“Banana tourists. This is how we call passengers who travel to the islands, because they want to live there in the nature, far from the world, free from money problems, having as food coconuts and bananas.” (qtd. Metken 7)
This is how the French writer Georges Simenon envisions Tahiti and people like Gauguin. Although the artist’s purpose in his travels was mainly to get away from the world in order to discover a new paradise, this new point of view makes Gauguin’s dream look trite. It supports the idea that Gauguin was not at all different from many other people living in civilized countries, and that his desire to live a new life is just a whim of a man who has never found his place in this world.
Not intending to be imperialistic by any means, we must address an issue regarding the artist. Although he found the life in Tahiti better than back in Europe, was Polynesia actually a better place, a progress on the scale of quality of life? Or was Tahiti just a leftover of civilization? This would mean that Gauguin, not being able to lead a normal life under the conditions imposed by civilization, would be permanently excluded from it, finding in the primitive world a solution of the last resort, a temporary host for him.
Gauguin’s tragedy continues in that he even started to despise Tahiti at the end of his second journey, which made him finally leave for the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific, an even more remote spot than Tahiti. This could show that his run from civilization had the artist as an only cause, as it was not directed to a specific place in this world. Wandering his entire life for an ever better place to suit his personality and artistic endeavors, he never found the perfect environment. Even more, he did not realize that the problem was in himself, not in those around him. An introvert by definition, an outlaw in his destructive way to live his life, he tried to relate everything to himself rather than adapt and strive to have a life style that would fit the community.
Thus, failing to adapt and avoiding facing the problems that a civilized life may raise, we can say that he lost the battle with himself, a battle which he had tried to avoid all his life.