Joe cable penn5/2/2023 ![]() ![]() The overarching plot which binds the Tales together is a top secret plan known as “Alligator” which intends to launch a surprise attack on the Japanese forces on Kuralei, not unlike the Battle of Guadalcanal, the first major Allied land invasion in the South Pacific. The mise en scène removes us far away to the edge of civilization in the South Pacific, a beautiful tropical locale, where scattered bands of Navy crewmen find themselves in an endless cycle of waiting –waiting for battle, waiting for reinforcements, waiting for news, waiting for letters, waiting for the war to end. Rumors fly amidst the ever-present fear of a Japanese attack while soldiers dream of pretty girls and letters from the homefront. In the book, each of the short stories unfolds like a series of digressions –we see soldiers battling foot fungus and malaria, loneliness and boredom, depression and anxiety, hope and fatalism. After the book’s success, the story was later adapted by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein into a wildly successful Broadway play, and a popular musical film released in 1958 (a second film version was released in 2001). These scattered fragments became Tales of the South Pacific. During his time in the Navy, he carefully collected observations from the Espiritu Santo Naval Base on the island of Espiritu Santo in the “New Hebrides Islands” (today called Vanuatu). Michener’s own experiences as a Naval Historian in the Pacific Theater during World War II which inspired the Tales. Perhaps this is intended to be James Michener himself. ![]() ![]() Our main narrator is an anonymous “Commander” who delivers paperwork from island to island, serving in those “bitter” years between ’41 and ’43. In truth, Tales of the South Pacific represents a cohesive whole –each of the nineteen short stories carry consistent themes, subject matter, characters, and they take place sequentially, culminating in a dramatic invasion of fictional island called Kuralei. To this day, this title has remained unchanged since 1948. This was also the book that caused the Pulitzer Prize to change its award title from the “Novel” to “Fiction” in order to allow for groupings of short stories to be considered. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is structured to be a panoramic series of interconnected vignettes which present a unique portrait of the era. In a collection of partly autobiographical sketches, James Michener’s debut book Tales of the South Pacific (1947) invites us to consider the often-overlooked lives of Allied soldiers stationed in the South Pacific during World War II. ![]()
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