ABSTRACT
BY now the pleasant, unhurried, utopian world of Chapter I is so far away that the reader who has persisted to this point will have forgotten its existence. Reminded of it, he will see that the world-famous smile of the Fijian is the brave face of a man whose problems often seem insurmountable, who hides his fears and insecurities behind the pleasant demands of hospitality. The apparently happy-go-lucky qualities of the village Fijian are emphatically not, to my way of thinking, the infantile or irresponsible retreat into a dream world. The laughter is that of men and women who try to keep values in perspective, who cannot afford psychologically to dwell solely on the stresses of their condition, and who seek the compensations of ritual and emotive states which, for a while, can channel and control their thoughts, making it possible a little later to grapple afresh with unresolved dilemmas.
