”Mandrake” gives a very interesting personal reaction to the novel as a customer review here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Wind-J...ind+in+Jamaica
It has plenty of spoilers so you might want to read it through first.
My first reaction is that the approach to children is reminiscent of
Lord of the Flies. Civilisation (represented by the external world) is an artificial construct which has little ability to impact on the basic tendency of humans to be selfish and amoral. The endings to both books are resolutions of rather than solutions to the conflicts presented.
One should not take the resemblance too far. In fact, there are a number of significant differences between the two works. Golding is writing what is very much a psychological allegory of of the means by which human beings embrace evil and the way it is reflected in human civilisation as a whole. There is a temptation to see this in HWJ in that the children--Emily in particular--do function from a pragmatic morality rather than from "civilised" ideals and will accept betrayal and falsehood as working methods. But the children in Hughes' novel are in the presence of adults and are not isolated on an island microcosm.
I think, too, that while this novel is bleak it is not as utterly desolate and dark as Golding’s Work.