Typee is the first novel of Herman Melville which is written soon after his four-year service as a sailor with no known apprentice work. This study started with a question of whether Melville’s view in this novel is the same as those in his later novels. The question was triggered by two critics. Kingsley Widmer says Melville’s work after Moby Dick might reasonably be viewed as of a piece. He excludes the first five novels including Typee from what he says “a piece.” On the other hand Rosalie Feltenstein says with Melville in his mind that “great author is of one substance and often of one theme.” This study tries to prove Typee is the first main novel that has the same view as in Melville’s later novels. Typee seems to live in harmony. They have no struggle, no sorrow, no pain and even no court. So not a few critics say Typee is for “the defense of the Noble Savage and a eulogy of his happy life.” But an optimistic view on man is not the view of Melville’s because he “hates” the condition of human being. Typee is found to have a long “hereditary” history of war with other tribes. They are all war professionals. That Typee has a fatal defect is just like Melville entitles a serious defects to such perfect man as Billy in “Billy Budd.” Berryman says the main evil in Melville’s novels is caused by an extreme fear, “the chief enslaving force of mankind.” We find the extreme fear in the long history of the Islanders and in the reaction of one tribe to others. All the tribes of the Island are cannibals but only the Typee who has just peculiar ferocity is known as man-eaters because it is the typical “imputation of evil in man.” The fear is also shown when the escaping Tommo tries to dash the boat-hook at the pursuer Mow-Mow exerting all his strength. “He himself felt horror at the act he is about to commit.” There is the “interchangeability” of role between the native and Tommo. In “Benito Cereno” also, there is the “interchangeability” of role as the white and the black change atrocities and act the same.
Melville uses the same motives, symbols in Typee as he uses in his later novels. Those are the escape from a whale boat to pursue a certain ideal, to meet the primitive man in the Eden-like garden, symbols of shark and verde-antique, a circular movement, the repetition of the same role between two enemies, summary of the entire meaning of a work by an incident. With all these it might be safe to say Typee is the main, germinal work of Herman Melville. Typee is the main novel of Melville both in view and technique. Melville begins his ‘Quarrel with God’ in the very first novel.