"Typee" by Herman Melville

The "Civil" and The "Savage"
Herman Melville in his book Typee gives the "civilized" world a peek at the "uncivilized" world in the Nukuhiva valley. Through his speaker Tommo's experiences in the valley Melville shows the "civilized" world what it would be like to live in harmony with nature. He thinks that the people who live close to the nature are much happier, healthier and are free from most of the miseries that the people of the "civilized" world go through. He says, "In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve; - the heart burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissensions and the thousand self- inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people" (124-25).…