Herman Melvilleās Typee (1846) is a narrative I have been wanting to read, and this project has re-kindled the aspiration. I picked the book up years ago, as it stuck out as a total mystery, the mystery itself has continued to cloud my mind by its riddles all throughout this not-so-read project, but I hope to arrive to some revelation by tying in a handful of specific words. Using Wordl and Voyant tools, I have arrived at even more complexities, leaving me more perplexed than I had begun. There are just so many words that contrast each other that orchestrate a symphony of nature through the senses. Through excavating the contents of the story, I have come to the conclusion that the sea-faring adventurous narrative Typee may very well contain such a simple theme of life through procreation and demise.
The word āsideā frequents almost twice that as āfruitā (at 89), but the most noteworthy stems are the words āresident,ā āresidents,ā and āpresident,ā all of which appears only once. āCompanionā makes an appearance 55 times; āappearanceā manifests 49 times, while ādisappearanceā crops up in 8 instances. The most incredulous word that begged my attention was āoperationā which had appeared 38 times.
The most specific words are the odd words that manifest on the page, screaming for attention: fruit, side, companions, operation, and appearance. The interesting thing about āfruitā is not only that it appears 41 times in the text, but its antonym, āfruitless,ā appears only once. Ā Fruit can be symbolic for reproduction, but it can also symbolize a new beginning, while āfruitlessā counteracts in fruitionāa meaning to an end. Life begins on a track that leads up to a great finale.
The term ācompanionā is obviously an essential counterpart for procreation, but a companion can likewise drag one to its end. There is a balancer in relationsāwhether it be intimacy or mere friendshipāthat can sway oneās journey to life or death. Friendships born, fade, and die. āCompanionā can also be seen as a conjoined unity of a body of people to form one single society, which cultivates into a civilization. And a civilization needs an authoritative figure, say āpresidentā in order to instill law and order. The president can also be seen as one ruling body, or spiritually one God, who reigns over all āresidentsā: those who exist under the laws of nature. Even though presidents are elected, a divine figure requires a collective community that agrees to worship the entity.
āAppearanceā is the one differentiating factor that physically separates and individualizes each part of a communityāthe people withināto ensure that a true, and not synthetically identical, civilization exists. āAppearanceā can also play a part in constructionāwhether that be of a civilization, or a storyāand its contrast ādisappearanceā which breaks apart civilization and the contexts of stories into fine, minute particles. āDisappearanceā can also symbolize death, which is the destination of life from which āappearanceā is born. Or new technologies come and fade, as newer inventions come to dominate older means. Basically, there is a sort of naked revelation when one civilization encounters another civilization, when the contents (ideas/values/technologies/moralities) are laid bare, from which the contents are manipulated in some way (either through war, delegation, or trade) by which older trends die out with the instillation of newer (whether that be innovative or interwoven) ideologies are converged--or structured--into one agreeable unit.
All of these intricacies are part of a whole, symbiotic āoperationā on the sustenance of life, the growth of a society, the age of a civilization, leading to a great cultural demise, and the rebirth of a new community from the ashes of an older civilization. It is the heart about which the civilized world--humanity--evolves through the progression of existence. It may be of the great scheme of fate, where beginnings lead to new ends, from which newer beginnings blossom in an endless chaināthe only evidences lay in the artifacts left behind. But the artifacts are trivial in relation with Typee, as the evidences of ages past truly exist through ancestry, and the descendants of ancestors who are part of age-old bloodlines, containing the beliefs and values about which particular societies are based. The protagonist may come to the savages as a complete stranger, but the interaction between people of separate cultures could very well be the birth of a new aspect of civilization, while the demise of particular customs or beliefs.Ā
I have never read any of Melville's works (shame on me), but this story may very well mark my first step toward reading his works. I just see a lot that can be drawn and analyzed from Typee that could easily transcends these preconceptions. I could not find myself investing the time appropriate to delve into the pages of the text, as it would make for a great stand-alone summer reading.