Caribbean Essay
AAS 18
10/24/12
Sugar Cane Alley Movie Analysis In the film “Sugar Cane Alley” by Euzhan Palcy, Jose the main character is an intelligent young boy who understands the racial divisions in Martinique. As a black boy he witnesses how his people live, in a small village where they all work cutting canes and barely earn a living. Meanwhile the white planters produced immense wealth and lived a life of comfort and prosperity. The black workers are often short on money when they buy food and the planters fined them for the smallest infractions. At a very young age Jose understood that the color of one’s skin defined your position in society, basically the lighter the shade the higher the rank in the social ladder. He noticed this with his mulatto friend Leopold whose father was a white planter and his mother a black woman. Leopold had better life chances than the rest of the black kids because of his background but his only problem was that he could not inherit his father’s last name. The reason being that the white people feared the mulattos climbing up the social ladder and eventually having black people in that higher social class.
“Money and justice are what’s needed to end our suffering” is what the workers sang and believed in, especially Jose’s grandmother Ma Tine who was his biggest supporter. She knew that the only way to escape a life of misery in the sugar cane plantation was through education. She always believed in her grandson and his capacities in school and never let him work in the fields. The old village man Medouze also believed and mentored Jose. He played a big role in Jose’s education by teaching him of his black self-identity by telling him stories of their ancestors and their roots, of how slavery ended and how he wished to go back to Africa. Within these stories Jose learned that “whiteness” was valued as an idea of superiority in the cultural, political, and mental aspects. Also that “blackness” was viewed as an inferior, negative term and
10/24/12
Sugar Cane Alley Movie Analysis In the film “Sugar Cane Alley” by Euzhan Palcy, Jose the main character is an intelligent young boy who understands the racial divisions in Martinique. As a black boy he witnesses how his people live, in a small village where they all work cutting canes and barely earn a living. Meanwhile the white planters produced immense wealth and lived a life of comfort and prosperity. The black workers are often short on money when they buy food and the planters fined them for the smallest infractions. At a very young age Jose understood that the color of one’s skin defined your position in society, basically the lighter the shade the higher the rank in the social ladder. He noticed this with his mulatto friend Leopold whose father was a white planter and his mother a black woman. Leopold had better life chances than the rest of the black kids because of his background but his only problem was that he could not inherit his father’s last name. The reason being that the white people feared the mulattos climbing up the social ladder and eventually having black people in that higher social class.
“Money and justice are what’s needed to end our suffering” is what the workers sang and believed in, especially Jose’s grandmother Ma Tine who was his biggest supporter. She knew that the only way to escape a life of misery in the sugar cane plantation was through education. She always believed in her grandson and his capacities in school and never let him work in the fields. The old village man Medouze also believed and mentored Jose. He played a big role in Jose’s education by teaching him of his black self-identity by telling him stories of their ancestors and their roots, of how slavery ended and how he wished to go back to Africa. Within these stories Jose learned that “whiteness” was valued as an idea of superiority in the cultural, political, and mental aspects. Also that “blackness” was viewed as an inferior, negative term and