A High Wind in Jamaica

"A High Wind in Jamaica" is always on the "best novels" lists and when I finally got around to it, I've discovered that the adulation is deserved. It's one of the best things I've read for a long time. "A High Wind..." is sometimes compared to "Lord of the Flies," but they can teach "Lord of the Flies" in high school because the symbolism is pretty clear and the little-nerdy-guys vs big-peer-pressure-bullies characters are easy to point out and discuss. And there's no sex in "Lord of the Flies." (How could there be? It's all boys?!?) The plot of "A High Wind..." is high adventure: After a hurricane destroys the house of the British colonialists exploiting the poor in Jamaica, the Bas-Thorntons send their five slightly wild children (oldest brother John, followed by Emily, Edward, Rachel, and baby Laura) - along with the Fernandez's slightly older and more reserved children (Margaret and Henry) - back to Britain. But on the way back, they're kidnapped by pirates and undergo a number of extraordinary physical and psychological adventures before they're returned to the motherland. The violence in "A High Wind..." is pervasive and clearly important to the plot. Like the violence, the sex is scattered throughout the story, but appears ambiguous. But if you think about it, the sexual allusions result in inappropriate sex; some dirty filthy, socially unacceptable sex WITH PIRATES; a little sexual confusion among the children; and even a some gender play WITH PIRATES, all of which could be tough to talk about with tenth graders. The first half of the novel has plenty of funny, dry British incidents. The diction itself is often intentionally humorous. The pirates turn out not to be what you might expect, which is both funny and appalling at times. And the conclusion is completely ambiguous, ending in a very thought-provoking scene. This is a terrific novel that shouldn't be wasted on the young who wouldn't understand all the implications.

High-seas piracy and the complex psychological lives of children are brought together, quite strikingly, in Richard Hughes’s 1929 novel "A High Wind in Jamaica." This book looks ahead to William Golding’s "Lord of the Flies" in the way it suggests that the outward innocence of children may conceal a capacity for cruel and wicked acts; but Hughes’s presentation of these ideas seems to work at a subtler and more disturbing level than does Golding’s better-known 1954 novel. "A High Wind in Jamaica" begins in, unsurprisingly, Jamaica, at a time when that singularly lovely island is still an English colony. I took this book along with me on a trip to Jamaica, and I found that the descriptive passages from the early part of the book capture well the paradoxical beauty of the island: “The air was full of the usual tropic din: mosquitoes humming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs twanging like guitars. That din goes on all night and all day almost: is more insistent, more memorable than the heat itself, even, or the number of things that bite” (p. 18). The evocation of natural beauty, closing on a note of menace: it is strongly characteristic of the manner in which Hughes conveys setting and tells his story. The “high wind” of the novel’s title is a hurricane that strikes Jamaica and destroys the home of the Bas-Thorntons, an English family who, like many other Britons of that time, have come to Jamaica to recoup fortunes lost in the mother country. Struck by how narrowly the family survived the tempest that destroyed the family home, and concerned that their proper English children seem to be taking on “wild” island ways, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton decide that it is a propitious time to send their children to live in England, along with the children of a nearby Creole family. Yet Hughes’s narrator places considerable emphasis on the idea that the Thorntons – and, by implication, most parents – know almost nothing about the actual emotional lives of their children, in passages like this one: “It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children….[I]t would undoubtedly have surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant to them. Children seldom have any power of quantitative self-analysis: whatever the facts, they believe as an article of faith that they love Father and Mother first and equally. Actually, the Thornton children had loved Tabby [the family cat] first and foremost in all the world, some of each other second, and hardly noticed their mother’s existence more than once a week. Their father they loved a little more: partly owing to the ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.” (pp. 44-45) But the Clorinda, the ship in which the Thorntons have booked passage “home” to England for their children, is waylaid by pirates; and once the children have been taken onto the pirate ship, Hughes gets on to his real subject: the question of what children – especially the two oldest Thornton children, John and Emily – are capable of, once the restraints of ordinary civilization have been stripped away. The children-and-pirates scenario may seem like something reminiscent of J.M. Barrie’s "Peter Pan" (1904); but if anything, "A High Wind in Jamaica" works as a sort of anti-"Peter Pan." For one thing, the pirates, as led by a Danish captain named Jonsen and his Viennese first mate Otto, are not figures of operatic menace, like Captain Hook from Peter Pan or Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Treasure Island" (1883); rather, they emerge as feckless and rather pathetic figures. Taking advantage of the indulgent attitudes of Spanish colonial authorities in the port of Santa Lucia, Cuba, they are operating a good 150 years after the supposed “golden age” of piracy: “Piracy had long ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago; but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia – and piracy – continued to exist as they always had: but for no other reason” (p. 96). And as their nautical misadventures unfold, Jonsen and Otto and the rest of the pirates show a remarkable capacity for poor and ill-informed decision-making. The more fateful, and more existentially troubling, words and actions and decisions come from the children. "A High Wind in Jamaica" offers a couple of real surprises. When, for example, one major character leaves the novel, the circumstances of said event are described so routinely – in a single, declarative, 24-word sentence, about one-third of the way through the book – that the reader is likely to flip through the next couple of pages in search of a passage saying “It was only a dream” or “It was not as serious as had been expected”; but no such passage is to be found. Comparably surprising is an action that Emily carries out after Captain Jonsen’s pirate ship has captured a Dutch merchantman. Hughes is one of those early-20th-century British modernists whose literary consciousness seems to have been molded in large part by the devastation of the First World War. His narrator sets forth the events of "A High Wind in Jamaica" with a knowing, rueful outlook on human flaws and failings, occasionally moving from the novel’s characteristic third-person omniscient point of view to passages of first-person narration in which the narrator stresses what he does not know – as when the narrator says of Mrs. Thornton that “She was a dumpy little woman – Cornish, I believe” (p. 44). This work reminded me of the novels of Robert Graves and Malcolm Lowry, fellow Britons who lived and wrote during the same period; and if you like books like Graves’s World War I memoir "Good-Bye to All That" (1929) or Lowry’s novel "Under the Volcano" (1947), then "A High Wind in Jamaica" will probably appeal to you as well.

ペーパーバック: 296ページ NYRB Classics (1999/9/30) ISBN-10: 0940322153 のレビュー 1929年初版のリイシュー。本文279ページ。1ページ26行。つまり、短めの長篇です。フォントはtrump medieval。 しばしばゴールディングの『蝿の王』と比較される、こどもの内面を描いた小説と言われています。（本書のイントロでも、言及されている。）しかし、ストーリー、雰囲気、テーマはまったく違うと思われます。 おとなとまったく異なる思考・感性を持った動物を描いた作品でしょう。大衆小説、ジュブナイル小説として扱うのは不適切でしょう。 さて、読みやすさですが、全体的に平明なものの、ときどき奇妙な描写、文体がまじる不思議な文章です。三人称だと思って読んでいると、いきなり I で始まる文が出てきたり。 ストーリーの要となるような事件の描写があまりに淡々としていて、「あれ、いま何が起こったのか？」と前の部分を読み返すこともありました。（地震のシーンなど） それから、どうしても判らない部分が数か所ありました。この作品の文章のわかりづらさというのは、英和辞典や文法書を引いて対処できるようなものではないと思います。 邦訳が晶文社から出ていますが、原文に挑戦したい方は、翻訳にあたる前に読むことを薦めます。ほんとに意外な展開、結末でした。最後まで読み終わって、初めから読み返したくなる作品です。全体的なストーリーを追い、登場人物の性格をつかみ、不思議な雰囲気を味わうのは、さほど困難ではないと思います。 物語の年代が不明で、ジャマイカの奴隷解放後しばらくたった頃。蒸汽船の航路もあるが、まだ帆船が現役だった時代。19世紀末か20世紀初頭か？

Das war ein Buch, das ich haben wollte – und es ist sehr schnell angekommen.

Although this book is ostensibly about a group of children who are kidnapped by pirates on their voyage back to England from Jamaica sometime in the 19th (?) century, it is actually about the wild, unknowable nature of children. It prompted a very good discussion at book club last night (one of our best), and someone commented that they had never read a book in which there was so much subtext rippling beneath the surface. It is beautifully written and intricately plotted, with much to interpret. Our book club members fell into two camps: those who believed that the book portrays children as wild animals that live instinctively and entirely in the moment (I was in this camp); and those who believed that it was a portrayal of a particularly dysfunctional set of children, whose behaviour was a result of their upbringing rather than their inherent nature. It can, of course, merely be read as an adventure story (it is clear that many Amazon readers have done so), but that is to miss the central theme of the book which is the alien nature of children. It has such a distinct view of children that it prompted me, for the first time, to take detailed notes which I include at the end of this review (spoiler alert). In my view Hughes describes children as: 1) Initially unformed and completely unaware of themselves. 2) Living within their minds largely indifferent to the world outside. They transmute their experiences into an inner life that is entirely egocentric. Adults cannot entire their world. 3) Living entirely in the moment. They have no sense of gratitude or loss, because that requires a sense of memory. Only when they do not have immediate stimulation, do vague images of the past come back to haunt them. 4) Wild animals that must follow their instincts, whether that is to react to a threat or follow their urges 5) Alien to adults who they regard as gods to be appeased 6) Having no moral sense or sense of personal responsibility Surprisingly it was written before the author, Richard Hughes, had any children himself, and one topic of debate was how accurate this depiction of children was. In my view it was an unrealistic one. Nevertheless it was an excellent book, which prompted one of our best discussions. My detailed notes containing quotes from the book are below (spoiler alert): The book has a very defined view of children as being wild animals, whose inner life is alien and unknowable. According to Hughes, children are: • Initially a wild animal that is unaware of itself. Examples, p.98 “The inside of Laura was different indeed: something vast, complicated, and nebulous that can hardly be put into language. To take a metaphor from tadpoles, though legs were growing her gills had not yet dropped off. Beign nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term ‘human’ a wild sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies of course are not human – they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.” p.83 “And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She suddenly realised who she was.” • Live entirely within their minds, largely indifferent to the outside world. They transmute their experiences into an inner life that is entirely egocentric. Adults cannot entire their world. p.90-1 Weeks into their captivity on the ship they remain unsure whether or not they are on a pirate ship. Did the sailors call themselves pirates or pilots? p.86 “Grown-ups embark on a life of deception with considerable misgiving, and generally fail. But not so children. A child can hide the most appalling secret without the least effort, and is practically secure against detection. Parents, finding that they see through their child in so many places the child does not know of, seldom realise that, if there is some point the child really gives his mind to hiding, their chances are nil.” p.116 Emily plays with the blood stain of the man she has killed: “But presently she was singing happily again, and hanging right out of the bunk to outline in pencil the brown stain on the floor. A touch here, a touch there, and it was an old market-woman to the life, bobbling along with a bundle on her back!” p.153 When asked about their experiences on the pirate ship the children invent stories that they think will please their adult audience: “It was wonderful for Edward that everyone seemed ready to believe what he said. Those who came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent away empty. Nor did Rachel contradict him. The pirates were wicked – deadly wicked, and she had good reason to know. So they had probably done all Edward had said: probably when she was not looking.” • Live entirely in the moment. They have no sense of gratitude or loss, because that requires a sense of memory. Only when they do not have immediate stimulation do vague images of the past come back to haunt them. p.27 “If it would have surprised their mother, it would undoubtedly have surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant to them.” p.69 John has fallen and broken his neck. “Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding, no one commented on his absence. No one questioned Margaret, and she offered no information. Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever mentioned by anybody: and if you had known the children intimately you would never have guessed from them that he had ever had existed.” p.158 it is clear that the children have never mentioned John to their rescuers, and that they have entirely forgotten him. “Mre Thornton looked from one of them to another. ‘John! Where is John?’ she asked the world at large, a faint hint of uneasiness beginning to tinge her voice. It was then that Miss Dawson showed a puzzled face at the window. ‘John?’ she asked. ‘Why, who is John?’ p.117 “Children, it is true, have a way of becoming more or less attached to any one they are in close contact with: but it was more than that, deeper. She was fonder of them than she had ever been of her parents, for instance.” p.143 After months of captivity the children are finally free of the pirate ship, which almost immediately disappears from their minds: “at last they were all on board. The little boat returned to the schooner. The children never once looked after it.” p.165 Mr Mathias finds the children to have very poor recollections of the pirate ship. “Mr Mathias turned the examination back to the capture of the Clorinda. But they seemed to have been strangely unobservant of what went on around them, he found.” • React like wild animals to threats, and to their inner instincts. p.108 Frightened by the rope bound prisoner in her cabin, Emily is roused to action: “Emily, beside herself with terror, suddenly became possessed by the strength of despair. In spite of the agony it caused her leg she flung herself out of the bunk , and just managed to seize the knife before he could manoeuvre his bound hands within reach of it. In the course of the next five seconds she had slashed and jabbed at him in a dozen places,: then flinging the knife towards the door, somehow managed to struggle back into the bunk.” p.89 After the men drunkenly come down into the hold with dishonourable intentions towards the girls but are scared off, 13 year old Margaret becomes sexually awakened: “For some time she had behaved very oddly indeed. At first she seemed exaggeratedly frightened of all the men: but then she had suddenly taken to following them about the deck like a dog – not Jonsen, it is true, but Otto especially.” • Treat adults like gods, who have complete power over them and they must appease. Mr Mathias on children as witnesses: “’you can never count on them. They say what they think you want them to say. And then they say what they think the opposing counsel wants them to say too – if they like his face.’” • Have no moral sense, or sense of personal responsibility. p.108 Emily’s murder of the Dutchman. p.173 Emily describes the murder of the Dutchman in the third person, as though she were a witness to events rather than the perpetrator. “”Those who were watching the self-contained Emily saw her turn very white and begin to tremble. Suddenly she gave a shriek: then after a second’s pause she began to sob. Everyone listened in an icy stillness, their hearts in their mouths. Through her tears they heard, they all heard, the words: “...He was all lying in his blood.... he was awful! He...he died, he said something and then he died!””

Great!

Speedy service