ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two men often thought to inhabit opposite ends of the political spectrum: Roger Mais, lauded as a figurehead of the nationalist struggle, and his friend John Hearne, characterised retrospectively as an elitist, wedded to an outdated vision of Jamaica. In the early 1950s, however, Mais served as a formative political influence on Hearne, who was described as ‘hero worshipping’ the older man (Carew 15/10/2009). Both were similarly committed to rendering imaginatively the longed-for unity the nationalist project depended upon and, unlike many of their peers, they wrote almost exclusively about their own island setting. In this, their work is in keeping with the nationalist emphasis on the necessarily close relationship between an artist and their society, as exemplified by politician, Norman Manley’s claim that the aim of a writer is to: ‘simply and naturally reflect the life, the thought, the struggles, the problems of their own people and their own country’ (Manley 1971, 109). Despite writing towards this ideal of national coherence, Mais and Hearne’s work provides a valuable insight into the challenges faced by those committed to West Indian nationalism, a movement led by elite, educated men, which focused on mobilising the poor black majority. Although both made earnest efforts to portray a more equal Jamaica, they nevertheless struggled to reconcile the privileges of their respective, light-skinned middle-class backgrounds with their desire to give voice to the ordinary man. Accordingly, their work oscillates between an attraction to an earthy, peasant virility and a more ambivalent, voyeuristic response to folk life and customs. It is therefore far from being a straightforward conduit for nationalist doctrine, being more aligned with Suzanne Scafe’s claim that even ‘the most ardent demands for a culture that reflected the lives and experiences of the ordinary people of Jamaica’ were ‘not without traces of anxiety, fear and feelings of ambivalence’ (Scafe Spring 2010, 67).
