A Purgatory Journey In Pursuit Of Paradise

Typee is the apprentice work of Melville's literary career, and it is attracting more and more attention from the critical world. Typee, a work of combination of romance, imagination, and research, brings readers the Polynesian world of savages that is totally different from the civilized society where Melville lives. In such a different society, Melville has very serious meditation on colonization and civilization. Melville's agonizing childhood and disappointing manhood experience in the modern American society and the drudgery on the whaling ship make him hopeless and helpless, so he wants a way out to find hope. Melville says "To scale great heights, we must come out of the lowest depths. The way to heaven is through hell. We need fiery baptism in the fierce flames of our bosoms."Having escaped from his homeland, Melville begins his spiritual journey in pursuit of paradise, but he who comes to Typee with hope has to escape from there with disappointment. Perhaps Typee is a paradise, but definitely not HIS paradise. In Typee, Melville falls into an awkward position: the Typees are both angels and demons; he loves this Eden-like place, but he can not accept it; he criticizes the colonization of western countries, but he unconsciously becomes a colonizer. So he is dangling between savagery and civilization, colonization and anti-colonization. His national identity and his social background corner him. He is lost in dilemma. This paper tries to evoke people's attention on colonization and anti-colonization, civilization and savagery, and expound the necessity and rationality of the coexistence of various forms of civilization.