Hawaii

“In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish […] On these harsh terms the islands waited.”

This quote is presented before the first human ever sets foot in the Hawaiian Islands. The warning foreshadows the privations that will be faced by all the immigrants, no matter what their point of origin. Miraculously, the ingenuity of the new inhabitants will be their saving grace, and the entire novel is essentially an amplification of that concept. Michener also opens the novel with an anthropomorphism of the islands—they “waited”—this both emphasizes that the islands have a power and volition of their own, as well as sets up how vast the geological time scale is compared to the short timeline of humankind.

“Later ages would depict these men as all-wise and heroic, great venturers seeking bright new lands; but such myths would be in error, for no man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure; but having failed in one location and having been ejected, it is possible that in the next he will be a little wiser.”

While this quote refers to the Polynesians who left Bora Bora, it can be applied to all the other central characters. Abner is a failure as a divinity student in New England. Nyuk Tsin is considered cursed by her home village. Kamejiro is sent to America because his family has no use for him at home. To varying degrees, each one manages to make wiser choices in Hawaii.

“What had been a free volcanic island, explosive with force, now became a rigidly determined island, and all men liked it better, for the unknown was made known.”

This quote applies to the Polynesians as they establish taboos in their new land. Freedom matters less to them than structure. When the New England missionaries arrive, they create an entirely new set of taboos for the islanders to follow.