- What is the significance of the book title?
- What were some of the indigenous cultural practices you encountered in the book
- How does the author portray missionaries and their efforts to convert Hawaiians to Christianity? Was their intervention into Hawaiian culture for the better or worse?
- Vowell writes that the missionaries “sort of kind of had a point. If Kalakaua had taken better care of his charge…then his enemies would have been unable to swaddle themselves…in the mantle of…1776.” To what extent, then, does Vowell see Hawaii’s history a result of poor governance by its ruling class? Or was its annexation by America inevitable given its location and geography?
- Vowell describes the clash between the whalers and the missionaries as “representing opposing sides of America’s schizophrenic divide—Bible-thumping prudes and sailors on leave.” Is that an adequate description? Was that kind of “divide” endemic only to America, or did it exist elsewhere? Does Vowell’s “schizophrenic divide” exist today?
- Are there any heroes in this story of the Hawaiian Islands? Any villains? Is the history of the Islands a tragic story, a redemptive one, or something else?
