Season of Adventure by George Lamming

First published: 1960

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of work: Mid-twentieth century

Locale: The imaginary Caribbean island of San Cristobal

Principal Characters:

• Fola Piggott, the protagonist, a beautiful eighteen-year-old mulatto girl
• “Piggy” Piggott, a police official, Fola’s stepfather of ten years
• Agnes Piggott, Fola’s mother, an attractive, vivacious woman who keeps the circumstances of Fola’s conception a secret
• Chiki, Fola’s friend and lover, an artist with an unusual past
• Charlot Pressior, Fola’s history teacher, a young Englishman fascinated by Caribbean rituals and folk beliefs
• Vice President Raymond, a friend of the Piggott family
• Powell, the leader of a steel drum band who hates the British and those who imitate them
• Gort, a man who lives in the Forest Reserve and lives for his music

The Novel

Season of Adventure takes place two years after San Cristobal has gained its independence from Great Britain. Divided into two parts, “Arriving and Returning” and “The Revolt of the Drums,” the novel traces, through Fola Piggott’s life history, the breakdown of colonialism and construction of the new republic.

The novel opens with the native religious ritual of resurrecting the dead, the Ceremony of Souls. Fola, who has been immersed in British culture through her schooling and her home life, attends the ceremony only to please her teacher, Charlot Pressior, who accompanies her. Once there, however, the music of steel drums helps reestablish her connection with her own culture. She becomes dissatisfied with her sheltered upbringing.

Although she has always felt closer to her stepfather than to her mother, she rejects them both in an attempt to become independent and to discover her roots by finding out who her natural father is. Her obsession with learning this information takes her first to lower-class sections of the city, where she meets Chiki in a bar. Hoping that Chiki can help her, she begins visiting him in the Forest Reserve he owns, home to the very poorest of the islanders, many of whom have no education, no work, and no future. These inhabitants isolate themselves from society and wish only to be left alone, away from harassment by the police.

One day Chiki paints a portrait of a man neither he nor Fola has ever seen. Shortly afterward, Vice President Raymond is assassinated. The police arrive, determined to find the murderer among the residents of the Forest Reserve. Constable “Piggy” Piggott, in charge of the roundup of suspects, has allowed his men to beat and handcuff the suspects when Fola appears and announces that she knows who killed the vice president. Lying to save the men of the Forest Reserve, Fola insists that the assassin is her father and that Chiki has painted a portrait of him. The men of the Forest Reserve are released, and copies of the portrait are displayed all over the island. No one, however, can put a name to the face. In the meantime, Powell, the leader of a steel drum band, has disappeared.

Piggott is relieved of his duties because of his family’s involvement. He beats Fola and physically throws her out of the house. The Piggotts’ servant takes Fola in and notifies Chiki, who then cares for her in his own home. In his absence, Powell appears and tries to kill Fola. To him, she symbolizes hated British authoritarianism. Chiki arrives and saves her, and Powell disappears, never to return.

The government never learns that Powell is the assassin and continues looking for the man in the portrait. He is not found. Frustrated by their inability to solve the case, the government officials connect the assassination to the “backwardness” of their countrymen. In consequence, a proclamation barring the playing of steel drums is issued. Knowing that the lack of music will kill the spirit of the people, Fola and Chiki send word across the island to play the music at an appointed time, in defiance of the edict. Through a quirk on the part of Jim Aswell, the rich distributor of Coca Cola who allows one of his workers to deliver the message of defiance, the islanders believe that this powerful businessman supports the drum boys against the government. With such a sanction, the steel drum bands from all over the island, led by Gort, meet in Freedom Square, play their music, and depart unmolested. Two months later, a new government takes over, led by a man who knows the difficulties of independence and also respects the old ways.

The Characters

Fola Piggott, a strong heroine, has been compared by many critics to Bita Plant, featured in Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom (1933). Not quite eighteen years old when the novel opens, Fola changes from an obedient young girl to a rebellious, and then finally independent, young woman, paralleling the changes in San Cristobal during its emergence from colony to republic. Fola, through her attendance at the Ceremony of Souls, begins her backward glance at her own past and that of her culture. When she decides that she is Fola and “other than Fola,” she starts her exploration into her roots. “Other than Fola” is the name she privately gives herself in order to become an independent woman who is no longer bound by upper-middle-class values. Other than Fola is the person who longs to understand the past.

Her mother’s marriage to Piggott and her parents’ desire for upward mobility have provided her with a past based on British ruling-class standards. Her rejection of her family also signals her rejection of their values.

The two artist figures, Gort and Chiki, play important roles in the novel. Gort, a drummer, is a folk artist whose art is directly inspired by the peasant community of the Forest Reserve. Chiki, a painter, first provides a political perspective on the role of the artist in a changing society. By the end of the novel, both artist figures make the connection between art and politics, and both become artists who are teachers. Their actions show the rest of the Forest Reserve inhabitants how to live.

Powell symbolizes a part of the peasant community. His rejection of and hatred for all things British (even Fola, simply because she is a product of British-ruled schooling and upbringing) shows what can happen when the will of the people is frustrated. Originally a rebel, he becomes an assassin and escapes from the island.

Agnes Piggott, victim both of the ruling class and of Chiki’s brother, who raped her and perhaps fathered Fola, keeps the circumstances of Fola’s conception secret, not to further her own ends but for Fola’s sake. Her love for her daughter is manifest throughout Season of Adventure. She is also instrumental in keeping her husband from sharing in the ill-gotten riches of Vice President Raymond.

Piggott, Agnes’s husband, loves Fola unqualifiedly until he learns of her deviation from the imitation of British lifestyle he has provided for her. A seemingly kind man, his true unpleasantness is revealed in his behavior toward his servants and the men of the Forest Reserve. In many ways, Piggott stands for the nearly inevitable mishandling of the peasant population by the first republic’s government. From the servant class himself, he aspires not to share power with others of similar background; instead, he wishes to wield power over them.

Charlot Pressior, the history teacher from Great Britain, seems fascinated with West Indian culture. His fascination leads him to convince Fola to attend the Ceremony of Souls with him, but he looks upon the ritual and the peasants who perform as if he were an anthropologist studying the customs of the natives. Fola’s infatuation with him parallels her early infatuation with everything British. Only when he leaves the island can she become free to pursue her own cultural past.

Critical Context

The novel did not emerge as a kind of literature in the English-speaking Caribbean until the twentieth century. After a slow start until the 1930’s, West Indian literature began to gain international recognition with the works of Claude McKay of Jamaica, the first Caribbean novelist to write of the experience of the native peoples of the islands. His third novel, Banana Bottom, includes the themes of alienation and exile that inform much of the later literature of the Caribbean. In the period between 1949 and 1959, more than fifty novels written by dozens of different Caribbean writers were published. Many of these novels dealt with the themes McKay had first delineated.

Writing twenty years after McKay, George Lamming has dominated the Caribbean literary arena, with six novels published between 1953 and 1972. He garnered strong reviews and a reputation as an important writer with the publication of his first novel, In the Castle of My Skin (1953). That novel and his fourth, Season of Adventure, have been his most popular and most critically acclaimed works. His other novels include The Emigrants (1954), Of Age and Innocence (1958), Water with Berries (1971), and Natives of My Person (1971). Lamming has remarked on several occasions that these six novels make up one long book, beginning with the semiautobiographical In the Castle of My Skin. These novels parallel the social and cultural upheaval involved in changing from a colony to a nation. His acclaimed collection of essays, The Pleasures of Exile (1960), traces the cultural and intellectual consciousness inherent in Caribbean literature.

His interest in social issues has linked him with other important black writers such as Langston Hughes, Jacques Roumain, and Richard Wright. All of his works have focused on colonialism and nationhood, dealing with the experiences of the native population of the Caribbean islands. Scholars agree that Lamming’s work has been groundbreaking. His influence on later West Indian writers remains unquestioned in critical circles.

Although he works primarily in England and the United States and has accepted invitations from several universities to fill the position of writer in residence, Lamming has kept his ties with his native island of Barbados. He returns to the Caribbean frequently to assist the Barbados Workers’ Union, involving himself in various educational and cultural projects.

Bibliography

Birbalsingh, Frank. “George Lamming in Conversation with Birbalsingh.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 23, no. 1 (1988): 182-188. Interview with Lamming in which he discusses his first six novels, stating that they can be read as one book, beginning with colonial childhood in In the Castle of My Skin. He also credits Rastafarianism with providing the linkage between concepts of Africa and the Caribbean.

Birney, Earle. “Meeting George Lamming in Jamaica.” Canadian Literature 95 (Winter, 1982): 16-28. Poet Earle Birney reminisces about his initial contacts with Lamming’s novels, then describes his unplanned meeting with Lamming. The focus of the article concerns Lamming’s political involvement with the Caribbean and how that involvement is demonstrated in Lamming’s novels. This piece also includes the author’s and Lamming’s views of other well-known Caribbean figures.

Cudjoe, Selwyn R. Resistance and the Caribbean Novel. Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1979. Discusses Lamming’s novels, particularly Of Age and Innocence and Season of Adventure. Points out that Lamming was the first Caribbean writer to use William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (pr. 1611, pb. 1623) as a point of departure for his novels.

Forbes, Curdella. From Nation to Diaspora: Samuel Selvon, George Lamming and the Cultural Performance of Gender. Mona, Jamaica: UWIPress, 2005. Analyzes Season of Adventure and Of Age and Innocence, arguing that Lamming constructs gender in both texts as an anticolonial discourse.

Jonas, Joyce. Anancy in the Great House: Ways of Reading West Indian Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990. Examines the related problems of language and perception as thematic motifs in the works of George Lamming and Wilson Harris. Employs the concepts of the Great House and Anancy (a trickster figure of West Indian literature) to present a worldview of opposites in Season of Adventure.

Joseph, Margaret Paul. Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Explores Lamming’s novels as parallel to the social and political evolution of Caliban, Lamming’s own image of the West Indian. Concludes that only in Season of Adventure does Lamming reach some sense of affirmation.

Maldonado-Diaz, Arturo. “George Lamming: A Descriptive Bibliography of Criticism and Reviews.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 16, no. 2 (1982): 165-173. Provides an annotated bibliography, particularly helpful as an introduction to Lamming studies. A complete listing of critical articles and reviews of Lamming’s novels and essays up to 1982.

Pouchet Paquet, Sandra. The Novels of George Lamming. London: Heinemann, 1982. Discusses Lamming’s first six novels, emphasizing their political themes. Underscores Lamming’s status as a major novelist, providing a comprehensive overview of his work. Each chapter thereafter concentrates on one of Lamming’s novels, providing a close reading. The critic concludes that Season of Adventure is Lamming’s most positive work, demonstrating the promise of a peasant and middle-class alliance through the characters of Gort and Fola.