subway does not end. Where is the subway? Everywhere, and how can you be inside and away from  e  v  e  r  y  w  h  e  r  e? 

In comparison with Barthes’ ideas on the Eiffel Tower, the two, Eiffel Tower and NYC subway, do diverge a little: whereas the Eiffel Tower lacks any pragmatic usage at all, the subway map and system do not (5). Nonetheless, the intricate map of the subway system has become just as symbolic as the Eiffel Tower. One can buy posters, bags, mugs, and iPhone cases depicting the intricate labyrinth that is the subway system with all its glorious colors, numbers and letters. This souvenir would say just as much as if not more than the magnet of the Eiffel Tower on one’s fridge. “I was here” becomes “I made it;” The subway map is the clew to New York, which one must wield well to have visited and, moreover, to make it through the crowd and disorientation alive. One cannot visit New York without taking the subway just as one cannot visit Paris without climbing the Eiffel tower; however, in New York, the subway system supplies more than a visit, it allows an initiation.

Moreover, the subway offers a panoramic view of New York City just as the Eiffel Tower does for Paris without the need of a climb to the top of the Empire State Building, a worthy cultural endeavor nonetheless. While going over the bridge on the N, D, B, etc. train, the rider receives a sweeping view of the New York City skyline in motion. This panorama, however, does not offer a sense of dominion as the Empire State Building might and as Barthes explains the Eiffel tower succeeds in doing, but, rather, it is another, I think, initiatory experience that goes beyond being a part of something, which a simple promenade around the city offers (10). As a subway traveler overground, one is both experiencing being part of something as well as the view of what that something is. As a subway traveler underground, one can add that the occasional traffic noises or the racket of construction offers an auditory overview of what it means to hear a whole city without necessarily being within it or without.

The signs on the subway are even more intricate. While the words contained within the signs such as uptown, downtown, manhattan, queens, etc can be confined to the semiotics of purely language; there are other subtle indicators contained within these subway signs, which New Yorkers are probably too attuned to notice and because of which other foreigners may become confused. I was at the West Fourth street train station on my way to Uptown, Queens and wanted to catch the F, so I followed the sign that said “B D F M Uptown,” walked through a hallway, down the stairs, and arrived at another staircase above which was another sign that read:

“BDFM   AC Downtown
                      Brooklyn.“

It looked like this, only a little more confusing. Due to experience, I understood that Downtown, Brooklyn was a direction limited to the A and C trains by how far away the “BDFM” was from it. Others were not so fortunate. A man with an unfit leg walked down the hallway and stairs only to misread the sign and walk back up after telling his aggravated daughter that they were in the wrong place. I am not sure if every New Yorker is as sensitive to these subtleties, but I am sure a New Yorker would be quicker at grasping them.

Barbara Johnson has a very interesting analysis of the story Billy Budd. Johnson connects the characters to the type of readers they are. Billy who is innocent and harmless is describes as an illiterate because of the fact that he’s dumbfounded and that “language can be taken at face value”. Claggart on the other hand is complex, he’s intellectual but also seen as this evil guy. Lastly is Captain Vere who’s identity is connected to his books. Johnson describes him saying that, “Vere, then, is an honest, serious reader, seemingly well suited for the role of judge and witness that in the course of the story he will come to play.” Vere then is different form the other two characters because while the other two are represented by their actions, Vere is shaped by his reading. However Johnson does connect Billy and Claggart to reading as well and in a very interesting way.

The story is focused around good and evil and irony, however when one connects it with the type of reader the character is, there’s more to talk about. Billy is considered illiterate due to the fact that he doesn’t question appearance. He doesn’t seem to look more deeply into stuff, just accept it as it is. Whereas Claggart is complex, described as, “…the separation between being and doing…” However Claggart is perceived as evil. Where irony plays in is when Billy is the one to do harm.

Something that’s interesting that Johnson brought up is the whole idea of signified and signifier. She takes Billy as an example saying that, “…his inner self (the signified) is considered transparently readable from the beauty of his outer self (the signifier).” I think this is why she also considers Billy an illiterate because he’s exactly how he is. In language there’s a lot of complexity and thinking, not everything is as it seems and Billy is how he looks like. However irony comes into play and that’s when we could see the turning point of Billy as a character and as a reader. There’s now a difference between the signifier and the signified.

Johnson also questions a man’s nature vs his actions. Melville’s twist in his story where the good does something bad and the bad lives the fate, doesn’t really focus on good vs evil but more so on being vs doing. It questions society and what if a person is good by nature however his one action is evil. Johnson says that, “…Melville is preoccupied here is less the static opposition between evil and good than the dynamic opposition between a man’s “nature” and his “acts”…” Johnson shows that Melville’s work isn’t just about evil and good but the actions of a man. This then relates back to reading, where Vere is the only one who is how he seems, a judge while Claggart and Billy are changing and questioning for their actions.

In conclusion, a person’s action don’t just focus on good and evil on the outside but also within the person as well.

I thought y’all might enjoy reading the Yeats poem in full from de Man’s essay, so here it is.

In response to a few questions I’ve gotten via email, I wanted to clarify a couple of things:

1. Late is better than never: I can’t promise I will respond to late posts the way I would more punctual posts, but I will certainly give you something much better than a zero!  Don’t assume all is lost if you miss a deadline; turn something in!
2. Study questions: there are questions to guide your reading under STUDY QUESTIONS.  You are always free to answer one of these questions for your post.  Ezra’s most recent post does just that, and it turned out great.
3. You don’t have to answer all the study questions: you don’t have to address the questions at all, in fact.  And I don’t recommend taking on more than one at a time, unless you’ve found a way to mesh two questions into one argument in an innovative, clear way.