59 pages • 1 hour read
James A. MichenerHawaii
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Pages 199-399Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “From the Farm of Bitterness”
Part 3, Pages 199-299 Summary
The narrative travels forward to 1821, when young Abner Hale is a university student at Yale. Abner comes from a strict Congregationalist family that believes in Calvinist predestination. Abner himself had a conversion experience in early youth and is depicted as smug about his status among the saved. One night, his life changes dramatically when he hears an Indigenous Hawaiian named Keoki Kanakoa speak at his school. Kanakoa asks the school to send missionaries to his heathen native land. “For the engaging young savage told how he had run away from an idol-worshiping home, from polygamy, from immorality, from grossness and from bestiality to find the word of Jesus Christ” (203).
Abner’s school friend, a doctor named John Whipple, is determined to answer the call. Abner feels equally moved, but the missionary society will only send married men to the islands. A member of the governing committee, Reverend Thorn, has an unmarried niece who is pining for a sailor, and Thorn is determined to get her married off. Presenting Abner as a suitor is not easy. Inwardly, he says of Abner:
You’re an offensive, undernourished, sallow-faced little prig, the kind that wrecks any mission to which he is attached. There’s not a man on my committee that really thinks you ought to be sent overseas, but I have a niece who has got to get married one of these days (215).
Jerusha Bromley is the intended bride. Her family worries because she alternates between desiring to marry her absent sailor and wanting to run off to devote her life to missionary work. When Abner calls, he is overwhelmed by Jerusha’s beauty and grace. “Twenty-two years old, slim, dark-eyed, dark-haired, perfect in feature and with gently dancing curls which framed her face [...] She was exquisite in a frail starched dress of pink and white sprigged muslin” (238).
Jerusha hasn’t heard from her sailor for many months, so she accepts Abner’s awkward proposal. She isn’t aware that Reverend Thorn has just intercepted a letter from her seafaring suitor but fails to deliver it before the wedding. Abner and Jerusha marry after knowing each other for two weeks. They board a ship to Hawaii called the Thetis in Boston harbor, along with several other missionary couples. The craft is very small, but their Captain Janders is experienced.
Because the ship must sail around the southern tip of South America, the trip takes six months to complete. Along the way, the passengers are afflicted with seasickness and digestive upsets. Abner nurses his fellow missionaries through the worst of their symptoms, which wins their approval. However, he also tries to convert the crew, which annoys Captain Janders.
Part 3, Pages 300-399 Summary
After a nerve-racking passage through the Straits of Magellan, the Thetis moves into the calmer waters of the Pacific. As it continues its journey, it is hailed by a whaling ship traveling in the opposite direction that wishes to exchange mail. The captain of the ship is a brash, impulsive man named Rafer Hoxworth. By a curious coincidence, he is the sailor who had been courting Jerusha. When Rafer finds out that she has married Abner, he confronts her, insisting that he wrote several letters promising to marry her once he returned from his current voyage. Jerusha never received the letters and tells him that she is now pregnant with Abner’s child. Infuriated, Rafer hurls Abner overboard, where the missionary is bitten on the leg by a shark before he is rescued. The nerve and tendon damage leave him with a limp. Rafer swears that he will return to Hawaii and reclaim Jerusha someday.
The Thetis finally makes port at Lahaina, the capital of Maui. There, the missionaries are greeted by the supreme ruler, the Alii Nui. She is a tall and obese woman named Malama. Her appearance is typical of Indigenous Hawaiian rulers, whose large size is seen as a sign of their spiritual energy. Malama’s principal husband is Kelolo, her brother. The Alii Nui is always the offspring of a sister-brother coupling. Their eldest daughter, Noelani, will be the next ruler. It was Noelani’s brother Keoki who came to Boston to bring the missionaries to Hawaii.
The missionaries are shocked by the nudity and sexual freedom of the islanders. For their part, Malama and Kelolo want to embrace Christianity while retaining their old gods. Abner is too morally rigid to accept this situation. He tells Malama that she will burn in hell unless she relinquishes Kelolo as her husband. Abner also lectures Kelolo against forcing his servants to harvest enormous quantities of sandalwood to trade with Europeans while they neglect their own farmlands. Malama learns to write with Jerusha’s assistance, and she receives lectures on the new God from Abner. She has trouble understanding his explanation of predestination, and his lurid descriptions of hell frighten her.
Jerusha is in an advanced stage of pregnancy when another missionary couple arrives on the island seeking help. They are the Hewletts, and the wife is about to deliver a baby prematurely. The two male missionaries assume they can handle the delivery by consulting their textbooks. They refuse the assistance of experienced midwives on the island, whom they consider heathens. As a result, Mrs. Hewlett dies, and Reverend Hewlett is left to care for his newborn son alone.
Part 3, Pages 199-399 Analysis
Part 3 of the book skips forward 1,000 years to the arrival of the Congregationalist missionaries in Hawaii in 1821. Abner Hale is the central character in this segment. He is a person of rigid beliefs and limited social intelligence, which makes him the perfect character to illustrate the themes of Cultural Crossroads and Resisting Change. Even before arriving in Hawaii, the missionaries already demonstrate distinct characteristics that run contrary to the attitudes of the crew of the Thetis. The sailors aren’t god-fearing Christians in a way that wins Abner’s approval. Instead of accepting this difference, he tries to convert several sailors, much to the annoyance of Captain Janders. Abner is equally obstinate when, despite bad weather conditions, he tries to stage a Sunday service on deck in high winds. He also unknowingly alienates Rafer when the latter realizes that Abner has stolen his bride-to-be. Despite all these adverse conditions, Abner tries to uphold his beliefs as if he were still in New England, demonstrating not only his self-righteousness but also his fear of change.
When the missionaries arrive on Maui, their introduction to the island population foregrounds the theme of cultural crossroads as the two groups puzzle over one another’s behavior. Upon first meeting Malama, the missionaries are astonished by her enormous size and her willingness to doff her clothing when the weather gets too hot. Likewise, they can’t understand the queen’s desire to get in step with the times while still upholding the ancient customs of her land. Though this desire to blend her old culture with a new one shows that Malama is willing to attempt Adapting to Survive, she exhibits resistance to change when Abner tells her that she must divorce Kelolo and stop allowing him to worship Pele, the Hawaiian fire goddess believed to govern the volcanic eruptions that occur in Hawaii . Conversely, he asks Malama to believe in a fiery Christian hell, telling her God will damn her soul if she doesn’t follow his rules to the letter. This frightens her enough to comply.
While Abner is trying to force change upon the natives, his own resistance to change is great. The most tragic example of his intractability is his determination to deliver a baby after simply reading a book on the subject, rather than avail himself of the wisdom of the local midwives. His determination to reject their traditional ways even if it means that a woman’s life is lost is a literal example of his failure of adapting to survive. Michener highlights the irony of how the enlightenment of the so-called “savages” of Hawaii is entrusted to a man whose own prejudices keep him in darkness.
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