Typee - A Romance of the South Sea

by Herman Melville

Overview

More than an impressive travelogue or discerning psychological perspective, this novel is also a chronicle of two friends who jump ship expecting to find paradise on the Marquesas Islands of the Pacific. They find, instead, a group of cannibals. When Tom (he comes to be known as "Tommo" to the Typees) and his friend Toby discover the natives are cannibals, they are continuously wary of their status in this alien society. Tommo's careful observations tell him that the Typees are generous with one another; they do not cheat nor steal; no part of their community is left starving or indigent because of debt or poverty. He begins to understand, with the help of his "serving-man" Kory-Kory that, as long as he remains in their company, his life-style will consist of a relative peacefulness. Tommo reflects on the dubious cross-cultural account of the inhabitants as heathen savages and believes that such a description was given by missionaries and merchantmen who failed to realize the quality of the native customs. Tommo describes in detail their food, dress, behavior, physiology, musical instruments, warfare, architecture, and religious habits. It is a captivating study of pre-industrial culture while also offering the genuine suspense and excitement of an adventure story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595473998
Publisher:	NuVision Publications
Publication date:	01/28/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	580 KB

About the Author

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Date of Birth:

August 1, 1819

Date of Death:

September 28, 1891

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended the Albany Academy in Albany, New York, until age 15