This awareness of the Typees exemplifies the fearfulness and paranoia that exists in Tommo, despite his choice to escape his work and search the island. This paranoia is evident throughout and towards the end of the novel as well. After struggling to pass by Kory-Kory, Tommo claims he had "just caught a glimpse of three human heads, which others of the party were hurriedly enveloping in the coverings from which they had been taken" (389). Tommo makes it clear to readers that he only received a quick glimpse of the preserved heads. He automatically jumps to the conclusion of cannibalism, where he decides he must leave the Typee community. His existing paranoia that has lived within him from the beginning of the novel has him jump to drastic conclusions when he sees these three heads. Though he has not seen proof of cannibalism, he concludes to the reader that Typee are savage man-eaters. The theme of cannibalism and the paranoia that it creates is an important undertone to the novel, as it deeply impacts the way Tommo perceives the Typees within his narration. Although there is not a moment in the novel where Tommo provides legitimate proof that Typees are cannibalistic, he remains on high alert from the moment he arrives on the island until the time he departs from the Marquesas. .
In Tommo's biased interpretation of the Typee culture, he links idleness with Typee sexuality. "The girls anointed themselves with their fragrant oils, dressed their hair, or looked over their curious finery, and compared together their ivory trinkets" (221). Tommo relates Typee productivity with these leisurely, beautifying activities of the culture which, for the women, tends to include adornment, tattooing, and dancing. When describing the women dancing, he states how they "arch their necks, toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl, that it was almost too much for a quiet, sober-minded, modest young man like [himself]" (224).