Jolly Retired College Prof Who Had Quite An Adventure…Once
It isn't just Tommo's tone that changes as he moves his readers from in-scene stories to reportage (more factual-sounding accounts), and back. It's also how Melville manipulates his vocabulary that really exemplifies the changes in style throughout the book.
It's not so hard to imagine Tommo as an old man in an over-stuffed lounge chair, surrounded by books and warming himself by the fire as he starts and stops his crazy captivity tale, taking lengthy informational breaks to make sure we're not only entertained, but educated.
Slide Show Lecture on the Marquesas
Melville's not just in it for the drama—he really wants to teach us. The language here shows that: he'll drop five-dollar words like he doesn't need the cash.
What does it mean when he uses stilted, formal words? First, check out this passage about female puberty in the Typee: "The early period of life at which the human form arrives at maturity in this generous tropical climate, likewise deserves to be mentioned" (25.6). Words like "human form"—instead of something simpler like "body"—or "generous tropical climate"—instead of something like "sticky jungle"—betrays a really particular diction: an authoritative Melville is dropping some serious factoids, and we better have come ready to learn.
And check out that sentence again. Look familiar to you? Yes, that's your classic topic sentence: a note to signal to the reader what he's about to talk about, just before he launches in. (While diction does totally signal tone, it also contributes to the style. For Melville, his vocab usage has everything to do with the overall experience of the piece as he throttles back and forth from drama to report.)
The Lyric Beauty of Tommo's Intense Feelings
Whether Tommo is providing descriptions of lazy afternoons in the valley, the ferocity of warriors, the beauty of the mountain lakes, or something as dramatic as finally gaining his freedom, Melville isn't shy about going into specificity or exclamation. Consider these two examples:
While sitting hanging out at Marheyo's, Tommo is "covered with a gauze-like veil of tappa, while Fayaway, seated beside me, and holding in her hand a fan woven from the leaflets of a young cocoanut bough, brushed aside the insects that occasionally lighted on my face" (14.29). Or when Tommo has broken free from his captivity, finally setting his eyes on the sea once more: "never shall I forget the ecstasy I felt when I first heard the roar of the surf breaking upon the beach. Before long I saw the flashing billows themselves through the opening between the trees. Oh glorious sight and sound of ocean!" (34.16).
Both passages—though one describes some serious sloth, and the other a big plot-turn moment of drama—are laden with description, like the "gauze-like veil of tappa," or "the flashing billows" of the waves. When Tommo does the text-version of gesticulating wildly, when he goes headlong into lyric reverie, we think Melville's really working that emotion, perhaps hoping we'll get just as swept up as Tommo does.
It can be difficult, when in the throes of the adventure portions, to move back into the more dry chapters, and vice versa. We know that the informational chapters were added on after the first version was complete. So we do wonder: what would the book have been like without them?