Tales of the South Pacific
by James A. Michener

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Book Reviews of Tales of the South Pacific

Book Review: Glorifying war, ridiculing natives, having fun
Summary: 1 Stars

The book is a mix of a novel and a collection of short-stories, becoming more novel-like towards the end. Several characters reappear, some more often than others. They are integrated in stories about either a strange idea of love, heroic tales about ideal soldiers and detailed descriptions of war plans and battles. Following that order, the book is ridiculous, disgusting and boring.

When in the second story "Coral Sea" a New Zealander gives a description what New Zealand will become if it is captured by Japan, you wonder what is going on here. Why is this description there, talking about "white men being used on farms"? It dehumanizes the enemy, the Japanese and is just one instance of many in this book where those people are described in the most defying ways one could imagine. Maybe I'm just not used to that, but the ongoing glorification of Americans versus the prejudiced description of the non-human Japanese in this book just made me sick. Of course war can only be fun if the enemies are pure evil, but I live in the real world where everybody is a human being.

Next tale, "Mutiny" is about a captain who has to decide if some old trees are chopped down for an airstrip. Of course he does (after all, they're just trees), but what's interesting is the description of a girl called Lucy living on this island. The words used for her are the following: chubby, crazy, fat little moron, chubby moron, etc. Very nice and a good basis for the description of all natives. Lucy isn't a native but a mix between natives and white men, an idea that makes our "feel a bit sick his stomach".

On other occasions natives are primitive beasts who are unable to understand anything (because they can't speak English which makes them not worth respecting them), who are dumb and naive, maybe greedy, often mysterious and odd. But there are also good things, because when the natives are female and young, they function as excellent sex objects. Really romantic, isn't it? In the "tragic" story "Fo' Dolla'" a poor American soldier falls in love (read "has a lot of sex") with a young native girl and just can't live his life with her. He doesn't need to explain why since his motives are quite logical. Right? He is an American and she is a native, so what other motives for dumping her, after using her, do you need?

The rest of the book consists of terribly boring descriptions of battle plans of which I have no idea why anyone would want to read about them. There are also battles which aren't more exciting because you don't care about the characters, since you don't know them. The author doesn't care either, since most of the deaths are just mentioned without going into detail. "Then so-and-so many were killed... three were shot... we lost so-and-so many soldiers... etc." After all, they're soldiers, it is war, they're supposed to die. Right? And if they're white they're at least lucky enough to be heroes because, well, white soldiers are good and others... not. My favourite quote: "I thought of the dead Japs bobbing upon the shorelines... Even some of them had been good men... All men rotting in Iron Bottom Bay were good men too. etc. etc." Repeating it doesn't make it better or less disgusting.

What is left is a view of war which is very far from realism. Criticiscm about war is unknown to the author. They did what they had to do, and there was enough fun, alcohol and girls to enjoy it even more. I don't deny that the book is sometimes entertaining, because some of the recurring characters are interesting. But it also is glorifying war, it depicts natives and Japanese as negative as possible and it replaces love with sex. If that has to be part of a classic, I have no problems with getting rid of some classics pretty fast. Read Steinbeck instead, or Spike Milligan's memories of the war, if you like. "Tales of the South Pacific" is most of the time just disgusting.

Summary of Tales of the South Pacific

Action & Adventure Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure
• Historical
• Men's Adventure
• War