Unreliable narrators are unable to portray the environment that they experience and observe, as their bias damages the true meaning of a culture. In the novel Typee, by Herman Melville, Tommo renders himself as an unreliable narrator when it comes to defining the Typee culture due to his bias from previously living in the westernized world. Tommo works year after year on a whaling ship, which is grueling work. Upon his mistreatment by the ship captain, he decides to escape the boat with another crew member, Toby, in hope to find the friendly Happar tribe. Instead, they come across the alleged cannibalistic tribe, the Typees. Tommo lives among the Typee community for a few weeks, recording the account of events through his eyes. Knowing Tommo's preconceived connotations to what a savage is, Tommo assumes the Marquesan tribe to be a lazy, savage culture because of their engagement in a simple way of life. Tommo's partiality from only knowing the laborious, modernized structure of America causes him to lose sight to a neutral, unbiased description of Marquesan culture. Tommo misinterprets Typee culture because he is paranoid about the possibility of cannibalism, he assumes open sexuality and leisurely activities result from indolent communities, and he could not live more than a few days in the tropical environment without them. .
From the very beginning of the novel, the prejudice in Tommo is evident because he and other members of the whaling ship are told tales of the cannibalistic Typee tribe that inhabit the Marquesas Islands before their arrival. Tommo reflects on a rumored story he had heard from other men, where an armed ship arrived on bay was "flocked aboard" by "hundreds [of Typee], and at a given signal murdered every soul on board" (35). These stories and potential myths encourage a negative perception of the Typee people because Tommo and other members of the whaling ship assume that the Typee will murder and possibly feast on their bodies if a hostile interaction were to abrupt.
