Typee

As I go through some of the classics that are in literature anthologies I read, I see many photographs of well-known authors and poets. my tendency has been to see these wel-known authors as rather stuffy and old-fashioned.

But when I read their writings, I find these writers are contemporary and filled with a modern-day awareness of life. Their facial expressions and dress may be somber, and they may seem so serious and old-fashioned, but once I start reading their words, these authors  turn out to be real people with a great sense of humor. They don’t nearly take themselves so seriously as their photographs portray. And, so, as I read their words, these authors aren't old-fashioned any more, and I hold these authors and their consciousness very dear. I believe that books have been my great teachers.

For the first time I read an excerpt from Typee by Herman Melville. Typee is a novel about a native tribe in the South Seas. It’s told in the first person by a Westerner who was marooned on a Polynesian island.[All quotations are taken from Adventures in American Literature Pegasus Edition, Harcourt, Brace Jovanvich, Publishers.]

The main character tells us:

"The term ‘savage’ is, I conceive, often misapplied, and, indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of overy kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity…