Typee

Typee is Herman Melville’s first book, recounting his experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands in 1842, and becoming a captive of a cannibal island tribe. It was an immediate success in America and England, and was Melville’s most popular work during his lifetime. It was not until the end of the 1930’s that it was surpassed in popularity by Moby Dick, more than thirty years after his death. The story provoked harsh criticism for its condemnation of missionary efforts in the Pacific Islands. Many sought to discredit the book, claiming that it was a work of fiction, but this criticism ended when the events it described were corroborated by Melville’s fellow castaway, Richard T. Greene, who appears in the story as the character Toby

e44">[pg 44]the sun that had bleached them to a dazzling whiteness. The vale was more than three leagues in length, and about a mile across at its greatest width.

On either side it appeared hemmed in by steep and green acclivities, which, uniting near the spot where I lay, formed an abrupt and semi-circular termination of grassy cliffs and precipices hundreds of feet in height, over which flowed numberless small cascades. But the crowning beauty of the prospect was its universal verdure; and in this indeed consists, I believe, the peculiar charm of every Polynesian landscape. Everywhere below me, from the base of the precipice upon whose very verge I had been unconsciously reposing, the surface of the vale presented a mass of foliage, spread with such rich profusion that it was impossible to determine of what description of trees it consisted.

But perhaps there was nothing about the scenery I beheld more impressive than those silent cascades, whose slender threads of water, after leaping down the steep cliffs, were lost amidst the rich herbage of the valley.

Over all the landscape there reigned the most hushed repose, which I almost feared to break, lest, like the enchanted gardens in the fairy tale, a single syllable might dissolve the spell. For a long time, forgetful alike of my own situation, and the vicinity of my still slumbering companion, I remained gazing around me, hardly able to comprehend by what means I had thus suddenly been made a spectator of such a scene.

[pg 45]

As a young sailor, Herman Melville abandoned his ship in the Marquesas and lived for awhile among natives who had a reputation for being fierce warriors and cannibals. This book, Melville's first, is a fictionalized retelling of that experience. It was an instant success and gained it author much fa

Revision 16/2/16: I found a subversive quote and made stylistic edits.

Typee is a fascinating and surprising account of South Sea islander life in the mid-nineteenth century.

The story starts as an adventure tale with young sailors Tommo and Toby jumping ship as the whaler Dolly replenishes her suppli

This is the story Herman Melville was meant to tell. I hated Billy Budd; I liked Moby Dick a lot; I loved Typee.

Not coincidentally, Melville wrote this before he had met Nathaniel Hawthorne; and everything else he ever wrote after. I think Hawthorne ruined Melville as a writer.

This book feels real.

Don't read this book if you want to lie around and dream of coconuts and natives and bare-breasted maidens. Unlike those after him (like London, Twain, and Stevenson), Melville plays with the instability of western illusions about foreign places and people. You'll have to read this between the lines