Chapter 4 includes a fictionalized version of 1893 historical events known as the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.Ĭhapter 5: From The Inland Sea focuses on Japanese workers brought to the islands to replace Chinese laborers the latter begin to set up their own businesses. the ‘Chinese sickness’) and is sent to the leper colony in Molokai. The patriarch of the Kee family contracts leprosy (a.k.a. Many of the missionaries become founding families in the islands, including the Hales and Whipples.Ĭhapter 4: From the Starving Village covers the immigration of Chinese to work on the pineapple and sugarcane plantations. Ĭhapter 3: From the Farm of Bitterness follows the journey of the first Christian missionaries to Hawaii in the 1800s and their influence over Hawaiian culture and customs. Later some return to Bora Bora to bring back with them some women and children and an idol of the volcano goddess, Pele. Later they take the canoe Wait for the West Wind and sail to Hawaii. After finally agreeing to this plan, his brother secretly sets fire to Havaiki to take revenge for the human sacrifices they have been demanding from Bora Borans. Tamatoa suggests to his brother and friends that they should migrate to some other place where they might find religious freedom. because they are trying to force the Bora Borans to give up their old gods, Tāne and Ta'aroa, and start worshiping 'Oro, the fire god, who constantly demands human sacrifices. Ĭhapter 2: From the Sunswept Lagoon begins on the island of Bora Bora, where many people, including King Tamatoa and his brother Teroro, are upset with the neighboring isles of Havaiki, Tahiti etc. It goes into flavorful detail describing such things as primary succession taking root on the island to life finally blooming. With the exception of Chapter 1, all the chapters are of standalone novel or novella length.Ĭhapter 1: From the Boundless Deep describes the creation of the Hawaiian land from volcanic activity.
Most of the chapters cover the arrivals of different peoples to the islands. the Kee family represents the viewpoint of Chinese-Hawaiians).
The novel tells the history of Hawaiian Islands from the creation of the isles to the time they became an American state through the viewpoints of selected characters who represent their ethnic and cultural groups in the story (e.g. Chinn Ho, the "Chinese Rockefeller", was popularly considered to be the inspiration for the character Hong Kong Kee. Asa Thurston was also a model for a missionary character in the novel. The character Reverend Abner Hale is a caricature of true-life missionary Hiram Bingham I. Several characters in the novel are inspired by actual individuals. A book cannot tell you how a Polynesian acts or how he talks." Taylor said, "The things you want are not in books.all this material you want has to come out of my head. Taylor, explained customs, language, family names, and nuances of Hawaiian culture to Michener. His technical adviser, noted Hawaiian scholar Clarice B. Each section explores the experiences of different groups of arrivals.įor Hawaiian history, Michener researched at the Hawaiian-Mission Historical Library and consulted experts on island history, volcanoes, botany, pineapples, and Chinese culture. The story begins with the formation of the islands themselves millions of years ago and ends in the mid-1950s. It is written in episodic format, like many of Michener's works, and narrates the stories of the original Hawaiians who sailed to the islands from Bora Bora, the early American missionaries and merchants, and the Chinese and Japanese immigrants who traveled to work and seek their fortunes in Hawaii. The historical correctness of the novel is high, although the narrative about the early Polynesian inhabitants is based more on folklore than anthropological and archaeological sources. It has been translated into 32 languages.
Michener published in 1959, the year that Hawaii became the 50th U.S. Wikiquote has quotations related to James Michener's “Hawaii”.
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