ハーマン・メルヴィルのTypee：野蛮人の自由

Missionary and colonizing efforts in the South Pacific during the first half of the nineteenth century brought radical changes for the natives inhabiting the islands. Along with the supposedly humane improvements from Western influences, numerous negative effects occurred that weighed heavily on the Polynesians, especially those brought on by the missionaries. Spending time in the Marquesas, Tahiti, and the Sandwich Islands, Melville witnessed events that made him question the missionaries’ activities. In Typee there is a clearly defined incongruity between the civilized world of the missionaries and the “primitive” original mode of living that the Marquesan natives retain. The contrasts Melville draws between the primitive Typee and the converted Tahitian cultures illustrate his belief that the missionaries were driving the natives toward a cultural death through the removal of pagan practices and the introduction of the “civilized” Christian beliefs governing Euro-American society