# The Feast of Calabashes explained — Typee > Chapter companion for Typee by Herman Melville. ## What happens The narrator describes the elaborate Feast of Calabashes, a grand festival in the Typee valley. He observes the entire population gathered in the Taboo Groves, with men in fantastic costumes, women dancing and chanting, and a lavish banquet of fruits, poee-poee, and roasted hogs. The narrator witnesses peculiar customs, including widows leaping stiffly in nudity as a sign of mourning, and a chaotic orchestra of drummers and chanting priests. Despite his inquiries to Kory-Kory, he fails to understand the meaning of the rituals, and the festival continues for two days before ending. ## Themes in this chapter ### Cultural Relativism The narrator struggles to understand the meaning of Typee customs, such as the leaping widows and the chaotic orchestra, revealing his own cultural biases and the difficulty of interpreting foreign practices. ### Taboo and Social Order The festival takes place in the Taboo Groves, and the rituals, including the widows' public mourning and the priests' chants, illustrate the structured social and religious order of the Typee society. ### The Idealized Primitive The lavish abundance and seemingly carefree revelry of the Typees are depicted with a sense of wonder, contrasting with Western civilization and reinforcing the narrator's romanticized view of native life. ## Character check-ins ### Narrator The narrator observes the Feast of Calabashes, describes the rituals and customs, and attempts to understand the meaning of the events through Kory-Kory. ### Kory-Kory Kory-Kory attempts to explain the customs to the narrator, including the leaping widows and the festival's activities, but his explanations are largely incomprehensible. ### Mehevi Mehevi is mentioned as the noble chief presiding over the lavish feast, compared favorably to Warwick in his generosity. ### Fayaway Fayaway is not directly mentioned in this chapter, but is part of the broader narrative context. ## Key lines > the leaping figures before me were bereaved widows, whose partners had been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival, gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities. The jumping women were widows mourning their husbands killed in past battles, and they demonstrated their grief publicly during each festival. _The narrator learns from Kory-Kory that the leaping women are widows expressing their loss._ > What lavish plenty reigned around! Warwick feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Mehevi! The abundance of food at the feast was so great that even the legendary Warwick's hospitality seemed miserly compared to Chief Mehevi's generosity. _The narrator compares the Typee feast favorably to a famous English nobleman's banquet._ > For all the observation it attracted, or the good it achieved, the whole savage orchestra might with great advantage to its own members and the company in general, have ceased the prodigious uproar they were making. The noisy orchestra seemed pointless and disruptive, and everyone would have been better off if they had stopped playing. _The narrator expresses frustration with the seemingly meaningless noise of the drums and chants._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/typee_se/chapters/xxiii - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/typee_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/typee_se/chapters