Summary Of Herman Melville's Novel Typee

Herman Melville’s novel Typee analyzes the ways in which human bodies have become written and overwritten with racial meaning. The narrator, Tom, condemns the European world, desiring freedom from the oppressive ship he belongs to. He wants to enter the abundant Polynesian land but his connection of the European world remains. Despite how Tom speaks crudely of the “dark-skinned Hawaiians and the woolly-heeded Feejees” (pg 217), we can see his diminishing anxiety about racial contact and understanding of his own position as a European American in the mid nineteenth century. Tom is compassionate towards the Typee way of life, comparing cannibalism to the atrocities perpetuated by Europe, but condemns them once he is faced with a potential threat to his own skin. Fredrick Douglas would find the mark of a tattoo most compelling in the novel since skin color was the primary mark of slave status in society. When forcibly applied, a tattoo is an indication of status and ownership and has served as a badge of slavery in many societies. Slavery was a loss of identity, tattoo or not.
Although Tom regards this as a mask of religious identity (pg. 256), he fears racial, not theological conversion. No longer would he have the face that would allow him to live freely in both American and European society. He begs the
tattoo artist to take his arm, but to leave his face untouched (pg. 260). Granted Tom relished the privileged paradise, the prospect of having his white skin marked by ink would permanently take away his freedom.

Discover

By reading Herman Melville and Fredrick Douglas jointly, we are bound to think about the social space both men shared.
Although there was never any explicit reference by one another, there is much evidence that Melville and Douglas influenced each other. In 1845, Douglass was delivering antislavery lectures, and passages from his Narrative were being reprinted in the Evening Journal at the same time that Melville was writing Typee (Kane). Also in 1848 Douglass reprinted a passage from Melville’s Typee, titled “Tattooing,” in his newspaper the North Star (Kane). This reprinting may have led him to ask after Douglass and conceivably seek out his
autobiography.

Kane, Brian. "INTRODUCTION." Journal of Music Theory 54.1, CAVELL'S "MUSIC DISCOMPOSED" AT 40 (2010): 1-4. Web.

Imagine
1. Tommo does express sympathy for the “savages,” while criticizing the missionaries’ attempts to civilize them. On the other hand, he eventually forgets the Typees kindness and condemns their ‘true’ culinary behavior. He is faced with a marking and is terrified of being absorbed into native society. Is the tattoo a mark of transgression for Tommo or is it something else? What is the importance of tattooing in the Typee society?
2. Does Typee reinforce or challenge racist assessments of Pacific culture?