The Novel

The Wine of Astonishment is the story of the struggle of a Spiritual Baptist community, from the passing of the Prohibition Ordinance in 1917 until the lifting of the ban in 1951. It is told by one of the members of the church. Eva begins her narrative of the trials and sufferings of those of the Spiritual Baptist faith with the notion that there is a purpose behind it all. The only hope for the villagers of Bonasse, as they see it, lies in Ivan Morton, a teacher turned politician, the new man in the legislative council of the country. They would like Morton to intervene on their behalf to lift the ban so that they can be free to worship in the way that they choose. Morton disappoints them and reveals his loyalty when he abandons the house that his father build with his own two hands. With his wife, he leaves the village, taking nothing, to live in the big house on top of Bonasse hill looking over the sea and the whole village. The house, which some say is haunted, has itself been abandoned by the Richardsons, colonials who have returned to England. Meanwhile, the village undergoes significant changes with the coming of the war. An American base is established in the country, resulting in prostitution and the corruption of the youth. At the same time, the Spiritual Baptists suffer persecution at the hands of the police and government. At the center of this harassment is the cruel and relentless Corporal Prince, whom Bolo, the warrior and champion stick fighter, suggests should be killed. Bolo challenges Prince as Prince takes the worshippers to jail, but he is beaten and arrested by the police while the others look on passively. For his action, Bolo is sent to jail for three years of hard labor. While the warrior Bolo is in jail, the people of Bonasse, believing this to be the time of the intellectual, work to elect Morton to the legislative council, seeing him as a man to plead [their] cause, to change the law, to right the wrong that is going on against [them] for those long years. Bolo returns from jail only to find his efforts at making an honest living frustrated by the bureaucracy. Contemptuous of the community, Bolo challenges the stickmen to do battle with him, but no one obliges. From this point on, the warrior in Bolo degenerates into the badjohn. He terrorizes the Bonasse community with his recklessness and vexation and wickedness boiling up in him. The communitys outrage reaches a limit when Bolo takes the two daughters of one of the villagers to live with him. Determined to show him we is a people, Bee, the leader of the Spiritual Baptists, decides that they have to go against him with strength and anger. They must take up their manhood challenge that [they] turn away from for too long. Bolo is finally killed by the police in a showdown. Shortly thereafter, with the approach of elections, a law is passed allowing the Baptists the freedom to worship in their own way. When the church congregation gathers to celebrate its freedom, however, the Spirit just wouldnt come, in spite of the impassioned preaching, incense burning, and candle lighting. The sadness that Eva, Bee, and the others experience at this realization is assuaged by the music of the steel pans that they hear on their way home. They are convinced that the pan music has in it the same spirit that we miss in our church.

The Characters
Since all the characters in the novel are presented through the eyes of Eva, it is important that she is presented as a credible character. A member of the Baptist church herself and an ordinary peasant woman, she is capable of insightful thinking and profound analysis of her society. Lovelaces effective use of dialect in Evas mouth makes her that much more reliable in her judgment of people and events. Bolo, the warrior turned badjohn, represents rebelliousness within the society. As warrior, he is both admired and feared. He is the only one to stand up to the police and proclaim the rights of the people, but when the people refuse to support him and fail to stand up for their rights, he turns to terrorizing them, forcing them to find their peoplehood. Bee, on the other hand, represents the voice of moderation and patience. Unwilling to challenge the authorities directly, he seeks to use the political and legal machinery to change things. His slow approach results in a falling off of the churchs membership and the loss of the Spirit in the church. Bolo tries to show Bee the inadequacy of this approach. In time, Bee echoes Bolos sentiments: We shoulda never stop worshipping in the true Baptist way and we shoulda fight them, we shoulda kill Prince. Eva, with her commonsense approach to survival, reminds him of the wisdom of his decision. Ivan Mortons character is used to discuss a phenomenon within Caribbean society, that of the self-seeking politician who takes the people for fools, bribing them at election time but doing nothing for them for the rest of his term. Morton is the typical neocolonial puppet who seeks to take over from the colonial overlord while perpetuating all the bad habits of his predecessor. Armed with his colonial education, Morton thinks of himself as the natural leader of the people, but when he is elected, he abandons his village, rejects the dark-skinned Eulalie whom he had made pregnant, and goes to live in a colonial mansion overlooking the village. From this vantage point, it is easy for Morton to betray the interests of the community. The lack of third-person narration in the novel places limitations on the depth of characterization, since it is from Evas restricted knowledge that the characters are presented. Moreover, characters are presented as types or symbols; they are one-dimensional. Each one represents a specific type or mode of social behavior. No one changes except Bolo, who moves from being a warrior to being a badjohn with respect for no one.

Themes and Meanings

Lovelace is consistently focused on the powerlessness of the black masses in the Caribbean and the consequent struggle they must go through to achieve dignity and peoplehood. In The Wine of Astonishment, the Spiritual Baptists are powerless against colonial law, which defines them as illegal and illegitimate. The result is that they cannot worship in the true Baptist way. They cannot ring their bell, burn their incense, and light their candles; nor do their ministers have the authority to marry anybody.

Refusing to exercise the power that rightfully belongs to them, the people in their collective impotence look upon the scholar, intellectual, and politicianin this case, Ivan Mortonto fight for them. In an obvious criticism of Caribbean political leadership, Lovelace depicts Morton as a man who alienates himself from his community and finally betrays that community as he promotes his self-interest. The betrayal makes him one with the colonial overlord in the eyes of the village. He comes to the people only when he is seeking their votes, but once he is elected, he has no use for them. In time, the people come to see through these election gimmicks and begin to realize that this sudden rush to answer applications for land, this sudden rush to put up crash programs to give a man a job for a week or two is just a trick for election. Lovelace suggests that it is only when the people realize that the power is with them, only when they look inward to themselves, will they be able to achieve their dignity as a people. Eva, clearsighted woman that she is, reveals this notion to her husband when he seeks to lay the blame for their predicament on Ivan Morton: For if we didnt have the strength, if we didnt have the power, if we wasnt standing up on our own as a people, what was he there standing up for? We is a lot of people but we aint a people. This is Lovelaces way of criticizing the people of the Caribbean for placing too much emphasis on their political leaders and insufficient emphasis on themselves as a people. Lovelace knows that the struggle for peoplehood demands sacrifice, for which the people must accept full responsibility. In the novel, Bolo embodies that sacrifice. He must die so that the people can survive. Very early in the novel, Eva observes that the warrior was dying in the village as the chief figure. The change in focus from warrior to scholar means that the people are ready to do away with one while embracing the other. Once Bolo performs his role, there is no use for him, but he must first challenge the people to locate their power within themselves by standing up for their right to worship in the Baptist way. Bolo shows them how, but they refuse to take heed. He alone must bear the brunt of the beating by Corporal Prince and his men. Bolo loses respect for them, concluding that they are not prepared to challenge the law in order to continue worshiping in their way. It is no wonder that he confronts the whole community of Bonasse in his deterioration from warrior to badjohn. It is only at the very end that Bee understands that Bolos role is to be the sacrifice. To be the one terrible enough and strong enough and close enough to our heart to drive us to take up our manhood challenge that we turn away from for too long. Bolos role is to push the people until they have to stand up against him. Only then can they redeem themselves, but he has to die in the process. The Wine of Astonishment celebrates more than the peoples struggle for freedom. It also celebrates the culture that nurtures that struggle and that in turn is created out of the struggle. As in The Dragon Cant Dance (1979), Lovelace is principally concerned with the culture that the masses of African people of the Caribbean have been able to develop. Whether it is through stick fighting, playing mas, worshiping in the Baptist faith, or playing in steel bands, Lovelace is fascinated by the manner in which black people have been able to use their retention of African culture, adopting and transforming that culture in the process.

The stick fighting that Bolo excels in was more the dance, the adventure, the ceremony to show off the beauty of the warrior. Bolos skills are the skills of the people. He wants them to know, through his skill, that they are people too, with drums and song and warriors. As the society undergoes changes, the culture changes as well. Some aspects are lost altogether; others are transformed. The warrior tradition that sustains and gives impetus to Bolo disappears as the society welcomes education as the way to win the battle to be somebody. Similarly, the Baptist church, which represents the syncretism of African and Christian religious beliefs and practices, is a living testimony to the black culture of the people. The religion is testimony of the adaptability of the peoples culture, and it is precisely the African elements in it that the authorities seek to repress. They condemn the form of worship, and they forbid the singing of hymns, the lighting of candles, and the burning of incense. The result is that the church gradually loses the Spirit, central to making it a black church. All is not lost, however; the Spirit missing in the church has gone over to the steel band. Both Eva and Bee recognize it as the same Spirit. As they pass the steel band tent, with music being played by some young fellows, bare-back and with tear-up clothes, they get the feeling that they are passing in front of something holy. In typical Lovelace style, the sacred and the secular have been brought together. The struggle has been painful, but there is hope at the end. The people and their culture survive, making their struggle for dignity, for their peoplehood and their freedom, a realizable objective.

Critical Context
Fourth among his published novels, The Wine of Astonishment shares with Lovelaces other works his continuing concern for the black oppressed people of the Caribbean. Lovelace is not afraid to confront the social issues of the day. The prevalence of political corruption, the destructiveness of misguided warriorship, the Western and class bias against African culture (in this case a religion), and betrayal by black middle-class intellectuals are issues that plague the postcolonial societies of the region. Lovelace, unlike other writers who address the problems of the society, is not altogether hopeless in his prognostication. The ills of the society and the corruptibility of individuals and institutions are balanced by the ability of the people to adapt and survive, constantly creating new cultural forms to ensure their dignity and personhood. The spirit may leave the church, but the steel band is created to inherit that spirit. Another achievement of Lovelaces The Wine of Astonishment is his ability to deliver his narrative through Eva, herself a Spiritual Baptist. He captures both the language and the sentiments of the Baptist community with a sensibility that suggests a deep understanding of that religion. That he can sustain both for an entire novel is truly a mark of great skill as a writer. In the introduction to the 1986 edition of his text, critic Marjorie Thorpe notes that this linguistic skill from the outset, encourages the reader to believe that he is in fact listening to the artless, unstructured narrative of a simple peasant woman.

Just as he had infused the rhythm of the steel band and calypso into the language of the ordinary folk in The Dragon Cant Dance, Lovelace infuses the rhythm of the Trinidad dialect and the Baptist sermon into the language of Eva in The Wine of Astonishment. At times, this language reflects the spirit possession characteristic of the Baptist church. As he had done in his previous novel, he eschews grammatical convention and chooses to focus on capturing the rhythm of the Baptist religious service in his writing.

Bibliography
Cudjoe, Selwyn. A Critical Analysis of the Works of Earl Lovelace. Trinidad and Tobago Review 6, no. 10 (1982): 1415. Contends that the thrust of the novel is to counterpose the badjohn/warrior tradition to the intellectual/scholarly tradition. Criticizes Lovelace for not making a more comprehensive analysis of the social forces that cause the breakdown of the society. Faults the text for not adopting a socialist perspective to the problems of the society. Green, Jenny. Lovelaces Wine of Astonishment. Trinidad and Tobago Review 6, no. 4 (1982). Points out that Lovelace deals with the significance of history and roots as well as the implications of social reliance on the intellectual. Lovelace is able to capture the voice of the people in his use of the language. Green sees the characters as symbols of forces at work in Trinidadian society. Lowhar, Syl. Ideology in The Wine of Astonishment: Two Views. Trinidad and Tobago Review 10, nos. 1112 (1988): 4143. Taking a historical approach to the novel, Lowhar sees the major events of the novel as having their parallels in the actual history of the society and explores the implications of these events. Thorpe, Marjorie. In Search of the West Indian Hero: A Study of Earl Lovelaces Fiction. In Critical Issues in West Indian Literature: Selected Papers from West Indian Literature Conferences, 19811983, edited by Erika Sollish Smilowitz and Roberta Quarles Knowles. Parkersburg, Iowa: Caribbean Books, 1984. Argues that the search for a hero-figure establishes the basis of Earl Lovelaces four published novels. Insists that Lovelace makes the distinction between false heroes, whom the society esteems, and true hero-figures, whom the novelist celebrates. Thorpe, Marjorie. Introduction to The Wine of Astonishment, by Earl Lovelace. London: Heinemann, 1986. Notes the literary advantages of choosing Eva as a narrator of his novel. Argues that Lovelace focuses on the theme of betrayal. The Wine of Astonishment celebrates a peoples struggle for freedom and dignity as human beings. It speaks to the oppressed everywhere.