South
Pacific/Prof.
TYPEE STUDY/REVIEW SHEET
Dear
students: ponder the sequence of review questions below. Tip: if you follow the sequence below, you
could perhaps get a topic and sequence of ideas/stages of analysis for your
paper.
Concentrate
on what I said in class about the oddity of the beginning and end of the
narrative (the dedication to Mr. Law/authority, Melville’s father-in-law judge;
and the Appendix about an iron-handed ship commander, an “idol,” whom the crew
adores!) and the narrative itself which is about (once Tommo gets over his
paranoia) pleasure. Tommo at one point
even quotes Rousseau about the delights of a “healthy, physical existence”
(find the passage and I’ll give you a book prize!).
Why does
Tommo flee?
--how is
Captain Vangs described?
--is
Tommo’s body, as it were, happy aboard ship?
--is there
law on ship?
What are
some of the virtues of the Typees, according to Tommo?
--property?
--neurosis?
--what is
their morality based on?
--are they
into progress?
What are
some of the negative features?
--do they
understand their own past? Or culture?
--is there
individualism?
--is taboo/tattooing
a choice?
--Kory-Kory
in jail passage
You know
your culture’s laws (they are written down somewhere); how do the Typees know
their laws?
--does
Tommo think the Typees have (rational) laws?
--when does
Tommo get a headache?
If basic
story is: flee tyranny, only to discover a different tyranny, what is the point
of the Appendix?
SUMMARY
OF NON-WRITTEN NATIVE LAW
Typee “common-sense law” = law of the heart: precepts graven on
every breast
complex taboo law =too complex for Tommo so
he dismisses it/mocks it as superstition, etc.
complex taboo law =gothic paranoia, because
cannibal rites part of taboo system
=he always gets a
headache when he thinks about native law
=Tommo almost has an anthropological desire to know the
“other”, but perhaps what he fears is that native/taboo law will turn out to be
wall-to-wall law. We in the “west” can
obey or disobey the law; but Kory-Kory almost instinctively follows the dictums
of his culture. He is, as a student said
in class, “imprisoned by his own culture”—but does not know it!
(P.S. law exists in several forms: internalized authority (guilt);
written law/statute books; police authority; ritualized, non-written law. You feel guilty if you don’t stop at the stop
sign; Florida state law says you must stop at the stop sign; you’ll be issued a
traffic ticket if you don’t stop; you don’t get into the canoe if you are a
woman because you don’t get into a canoe if you are a woman…
ritual/dogma/truths that don’t require explanation or justification.)