The Masson family had left Normandy in May 1940 to escape the German occupation of Paris. They waited for visas to be issued in Marseille until 31 March 1941, when they boarded the cargo ship Carimare bound for Martinique. In Fort-de-France, Masson met up with Breton, the artist Wifredo Lam and the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who also stopped off on the island before heading back to New York. He also met many writers, including Aimé and Suzanne Césaire. Around this time, Masson and Breton wrote Martinique, charmeuse de serpents (published in 1948) in the form of a poetic conversation: ‘The forest envelops us; we knew all about it and its spells before we came. Do you remember a drawing I did called ‘Délire végétal’? This delirium is here, we touch it, we participate in it. The title of the collection is borrowed from Douanier Rousseau's famous painting, La charmeuse de serpents (1907), ‘that fascinating painting in the Louvre. Since we've been here, we've come across it every day on our way. It has lost none of its mystery and attraction’. The text is entirely illustrated by André Masson.

The Martinique period left its mark on André Masson's work, primarily in the form of Indian ink drawings. The island's profusion of wild vegetation fascinated the artist - Masson's images of Martinique see the leaves completely invaded by trunks and foliage, in a kind of horror vacui. Masson's art is an art of metamorphosis and the primordial erotic forces of the earth. André Masson's Jungles can be compared with Wifredo Lam's Jungles.