num_pages: 306
description: If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. "Billy Budd, Sailor," his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his "quarrel with God." It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. Melville also explores this theme in "Bartelby the Scrivener," his famous story about a Wall Street law clerk who takes passive resistance to a comic—and ultimately disastrous—extreme; and in "Benito Cereno," his dazzling account of oppression and rebellion on a nineteenth-century slave ship. Completing this collection of great tales are the eerie "The Encantados," the beautiful, romantic "The Piazza," and Melville's chilling science fiction parable, "The Bell-Tower."From the Paperback edition.
language: English
title: Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories
titlecomplete: Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories
genres: Classics, American, United States, Short Stories, The United States Of America, Short Story Collection, School, Literature, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 364
publisher: Bantam Classics