Charles Warren Stoddard was an American writer in the second half of the 19th century, known for his travelogue of the Pacific. Hawaii Life "consists of 31 notes depicting the landscapes of sugarcane plantations, orchards, trading markets, and Chinese laborers in Hawaii, all of which carry the imprint of political power. Landscape is not only a mixture of nature and culture, but also a product of power structures. Through landscape writing, the violence of imperialism and colonialism can be symbolically rewritten. Stoddard's works integrate the Hawaiian landscape into the imagined power map of the United States in the Pacific at the end of the 19th century, exploring the relationship between wilderness and pastoral landscapes and the imperial power map.

The 'Wilderness' of the Pacific Ocean

Stoddard depicted the Pacific Ocean as a picturesque "wilderness" landscape in his works, comparable to the "uncultivated" New World of North America. He focuses on the peak moment of Western geographical discovery through the rhetorical devices of "discovery" and "witnessing", and achieves symbolic possession and control of natural landscapes through "gaze". In the second half of the 19th century, the American characteristic of wilderness imagination began to influence the natural scenery of Pacific islands. Melville's Moby Dick, as a pioneering work of the imagination of the Pacific "wilderness" in American literature, compares the Pacific Ocean to the "ranch" and "prairie" on the wilderness of the North American continent, and stimulates the desire of Americans to colonize land. Stoddard followed in Melville's footsteps to explore the Hawaiian Islands and was attracted by the scenery of those rarely visited island nations. The natural landscapes such as Mount Halleacara have been endowed with American characteristic wilderness imagery, displaying vibrant vitality and immense allure. Stoddard was fascinated by the "secret center of the mountains" and regarded the wild imagery of deep valleys, streams, peaks, cliffs, and other wilderness areas on Pacific islands, as well as the indigenous people as "sons of nature", as organic components of the landscape. He encoded the Hawaiian community as a primitive tribe and depicted the land as a pristine natural landscape without any signs of cultivation or labor. Stoddard's Pacific wilderness landscape has actually become a metaphorical representation of the 'New World', through which indigenous peoples are stripped of their land and their rights and relationship with the land are denied. The Pacific islands have been simplified into pure natural spaces, erasing the socio-economic traces of indigenous peoples and land, and "naturalizing" changes in the environment. Stoddard's description metaphorically referred to the Pacific as the 'New World', symbolizing a wilderness like initial state where the island's primitive, lonely valleys and villages seemed to be waiting for the arrival of white colonizers. This metaphor creates an ideal stage for the transfer of knowledge and power.

The Treasure Awaiting Discovery ": Rhetoric of" Discovery "and" Witness "

When exploring the "New World" in the Pacific, Stoddard adopted a guided "exploration" and "discovery" model, which is actually an imperial rhetoric used to emphasize the handover of knowledge and power. In the description of the Io Valley, he compared this isolated valley to a "treasure waiting to be discovered," and the so-called "discovery" journey was actually led by an indigenous guide, who symbolized the absence and absence of existence. Stoddard used this rhetoric to transform local knowledge into knowledge related to European forms and power relations. On his journey to watch the sunrise on Mount Halleacara, he sighed as he stood at the top of the earth, symbolizing the handover of imperial power. Stoddard believed that he was best suited to inherit the crown and become a recipient of knowledge. He cleared the original meaning of Hawaii's natural landscape through the rhetoric of "witnessing" and the peak moment of "discovery", marked the starting point of colonial activities, and implanted new meanings derived from imperial culture on this basis.

'As far as my gaze goes, I am king': Landscape Gaze and Power Mapping

In his Pacific landscape writing, Stoddard incorporated the "treasure" landscapes of history into the imperial knowledge system through "discovery" and "witnessing", and achieved symbolic possession and power mapping through "gaze". He adopts a panoramic perspective from a high vantage point and uses linear perspective to control and grasp space as an objective entity, generating visual power and supplementing his real power over the land. Stoddard's landscape description uses the basic mode of perspective, standing in a favorable position to gaze at the panorama, establishing linear relationships, regulating all components of the landscape, and representing the valley as the viewer's spatial property. He used his visual power to act as a cartographer, drawing the colonial landscape and prospects of the empire in the Pacific. Stoddard's Pacific landscape is a power map that utilizes spatial representation to implement power distribution. He dominated, framed, and encoded the valley scenery through a series of established customs, constructing a complex system of symbols and a visual architecture, presenting an imperial landscape with a strong sense of painting. At the visual architecture level, Stoddard organizes the scenery of the valley into foreground, distant view, and sub distant view through imagination, constructing a spatial order with the observer as the fixed perspective, while using the power of perspective to layout and plan the space. He selects and constructs visual scenery in the name of aesthetics, drawing a map towards the colonial future. In Stoddard's works, the landscape of the Io Valley is constructed into a long and deep grid like scroll, with "sugarcane fields," "beaches," "bays," and "headlands" arranged in sequence. These seemingly unrelated scenery are actually connected through the empire's "colonial future.

'Like an Eden': Rural Landscape and Utopian Illusion

In "Life in Hawaii," Stoddard depicts a state of "semi primitivism" between nature and civilization, creating a rich, peaceful, and harmonious pastoral landscape that embodies America's pastoral ideals. However, this' new garden 'is actually a utopian illusion that conceals the cruel tyranny, exploitation, and oppression in the plantation. Stoddard idealized rural life in Hawaii and created an "Acadian style" pastoral landscape, but this landscape is only his beautiful fantasy, a set of metaphors about happiness, growth, and labor. The pastoral landscape incorporates the Pacific into American ideals and becomes a part of the mythology of frontier exploration. Stoddard weaved the illusion of a "golden age" in the pastoral landscape of the Pacific, but the sound of machines shattered the harmony of the countryside and revealed the counter power of industrialization against pastoral mythology. The pastoral landscape constructed by Stoddard is an illusion of utopia, blurring the relationship between scenery and internal violence, and concealing the cruel exploitation and oppression of labor by plantation owners. The racial diversity and ethnic complexity communities fostered by plantations are far from the equality and friendship displayed by Stoddard, and the pastoral landscape conceals ethnic conflicts. Stoddard achieved symbolic imperial power control and possession over natural landscapes through the rhetoric of "discovery" and "witness", shaping an pastoral landscape. However, this landscape is essentially an illusion of agricultural utopia, covering up the social reality of dictatorship, exploitation, and enslavement, and avoiding real social relationships.