A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

As may be expected, Sumida’s pastoral/heroic model works well when he analyzes
outsiders’ (=Westerners’) literature about Hawai’i. From his reading of Melville’s Typee
to assessing Mark Twain’s abandoned novel with a Hawaiian setting and theme, his lens
yields fruitful insights and interpretations. Criticizing Michener’s novel Hawaii, Sumida
comments:
Michener’s composite Golden Man is reminiscent of several symbols that figure
in the garden world of Western pastorals: there was once a Golden Age which,
when transformed from time and timelessness into imaginary space, became
various Golden Worlds; for instance, the Isles of the Blest. Inhabiting this once
Golden World was the noble savage, discovered by Westerners successively in
Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific and lavished, in each instance, with attention
and curiosity, until each in time proved to be a disappointment, a mere human
being, then a subhuman in the discoverer’s eyes. 280
When assessing the prevalent ‘childhood idyll’ or ‘small kid time’ story as examples of
the local pastoral, Sumida makes an enlightening comment about the function of
childhood and coming-of-age narratives: “Tacitly, these idylls are about the loss of
innocence, both personal and communal, when along with the keiki o ka ‘aina (the child
of the land), the state of Hawai’i, too, continues to grow up. […] The themes of change
and of loss have long been current in and about Hawai’i”. 281 In various ways and contexts,
Local writers thus employ a childhood formula in order to mourn loss, criticize discourses
of Americanization and development, or express their anxiety over the complexities and
inequities of their contemporary Hawai’i realities.
280 Sumida 1991: 83. The opening passage he cites from Twain’s manuscripts revels in such pastoral
imagery: “The date is 1840. Scene, the true Isles of the Blest; that is to say, the Sandwich Islands – to this
day the peacefulest, restfulest, sunniest, balmiest, dreamiest haven of refuge for a worn and weary spirit the
surface of the earth can offer” (Sumida 1982: 65). Sumida remarks: “Not only are the envisioned islands ‘a
very paradise’ but they are also ‘the true Isles of the Blest,’ a phrase which locates them squarely in the
ocean of Western mythology. Thus situated, ‘always present and always fresh’ nowhere but in the
imagination, the islands float outside of history and of reach of historical time” (Sumida 1991: 44).
However, this “ornate island paradise backdrop” was designed to contrast harshly with the novel’s plot,
which Twain had wanted to center on a man afflicted with leprosy: “It was to be about suffering and death
by a loathsome disease in a supposed paradise” (Sumida 1982: 67). The sickness can also be read as “the
leprosy of empire,” a term coined by Derek Walcott in his poem “Ruins of a Great House,” spreading like
cancer, and disintegrating indigenous society (see Rod Edmond, “Leprosy and Colonial Discourse: Jack
London and Hawaii,” in Wasafiri No. 25 (Spring 1997): 78-81, here 79). Hence we can surmise that
Twain’s novel would have been critical of American imperialism.
281 Sumida 1991: 89.
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