A High Wind in Jamaica - Introduction by Francine Prose - Chapter-based contents

Aug 25, 2026

A High Wind in Jamaica presents a gothic, unsettling reading experience shaped by tone that continually clashes with brutal content. Ruined West Indian houses frame a tale that begins like an adventure yarn—five British children captured by pirates—yet reveals murder, senseless violence, charged sexuality, and betrayal beneath its buoyant surface. The Bas-Thornton children live in Jamaica among cruelty toward local animals, then are sent to Britain after a typhoon exposes their island life as “too vegetable.” Nature and human nature alike feel predatory, turning children into instruments of a diabolic proliferation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages201

Reading Time5 h 10 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Cover

Biographical Note

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

RICHARD HUGHES (1900–1976) attended Oxford and lived formost of his life in a castle in Wales. His other books include The Fox in the Attic and The Wooden Shepherdess , the first two volumes of“The Human Predicament,” an unfinished trilogy about the rise of German Fascism and the onset of World War II. FRANCINE PROSE is the author of nine novels, two story collections, and most recently a collection of novellas, Guided Tours of Hell . Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications. A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes Introduction by Francine Prose New York Review Books New York Contents Cover Biographical Note Title Page Introduction Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright and More Information Introduction First the vague premonitory chill—familiar, seductive, unwelcome—then the syrupy aura coating the visible world, through which its colors and edges appear ever more lurid and sharp...The experience of reading Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica (a book in which swoons and febrile states play a critical role) evokes the somatic sensations of falling ill, as a child. Indeed it recalls much about childhood that we thought (or might have wished) we had forgotten, while it labors with sly intelligence to dismantle the moral constructs that our adult selves have so painstakingly assembled. The book opens among the ruined houses of the West Indies, slave quarters and mansions democratically leveled by “earthquake, fire, rain, and deadlier vegetation,” and features a frightening cameo appearance of the Misses Parkers, a pair of bedridden elderly heiresses starved to death by their servants amid ormolu clocks and the bloodied feathers of slaughtered chickens. The scene is grim, fantastical, but the novel’s language is delicate and precise—there is a humorous, chirpy cerebration to its narrative voice—and right away we are conscious of, and troubled by, the dissonance between tone and content—one that turns out, however, to be central to the shocking story Hughes has to tell. For on the surface, A High Wind in Jamaica is an adventure yarn involving five British children captured by a crew of pirates. But underneath this high-spirited romp is a story about murder, senseless violence, gothic sexuality, and capricious betrayal, a narrative that more nearly evokes the pictures of the “outsider”artist Henry Darger than those of, say, Kate Greenaway. When we first meet the Bas-Thornton family, they are living in Jamaica, where Mr. Thornton is involved in “business of some kind.”The children have business of their own, most of it involving the serial cruelty with which they treat the island’s hapless indigenous fauna. In this “paradise for English children,” John, the eldest son, catches rats for the degustation and sport of Tabby, the family’s half-wild pet cat, itself fond of mortal combat with poisonous snakes. Emily, the oldest of three girls, whose deeply peculiar experience and consciousness is at the center of the novel, has a passion for “catching houselizards without their dropping their tails off, which they do when frightened.... Her room was full of these and other pets, some alive, others probably dead.” The younger Thorntons’ sphere is so distant—so different—from that of their parents that they might as well be feral children. Mr. and Mrs. Thornton have no idea who their offspring are, or about the steamy, highly charged dramas that they are secretly enacting.“This sort of life was very peaceful, and might be excellent for nervy children like John; but a child like Emily, thought Mrs. Thornton, whois far from nervy, really needs some sort of stimulus and excitement, or there is a danger of her mind going to sleep altogether for ever. This life was too vegetable.” It takes a typhoon blowing the roof off the family house—an event upstaged for the children by

FAQs

这本书的基调与内容之间有什么突出的矛盾？

叙述表面上带有冒险与兴致盎然的语气，但很快揭示其中包含谋杀、残酷暴力、哥特式性暗示与背叛。引言强调这种“语气与内容的不一致”是整部故事的关键核心。

故事如何从牙买加的环境过渡到英国？

巴斯-桑顿家族最初住在牙买加，父母在某种“生意”中忙碌，而孩子沉浸于对当地动物的残忍游戏。台风掀翻屋顶并引发生死事件后，成年父母认定岛上生活不适合孩子，于是把他们送往英国。

引言中用哪些细节强化了自然与人性的威胁感？

引言反复描写自然与生物生命的阴森感，例如孩子触及海中幼鱼的画面、夕阳带有威胁意味，以及动物出现时带来的不祥预感。与此同时，人类角色也呈现出令人不安的侵扰与暴力，令整体氛围持续压迫。

Aug 25, 2026

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