Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person (Central Narrator)—Tommo
There are two Tommos, or rather, one Tom and one Tommo. It is Tom, a highly-intelligent ethnographer and storyteller who offers the novel, but it is poor, injured Tommo the escaped sailor who experiences the actions of the novel firsthand. They're the same person, but also, not.
Tom can afford to divert us for a handful of chapters to explain the Typee foods and religious customs, the weather, the flora, and fauna, etc. But in the meantime, Tommo is having a mysterious vegetable poultice applied to his wounds and splashing and flirting with his island love Fayaway. So, although Tommo's situation may feel quite urgent, Tom goes along at a leisurely, academic pace.
In the Melville-written preface, the author takes care to set up the book's artifice, saying that "Tom" has done his best to provide a clear account: "He has stated such matters just as they occurred, and leaves every one to form his own opinion concerning them; trusting that his anxious desire to speak the unvarnished truth will gain for him the confidence of his readers" (Preface.8).
But is this simply a novelist's postmodern trick? It's unclear. Indeed, a late-edition nineteenth-century editor of the book seems totally sure that Melville is Tommo and Tommo is Melville, writing, "Whether our author entered on his whaling adventures in the South Seas with a determination to make them available for literary purposes, may never be certainly known" (Letter.1).
One thing's for sure: the line between memoir and fiction has never been so darn blurry.