Tattoos

Tattooing in Polynesian cultures, and in Typee in particular, has been well covered elsewhere, but we would be remiss not to put in our two cents of wondering.

In Tommo's descriptions of the natives, he almost never fails to mention tattoos, their placement, geometry, and condition. Here are just a few examples:

"a broad patch of tattooing [...] making him look as if he wore a huge pair of goggles" (1.20)
"bare legs, embellished with spiral tattooing, and somewhat resembling two miniature Trajan's columns" (1.20)
"tattooed limbs of brawny warriors" (10.21)
"two broad stripes of tattooing, diverging from the centre of his shaven crown" (11.9)
"three broad longitudinal stripes of tattooing" (11.28)
"whose decrepit forms time and tattooing seemed to have obliterated every trace of humanity" (12.9)

We could go on…and on. Even in the absence of tattoos, as with Fayaway's face, he cannot seem to resist, noting that it's "free from the hideous blemish of tattooing" (11.42).

This compulsion of our narrator could definitely have to do with the fact that a tattoo stays with you forever. For the Typee, it is a cultural signifier of community and belonging. Perhaps that's why Tommo goes so crazy when stern, old Karky has the idea to put ink onto our hero's skin.

It's only by begging that he escapes without that ink, but in that moment, he realizes: tattoos are important part of Typee life, of their religion and way of organizing the world, and "they were resolved to make a convert" (30.14) of him. A tattoo, he becomes convinced, will make it even harder to find freedom and a way home.

Here, a tattoo is a physical mark, a record, a memory made material. But could you think about it in a more symbolic way, too? If so, we wonder what "tattoos" Tommo might have carried with him unknowingly, long after he's left the island.