Richard Arthur Warren Hughes (1900–1976)
Författare till Storm över Jamaica
Om författaren
Foto taget av: Автор: неизвестно - https://fantlab.ru/autor7666, Добросовестное использование, https://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6870784
Verk av Richard Arthur Warren Hughes
Plays : The Sister's Tragedy, A Comedy of Good and Evil, The Man Born to Be Hanged, Danger (1966) 3 exemplar
Best-in-Books: Squire / Quiet Under the Sun / High Wind in Jamaica / Captives / Paris / Green Hills of Africa (1955) 2 exemplar
A Night at a Cottage 2 exemplar
Richard Hughes: An Omnibus 2 exemplar
The Ghost 1 exemplar
Meditative ode on vision 1 exemplar
Ecstatic ode on vision 1 exemplar
A Rabbit and a Leg 1 exemplar
Associerade verk
The New Junior Classics Volume 02: Stories of Wonder and Magic (1912) — Bidragsgivare — 201 exemplar
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Namn enligt folkbokföringen
- Hughes, Richard Warren Arthur
- Andra namn
- Hughes, Richard
- Födelsedag
- 1900-04-19
- Avled
- 1976-04-28
- Begravningsplats
- St. Michael's on the Beaches church (Llanfihangel-y-traethau), Ynys, Gwynedd, Wales
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- UK
- Födelseort
- Weybridge, Surrey, England, UK
- Dödsort
- Ynys, Gwynedd, Wales, UK
- Utbildning
- Oxford University (Oriel College)
- Yrken
- journalist
- Relationer
- Wells, C.M. (son-in-law)
- Priser och utmärkelser
- Order of the British Empire (OBE)
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Listor
Priser
Du skulle kanske också gilla
Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 25
- Även av
- 13
- Medlemmar
- 3,347
- Popularitet
- #7,631
- Betyg
- 3.8
- Recensioner
- 103
- ISBN
- 117
- Språk
- 10
The boundary between childhood and adulthood is presented as a yawning chasm with mutual incomprehension. The children have not yet learned to be "human", a comprehensive transformation which comes with adulthood. Their minds and nature are alien to adults: "I would rather extract information from the devil himself than from a child," a lawyer at the end of the book confesses. Some of the pirates feel affection for the children, these strange creatures, but this difference can provoke dark emotions as well. There is disturbing pedophilia: the oldest child, 13 year old Margaret, becomes the lover of the first mate on the pirate ship, and its captain, Jonsen, in a charged moment while drunk caresses Emily, a child of about 10 or 11, then is overcome by shame, while she does not understand what happened.
The pirates are stupefied by what happens when they capture another vessel and transport its captain to their ship for safekeeping while they sack it. Emily, seeing this captain straining to reach a knife with which to cut himself loose, grabs the knife herself and in a frenzy stabs and slashes him to death. The pirates return from the captured vessel to find the body in a pool of blood and are gobsmacked. But the children have already displayed an apparent cold indifference to death - Emily's 10 year old brother John had broken his neck in an accidental fall while they were with the pirates, and been promptly forgotten about by all.
After rescue, Emily, with what amount of conscious calculation is left unspecified, leaves the impression that Jonsen murdered that captain, in a dramatic courtroom scene. Jonsen is sentenced to death for the murder, while in the novel's final scene, Emily is integrated into a new classroom, while Hughes writes of the little murderer, with a note of ominousness, that "perhaps God could have picked out from among them which was Emily: but I am sure that I could not."
This novel bears obvious parallels with the later novel Lord of the Flies, and I'm left wondering about its portrayal of human nature in childhood. There's an actual real life Lord of the Flies type situation that I read a news story about recently, and happily the children in real life did not become amoral wild things who discard civilization, but rather cooperated and lived peaceably until rescue. On the other hand, you have child soldiers forced into various conflicts worldwide and these children can reportedly become as vicious as you please. However they are forced into it by adults, they don't choose it. Still, it's true that the brains of children are still developing and maturing past their teenage years, so the gulf between childhood and adulthood is real enough, and children surely don't grasp the concepts of consequences and permanence like adults do. There will always be room to explore the difference, and the similarities.… (mer)