SAT Reading & Writing Practice Set - Billy Budd (Adapted)
When Billy Budd was “impressed” from the merchantman Rights-of-Man onto His Majesty’s ship
Bellipotent, most of the officers thought the navy had gained nothing more complicated than a
handsome foretopman with a ready smile. Billy’s physical grace and good nature won him quick favor
among the crew, who were not much given to analyzing character when a man could haul a line and
sing out cheerfully at the capstan. Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, bookish and self-contained, regarded
him with a more measured approval, seeing in the sailor’s open brow and childish trust a kind of natural
goodness that needed only firm discipline to serve the King well. But to John Claggart, the
master-at-arms whose duty it was to keep order below decks, Billy’s very innocence felt like an affront.
Where others saw an artless “Handsome Sailor” beloved by his shipmates, Claggart seemed to detect
some hidden threat to the fragile structure of obedience aboard a man-of-war that had not long ago
heard rumors of mutiny in other fleets. In the shadowed space between the gun decks and the captain’s
quarterdeck, the contrast between Billy’s unreflective decency and Claggart’s suspicious intelligence
began to gather the force of a story in which each man’s nature would test the other’s. (Melville, 1924)
The test came openly only after Claggart had tried subtler means of undermining Billy’s standing. He
sent messengers with hints that other men were grumbling against the officers and watched with
narrowed eyes when Billy’s naïve responses failed to produce any confirming sign of conspiracy. Finding
no dark corner in the sailor’s mind that he could point to as proof, Claggart at last went directly to
Captain Vere with the charge that Billy was the center of a mutinous plot. Vere, startled and incredulous,
warned the master-at-arms against bearing false witness but decided, in a spirit that mixed fairness
with a lawyer’s desire for formality, to summon Billy and Claggart together to his cabin. There, in the
small, enclosed space that had so often seen the captain reading quietly by lamplight, Claggart
repeated his accusation in the tone of a man merely doing his precise duty. Billy, confronted with words
that seemed to turn his very simplicity into evidence of cunning, felt his habitual impediment of speech
swell into a complete blockage. Under the strain of being asked to answer charges he knew to be false
yet could not refute in words, he lifted his arm and struck Claggart on the forehead with his fist. The
blow, delivered without a weapon and without intention to kill, felled the master-at-arms like an ox in
the slaughterhouse; when the surgeon was called, he declared that Claggart was dead. (Melville, 1924)
For Captain Vere, the silence that followed the surgeon’s pronouncement filled the cabin with a conflict
no article of war could neatly resolve. He saw as clearly as any man that Billy’s act sprang from shock
and inarticulate outrage, not from premeditated malice; more than once he called the dead man “struck
down by an angel of God.” Yet the memory of the recent mutinies on ships like the Nore and the Spithead
weighed heavily on him, as did the text of the Mutiny Act lying, in effect, alongside his own conscience.
To the officers he hastily gathered as a drumhead court, Vere argued not as Billy’s private friend but as
a guardian of the king’s law: in wartime, he said, the formal rule that striking a superior officer was a
hanging offense must hold, whatever their hearts might plead for in this particular case. The junior
officers, moved by Billy’s bewildered courtesy and his halting insistence that he had never dreamed of
mutiny, leaned instinctively toward leniency, proposing that the matter be referred to the admiral or that
Billy be held in confinement until higher judgment could be had. Vere, pacing the cramped cabin,
pressed them back from such evasions, reminding them that the crew would soon know that an officer
lay dead and that the spectacle of hesitation at the top might itself breed the very disorder the law was
written to avert. (Melville, 1924)
, By dawn the next day, the argument in the cabin had hardened into a verdict, and the ship’s company
was mustered to hear that Billy Budd was to hang at the mainyard before the sun rose much higher. The
sailors, who had known him as a willing hand and a voice in the forecastle songs, murmured in low
amazement, but discipline held; the night’s watch had seen Claggart’s body sewn in canvas and
dropped to the sea, and the presence of the marines along the gangways warned that no display of
feeling would be tolerated. Billy himself, confined in the after-chains, accepted the news with the same
literal, almost childlike obedience that had marked his service; whatever he could not understand in
the reasoning, he offered, instead of protest, a final blessing: “God bless Captain Vere!” At the moment
when the rope tightened, some of the men thought they saw his body hang for a heartbeat in perfect
stillness before the usual convulsion, as if the form that had been so easy in motion were briefly an
emblem rather than a corpse. Years afterward, sailors still sang a ballad about “Billy in the Darbies,”
and the name of Captain Vere went on provoking arguments among those who thought he had
sacrificed an innocent man to the idol of discipline and those who maintained that, in the close world
of a man-of-war under threat of mutiny, he had no other choice. (Melville, 1924)
(Adapted from the novella Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Billy Budd successfully exposes a mutiny and is promoted.
B. how Billy’s innocent nature collides with Claggart’s malice and Vere’s rigid sense of duty,
resulting in a legal judgment that pits the demands of martial law against sympathy and moral
intuition.
C. how Claggart reforms after learning to trust Billy.
D. how life on a merchant ship differs from life in the navy.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Captain Vere is presented chiefly as a character who
A. is indifferent to questions of law.
B. privately recognizes Billy’s moral innocence but believes that preserving naval order requires
enforcing a harsh, literal reading of the Articles of War.
C. eagerly seeks Billy’s death out of personal hatred.
D. encourages the officers to ignore the Mutiny Act.
3. The first paragraph’s description of the Bellipotent and its officers mainly serves to
A. show that the ship is poorly run.
B. set up the contrast between Billy’s “natural goodness,” Claggart’s suspicious scrutiny, and
Vere’s measured watchfulness, foreshadowing the moral conflict their interactions will create.
C. prove that mutiny has already broken out on board.
D. suggest that Billy dislikes his shipmates.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. how a false accusation and Billy’s inability to defend himself in words lead to a fatal blow,
forcing Vere and his officers to weigh strict law against the particulars of the case.
B. that Billy is secretly planning mutiny.
C. that Claggart is accidentally killed by falling rigging.
D. that Vere prefers to ignore all legal procedures.
When Billy Budd was “impressed” from the merchantman Rights-of-Man onto His Majesty’s ship
Bellipotent, most of the officers thought the navy had gained nothing more complicated than a
handsome foretopman with a ready smile. Billy’s physical grace and good nature won him quick favor
among the crew, who were not much given to analyzing character when a man could haul a line and
sing out cheerfully at the capstan. Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, bookish and self-contained, regarded
him with a more measured approval, seeing in the sailor’s open brow and childish trust a kind of natural
goodness that needed only firm discipline to serve the King well. But to John Claggart, the
master-at-arms whose duty it was to keep order below decks, Billy’s very innocence felt like an affront.
Where others saw an artless “Handsome Sailor” beloved by his shipmates, Claggart seemed to detect
some hidden threat to the fragile structure of obedience aboard a man-of-war that had not long ago
heard rumors of mutiny in other fleets. In the shadowed space between the gun decks and the captain’s
quarterdeck, the contrast between Billy’s unreflective decency and Claggart’s suspicious intelligence
began to gather the force of a story in which each man’s nature would test the other’s. (Melville, 1924)
The test came openly only after Claggart had tried subtler means of undermining Billy’s standing. He
sent messengers with hints that other men were grumbling against the officers and watched with
narrowed eyes when Billy’s naïve responses failed to produce any confirming sign of conspiracy. Finding
no dark corner in the sailor’s mind that he could point to as proof, Claggart at last went directly to
Captain Vere with the charge that Billy was the center of a mutinous plot. Vere, startled and incredulous,
warned the master-at-arms against bearing false witness but decided, in a spirit that mixed fairness
with a lawyer’s desire for formality, to summon Billy and Claggart together to his cabin. There, in the
small, enclosed space that had so often seen the captain reading quietly by lamplight, Claggart
repeated his accusation in the tone of a man merely doing his precise duty. Billy, confronted with words
that seemed to turn his very simplicity into evidence of cunning, felt his habitual impediment of speech
swell into a complete blockage. Under the strain of being asked to answer charges he knew to be false
yet could not refute in words, he lifted his arm and struck Claggart on the forehead with his fist. The
blow, delivered without a weapon and without intention to kill, felled the master-at-arms like an ox in
the slaughterhouse; when the surgeon was called, he declared that Claggart was dead. (Melville, 1924)
For Captain Vere, the silence that followed the surgeon’s pronouncement filled the cabin with a conflict
no article of war could neatly resolve. He saw as clearly as any man that Billy’s act sprang from shock
and inarticulate outrage, not from premeditated malice; more than once he called the dead man “struck
down by an angel of God.” Yet the memory of the recent mutinies on ships like the Nore and the Spithead
weighed heavily on him, as did the text of the Mutiny Act lying, in effect, alongside his own conscience.
To the officers he hastily gathered as a drumhead court, Vere argued not as Billy’s private friend but as
a guardian of the king’s law: in wartime, he said, the formal rule that striking a superior officer was a
hanging offense must hold, whatever their hearts might plead for in this particular case. The junior
officers, moved by Billy’s bewildered courtesy and his halting insistence that he had never dreamed of
mutiny, leaned instinctively toward leniency, proposing that the matter be referred to the admiral or that
Billy be held in confinement until higher judgment could be had. Vere, pacing the cramped cabin,
pressed them back from such evasions, reminding them that the crew would soon know that an officer
lay dead and that the spectacle of hesitation at the top might itself breed the very disorder the law was
written to avert. (Melville, 1924)
, By dawn the next day, the argument in the cabin had hardened into a verdict, and the ship’s company
was mustered to hear that Billy Budd was to hang at the mainyard before the sun rose much higher. The
sailors, who had known him as a willing hand and a voice in the forecastle songs, murmured in low
amazement, but discipline held; the night’s watch had seen Claggart’s body sewn in canvas and
dropped to the sea, and the presence of the marines along the gangways warned that no display of
feeling would be tolerated. Billy himself, confined in the after-chains, accepted the news with the same
literal, almost childlike obedience that had marked his service; whatever he could not understand in
the reasoning, he offered, instead of protest, a final blessing: “God bless Captain Vere!” At the moment
when the rope tightened, some of the men thought they saw his body hang for a heartbeat in perfect
stillness before the usual convulsion, as if the form that had been so easy in motion were briefly an
emblem rather than a corpse. Years afterward, sailors still sang a ballad about “Billy in the Darbies,”
and the name of Captain Vere went on provoking arguments among those who thought he had
sacrificed an innocent man to the idol of discipline and those who maintained that, in the close world
of a man-of-war under threat of mutiny, he had no other choice. (Melville, 1924)
(Adapted from the novella Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Billy Budd successfully exposes a mutiny and is promoted.
B. how Billy’s innocent nature collides with Claggart’s malice and Vere’s rigid sense of duty,
resulting in a legal judgment that pits the demands of martial law against sympathy and moral
intuition.
C. how Claggart reforms after learning to trust Billy.
D. how life on a merchant ship differs from life in the navy.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Captain Vere is presented chiefly as a character who
A. is indifferent to questions of law.
B. privately recognizes Billy’s moral innocence but believes that preserving naval order requires
enforcing a harsh, literal reading of the Articles of War.
C. eagerly seeks Billy’s death out of personal hatred.
D. encourages the officers to ignore the Mutiny Act.
3. The first paragraph’s description of the Bellipotent and its officers mainly serves to
A. show that the ship is poorly run.
B. set up the contrast between Billy’s “natural goodness,” Claggart’s suspicious scrutiny, and
Vere’s measured watchfulness, foreshadowing the moral conflict their interactions will create.
C. prove that mutiny has already broken out on board.
D. suggest that Billy dislikes his shipmates.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. how a false accusation and Billy’s inability to defend himself in words lead to a fatal blow,
forcing Vere and his officers to weigh strict law against the particulars of the case.
B. that Billy is secretly planning mutiny.
C. that Claggart is accidentally killed by falling rigging.
D. that Vere prefers to ignore all legal procedures.
