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Abstract
In this novel, Herman Melville has proved to be an explorer of the realms of darkness within the human psyche rather than some geographical places. It is a sea journey to the valley of Typee which lies in the Pacific Ocean. Here he lived among the cannibals. Melville's Typee is like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) who takes the adventures of a man in real life as a core of his novel, and that man is Melville himself. He jumped from his ship and joined the people of the valley of Typee, so "Typee is a true narrative of events which actually occurred to him." However, it soon turned out to be a symbol of cultural differences and conflicts which flourished during the nineteenth century. Melville set the sea as if he tried to isolate himself and forget about the life he was leading, finding in the sea an outlet for his troubled psyche and depressed soul. Melville discovered that the world was full of evil concealed beneath a thin veil of innocence. He came across the fact that civilization was the main source of evils. Hence, Melville decided to retreat from "civilization" and go back to the primitive life looking for the lost paradise. Like the hero's quest in the medieval romance for an innocent and unpolluted Garden of Eden, he could not cope with humanity as D.H. Lawrence argues: Melville is like a Viking going home to the sea, encumbered with age and memories, and a sort of accomplished despair, almost madness. For he cannot accept humanity. He cannot belong to humanity.
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