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Typee

Herman Melville

Summary

Originally published in Britain under the title Narrative of a Four Months Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands and therefore posing as non-fiction, Typee was Melville’s first novel. This version was published in 1846, five years before Moby Dick , and was the most popular of the author’s works during his lifetime. The book fell under the censor’s knife due to its satire of certain sensitive issues about imperialism and other matters when Harpers published it in New York soon afterwards. There is some considerable element of autobiography in the sense that, like Typee’s hero Tommo, Melville himself jumped from a ship in Marquesas: a whaling vessel no less. However, like Lavengro or the certain of the works of Defoe, the story acts as a symbolic analysis of innocence and the questions that surround it. The tale itself sees Tommo and his friend Toby attempt to find the ‘Happy Valley’ that is referred to in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas which is itself a symbol or allegorical portrait of an innocent world. Tommo and Toby find themselves in the land of cannibals (the Typees) who live out their existences without want but have little respect for life itself. Omoo is Melville’s second novel and is the sequel to Typee and follows its themes in a pseudo-historical romance setting. It was published in 1847.

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