Essay Questions

Is Melville endorsing or criticizing American/European efforts to introduce civilization to more primitive non-Christianized societies?

The longest-lasting element of Typee with which most who have never read it are familiar—if they are familiar at all—is that having to do with cannibalism. A routine description of the novel almost always implicates the cannibalistic aspects of the stay on the island by the sailors. “Cannibal” in one form or another recurs around fifty times. Despite this conceit that white society should fear primitive rituals, however, it is quite clear that the book was written at least in part to criticize colonialism in all its forms, whether nationalistic imperialism or individual missionary work. The author directly addresses the specter of “civilizing” native populations by asking the question if this intrusion serves to make them any happier. Rather than waiting for an answer, he provides it himself: “Let the once smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives, answer the question.”

At what moment does Melville subvert the standard trope of travel literature to which Typee belongs, that of the white visitor being superior to primitive indigenous cultures?

Again, it is the cannibalism aspect which immediately situates Tommo as superior to the natives and, since he is the narrator through whose eyes the reader sees everything, also implicates that reader as superior as well. This initial projection of American-European supremacy is eventually also cemented through comparisons in which the natives come off as lazy, lacking any ambitions to create lasting monuments to their own culture and, essentially, doomed to an inevitable early extinction. Over the course of the novel, however, Tommo’s superiority is called into question by himself. He finally reaches the point where he must admit that even with all the superior education of western civilization at his disposal, native society remains as incomprehensible as secret codes between Freemason. Tommo speaks for every narrator of this genre of travel literature when he is forced to conclude and confess that “I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing.”

In what way does the book reflect cannibalism from a civilized fear of primitive cultures back onto the civilization as a fear of their own insecurities?

Typee has long possessed the ability to shock some readers with Tommo’s seemingly inexplicable occasional defenses of the practice of cannibalism. After a justification that it is only done to slain enemies, Tommo goes on to write that while in agreement that practice “is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.” The justifications and defenses of cannibalism among the natives is itself subject to justification and defense as illustrated by Tommo’s awareness that his narrative will result in society back home will inevitably result in accusations of “admiring a people against whom so odious a crime is chargeable.” Such self-awareness and urge to justify ahead of the fact lies at the heart of how cannibalism is transformed from a fear of the Other into a fear of the Self. Essentially, Tommo is expecting to be accused of “going native,” a term commonly applied to civilized people living among more primitive cultures who reject the morality and cultural conventions of civilization to adopt a paganistic lifestyle. Since cannibalism is a ritualistic act universally considered taboo, it becomes a metaphor for civilization’s fears of everything else that alien cultures reject.