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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page paper which evaluates, describes and responds to the text and its depiction of the culture of the South Sea Islands. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGtypee.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
sea, where adventures were aplenty and exotic lands awaited. At least this was the allure of Melvilles first novel, Typee, which was written in 1846. Its premise was
simple: Tom and Toby, Tom (or Tommo) and Toby, two young sailor friends on the whaling vessel Dolly, escaped their brutal treatment aboard ship by making a daring escape in
Nukuheva, one of the South Sea Marquesas Islands, despite the awareness these islands were inhabited by cannibals. They were taken captive by the fierce Typee tribe of cannibals, whose
king Mehevi ensured much to their surprise that the captives were well taken care of. Tom, who had contracted some type of disease due to the whalers unsanitary conditions
that had settled in his leg, was well cared for by Kory-Kory, his attentive servant. He was eventually taken to the house of Kory-Korys mother Tinor to convalesce.
He also spent idyllic days canoeing with a beautiful young girl named Fayaway. Tom observed what appeared to be a very happy and orderly existence. Eventually, Toby escaped
to find medical aid for Tom, who was never out of Kory-Korys sight. The rest of the story involved Toms observations of the lives and social customs of the
Marquesas people. The story itself is not just an example of Herman Melvilles fertile imagination. Apparently, it is based on one of the authors real-life experiences of jumping
ship and finding himself in a place known as Taipivai, which Melville simply changed to the "valley of the Typee" (Evans 195). The problems with this kind of fictional
travelogue is that the lines become fiction and reality can easily become blurred as cultural anthropologists like James Clifford have frequently pointed out. Ethnographers have been studying the validity of
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