Herman Melville and the Paradox of Technology

When Herman Melville’s book, Typee, was published in 1846, American society was on the brink of great technological progress and change with regards to American culture. On the one hand, technology in the 1800s brought American society into a new world of advancement and improvement, and technological change created new benefits for Americans such as more ways of communicating with each other with the telegraph, different methods of transportation such as the railroad, and more efficient ways of doing work. Thus, technology brought a better way of life for the future. But, on the other hand, modern technology, even if it was originally intended to be used towards the ends of justice, equality, and the improvement of the human condition, has overcommitted Americans to the technological utopian vision of the future without regards to the savagery, poverty, and poor conditions of Americans in the 1840s or today in 2013.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau notes that “so with a hundred ‘modern improvement,’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance” (Thoreau 41). In other words, people reading authors like Thoreau or Melville in the 1800s up to today must understand that modern technology creates a mirage in American society where it is so easy to become caught up in achieving technological progress that people forget that technologies do have miserable consequences for the human condition in the present. Americans can become so focused on investing in technologies that embody and promote the values of the American Dream (such as hard work, laboring all day, and material abundance) that they have enslaved themselves within the capitalist system, a system ironically and originally intended to make men free as noted by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations and in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. When analyzing Typee, it is interesting to point out how modern technology (or the lack of it) has embodied and influenced the definition of an important American cultural value, which is freedom. Similar to Thoreau’s views of technology (even though Melville does not mention the word “technology” in the novel), Melville arrived at a similar conclusion when he compared how a Typee man is able to do the same work as a European man, but it is the Typee man, without modern technology, who lives the better life because he is stress-free from his labors and still provide for his people by picking the finer fruits “from the branches of every tree” (Melville 112).  In writing Typee, Herman Melville did not necessarily view technological change and progress as a negative change for American culture in the 1800s and in the future. However, the misery and enslaving aspects of modern technology in 19^th century America were what worried Melville in writing Typee  because technological progress, capitalistic values, and Christianity values enslaved the natives on the Sandwich Islands, and these American values were quickly spreading to the islands of Nuku Hiva; but more important, Melville, in writing this book, pointed towards a crumbling, lost future of American society (a vision that readers of this book in the 19^th century and in the 21^st century alike find troubling): unless Americans can hold onto the romantic, cultural values of freedom, equality, and justice and ease the burden of industrialization and technology, Americans in the 1840s were (and Americans today are) wasting their times with the pursuit of technological progress because technology is the ultimate destruction of simplicity and humanity (thesis statement).

How can technology promote the value of freedom and positive advancement yet at the same time enslave the users of that technology? This perplexing question is one that most people cannot answer today, and thus, many of Melville’s readers in the 1840s probably found Melville’s harsh outlook on technology, more specifically on civilization, troubling, especially when Melville noted in Typee that “in a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve…” (Melville 124). This statement from Melville in Typee is significant because it presented a challenge to the American way of living at the time the book was written and showed how people in highly-civilized cultures could both be free to do what they want but enslaved by the work they did because of the aid of the machine.

To help readers in the 19^th century and in the 21^st century understand this contradiction between technology and civilization and the contradiction between slavery and freedom that Melville wrote about in the 1800s, it is significant to look back at the patterns that arose in the Americas before Melville’s time. In the mid-1600s, on the one hand, the rise of the sugar industry in the Caribbean spurred economic growth for colonial European powers, but on the other hand, the sugar plantations enslaved the natives of the area. Ironically, a pattern developed where the slave labor of natives actually helped pave the way for freedom in the Caribbean and in the surrounding area in the 1700s and 1800s. For example, Toussant L’Overture led the unfree, enslaved Haitians of Saint Domingue in the Haitian Revolution to break free in 1804 from the bondage of Napoleon, the French, and from the grappling chains of industrial technology by holding onto the romantic ideals and cultural values of the French Revolution. Similarly, in 1776, slave labor on cotton plantations in the American colonies resulted in the freedom from Britain. However, when the Americans became free from British authority, the people of the United States ironically became so enslaved to the capitalist system that “most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them” (Thoreau 3). Just like Melville in writing Typee, Thoreau, through first-hand experience of freeing himself from the burdens of modern life, was a harsh critic on technology and industrialization’s promises for a better, more eloquent life. Were the natives of the Marquesas islands lazy and uncivilized because they slept in and sat around all day, or were they better off because at the end of the day, they were the ones who were able to pick the fruit from the breadfruit trees without the constant toils of industrial technology? Whether his readers in the 1840s agreed or disagreed with Melville, the simple, independent man, according to Melville, is the one truly free.

Thus, when the sugar plantations reached the Sandwich Islands around the time of Captain James Cook’s voyages in 1761, the paradoxes of slavery and freedom and of technology and civilization become even clearer. Captain Cook and his ship crew did not have any intent on enslaving the natives or converting them to Christianity, but “no matter how well-meaning, the eighteenth-century mariners inevitably introduced dangerous new diseases, animals, weapons, and missionaries that cascaded into rapid environmental and cultural changes that troubled the Polynesians” (Taylor 469). Alan Taylor’s writings about the Sandwich Islands is crucial to consider because Cook was warmly welcomed onto the Sandwich Islands by the friendly, “civilized”  natives, but at the same time, Cook’s death in 1779 at the hands of the natives themselves illustrates sufficient evidence of how industrialized cultures can turn the free into the enslaved through capitalistic enterprises like sugar plantations, difficult labor, and Christianity, and these cultures can turn the civilized into savages through modern technology. Just like how Captain Cook witnessed the unintended consequences of technological progress of exploring unchartered territory (consequences which resulted in the destruction of native culture), Melville, in writing Typee, expressed concerns of how quickly slave labor, industrialization, capitalistic values, and religious values could potentially be projected onto the Marquesas Islands.

After James Cook’s discovery of the Sandwich Islands, missionaries like Peter and Fanny Gulick came over in the 1830s to try to “Christianize” the natives and to prevent them from becoming powerless and from becoming influenced by the evils of capitalism and earthly salvation; however, “by cultural as well as commercial imperative, the missions were economic as well as religious institutions” (Taylor 464). What Taylor is saying here is important to consider because missionaries unintentionally became involved in the sugar industry and thus involved in the natives’ slave work of the sugar plantations because hard work and intensive labor, by its very nature, was and still is a deep American cultural value. So, missionaries viewed industrialization of the Sandwich Islands as a way to save the natives from their cannibalistic culture. But, in reality, Christianity brought about disease (small pox) and industrial technology that killed off the native population and that increased human misery not only for the natives but also for civilized societies.

As a result of the human misery caused by Christianity’s involvement in the sugar industry, Melville worried that bringing industry, capitalism, Christianity, and other American cultural values to the natives on the islands of Nuku Hiva would diminish the romanticism of native values (especially religious values), values that were necessary for these people to hold onto in order to live happily. This is why Melville was so interested in discussing Typee religion in the book because the Typee people did not have to take part in the drudgery of industrialization and the enslaving control of Christianity: “Better will it be for them forever to remain the happy and innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than, like the wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, to enjoy the mere name of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true religion, whilst, at the same time, they are made the victims of the worst vices and evils of civilized life” (Melville 181-182). Thus, it is intriguing to mention what Alan Taylor wrote in American Colonies when he argued that  James Cook seemed to think that “the Pacific Islanders seemed to possess a worthy simplicity that Europeans had lost” (Taylor 468). Similarly, Melville was deeply concerned with the potential negative influence of American cultural beliefs and values on the simple lives of the Pacific natives on the one hand. But on the other hand, it is true that “the fiend-like skill we [Americans] display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth” (Melville 125). This observation from Melville of white civilization in relation to the “noble savage” is an interesting point to consider because it can be argued that Melville’s Typee is an indirect greater warning to Americans about what cultural values and beliefs they have lost and will continue to lose because of the development of modern technology.

Therefore, Melville wanted to change American society with the book, Typee, by challenging his readers to think uncommonly in the 1800s to look at how a group of natives without modern technology can live richly with less.  Historian William Cronon wrote in Changes in the Land that on arrival to the East Coast of the United States in the 1700s (before Melville’s lifetime), “many European visitors were struck by what seemed to them the poverty of Indians [Native Americans] who lived in the midst of a landscape endowed so astonishingly with abundance” (Cronon 33). How can Cronon argue that poverty is equivalent to wealth? After reading Melville’s Typee, it can be argued that the values of capitalism created earthly material wealth for Americans in the 1840s, but at the same time, this capitalist system that Americans were trapped in had eroded the romanticism of not only the natural environment, but also, it had destroyed natives’ romantic values of living comfortably with one another without modern technology.

An important example in American history that illustrates this irony between capitalism and romanticism as related to Typee is the American whaling industry (around 1812-1861) that dominated most of Melville’s lifetime. The American whaling ship industry was significant because its global dominance was the result of Captain Cook’s scientific and technological voyages to the Pacific. Not only did the American whaling industry make the United States significant on a global level, but also, it was during this time period that this industry became a global economic powerhouse as whaling was one of the first capitalistic systems that joint-stock companies could invest money in overseas. As a capitalist system, whaling ships that voyaged to the Pacific helped spread capitalist values to the Polynesian landscape and way of life. Plus, the act of killing a whale and bringing it to market in the 1800s was rather romantic (yet a mystery) as described by Herman Melville in Moby Dick: “If then, Sir Williams Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can” (Melville Moby Dick 407). Melville’s description of killing the whale in Moby Dick is romanticized and beautiful on the one hand, but on the other hand, it represents mysteriousness, the overreliance on the capitalist market system, the evils of material wealth, and reliance on industrial technology. Just like Melville in writing Moby Dick and Thoreau in writing Walden in the 1800s, Melville wrote Typee to help the average reader in the 1840s understand that one must look to nature and beyond the natural environment to find oneself and to search for the multiple truths of the world (just like Tommo did on the islands of Nuku Hiva) because market, technological progress, and capitalism undermine the truths about who people really are and will eventually worsen the natural world. Thus, the historical context of the American whaling industry helps Melville’s readers to understand Melville’s prediction that capitalist wealth would destroy the naturalness of American culture. The whaling industry gives Melville’s readers some perspective on the dangers of capitalism influencing American life when he said that “there were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts of honor in Typee… or to sum all in one word – no Money! That ‘root of all evil’ was not to be found in the valley” (Melville 126). Therefore, because the Typees were uninfluenced by capitalist values of material wealth and slave labor, the Typees were freer than the civilized whites in the 1840s. Instead of constantly working for the advancement of the future, the Typees were able to live comfortably in the present with few troubles, problems, and issues. In other words, Melville tried to show his readers through his novel that capitalistic values are based on earthly salvation. To truly be saved, one must find a meaningful life and rooted cultural values in pure nature and beyond. Thus, capitalism and romanticism were and still are two American ideas that are troubling to Melville’s readers.

Therefore, Melville had an interesting message for his readers when he wrote in Typee, “how often is the term ‘savages’ incorrectly applied! None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travelers… That in all the cases of outrages committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders is mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples” (Melville 27). This passage from Typee is the most revealing passage that Melville offers to explain how modern technology influences cultural values and beliefs. The Polynesians in the Pacific were not really savages because Europeans did not see them the way they actually were. Instead, the science, the technology, and the cultural values of Western Civilization brought over to the Pacific Islands were forced and projected onto the natives, creating the discourse of savagery and barbarianism among the natives. Here, it is crucial to briefly mention the influence Captain David Porter’s Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean had on Melville’s research for Typee because unlike the common, misinterpreted views of Western Civilization on native life, both men on their trips to the Marquesas Islands did not see cannibalism or savagery of the native tribes, but rather, they witnessed friendliness, simplicity, and beauty in the respective tribes they visited. For example, Porter wrote in his journal that “this delicacy in concealing the wounded body of an enemy, and their caution in avoiding the touch of the blood or the dead carcasses, greatly staggered my belief of their being cannibals” (Porter 47). This quote from David Porter’s Journal illustrates the misunderstandings of what savagery and civilization really are, and it illuminates the savage, barbarian side of Western civilization that often was overlooked in the 1800s. Thus, when writing this book, Melville was not as much worried about the survival of the Typees, who did not have the material luxury of modern technology; however, he expressed greater concerns of the destruction of American cultural values because of the invisible, overlooked aspects of American savagery, an idea that troubled Melville’s readers because of America’s incredible potential for technological progress at the time.

Through Typee, Melville wanted to really make sense of the ambiguous relationship between capitalism and romanticism and the relationship between poverty and abundance that troubled his readers in the 1800s. For example, Melville writes that “I was fain to confess that the Polynesian savage, surrounded by all the luxurious provisions of nature, enjoyed an infinitely happier, though certainly a less intellectual existence, than the self-complacent European” (Melville 124). This passage is interesting to take note of because most who read this novel in the 1800s probably thought technology, industrialization, and material goods brought happiness (a selfish way of thinking brought about by capitalism), but Melville realized that happiness is the result of living with less and by easing one’s burdens and troubles in life. Thus, Melville outlined two views of wealth in opposition to each other. Before people started reading Typee in the 1840s, the way Europeans viewed Native Americans in Northeastern America in the 1700s illustrates these two views of wealth that Cronon wrote about in Changes in the Land.  Melville, in writing the book, thought that unless Americans could become consciously aware of the natives and the way they actually were without transferring cultural values and beliefs onto the natives’ landscape and way of life, then Americans would never be able to learn how to live richly in poverty. But rather, they would live for technological progress despite problems of poverty unresolved in the present.

Therefore, Melville’s ultimate message about technology and America culture that he wanted his American readers in the 1840s and even his readers in 2013 to know was that Americans live in two conflicting worlds. On the one hand, they live in a world of modern technology and industrialization that makes everyday life more efficient, easier, and richer in terms of material wealth. But, the consequence of living in this technological world is that they have created a world where they are constantly straddling the line between savagery and civilization, leading themselves to their own self-destruction.