77 pages • 2 hours read
Jack DavisNo Sugar
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Soap and Hygiene
Aside from water, soap is the most basic element of cleanliness. It is significant that soap is one of the first things taken from the natives in No Sugar. An unclean child cannot attend school. A child who is not in school cannot learn. An unclean body is more likely to contract and spread germs and disease. A diseased body can be relocated with the stroke of a government official’s pen.
The Aborigines are seen as a dirty people, both metaphorically and literally. By withholding soap, the whites can see them as being as dirty on the outside as they already believe them to be on the inside. The removal of soup allows them physical evidence to vindicate their toxic, racist ideology.
Billy’s Whip
Each time Billy’s whip appears, the playwright uses it to make a startling point. A whip has little practical value unless being used as an object of coercion. Anyone who wields it acts in the service of making others follow orders. To see the whip in the hands of Billy, a black man, as he uses it to wrangle other natives on behalf of Neville’s orders, is meant to raise questions about his complicity in the subjugation of the families. However, the last time Billy produces his whip, it is a gift for Joe and Mary, a symbol of his growing respect for them. It also inspires the hope of change. Perhaps Joe will go forward and use it for a better purpose.
Sugar
Sugar is a commonplace treat for most people. In No Sugar, it is a symbol of what the Aborigines are denied by the white authorities. Sugar is a small ingredient, but is present in innumerable foods and dishes. Taking it away limits the options for making certain foods delicious. When the Matron tries the sugarless quandongs and finds them sour and bitter, it is a reflection on the daily experiences of the Aborigines. Removing something as simple as sugar from their lives has far-reaching effects. And when one right is removed, it makes it easier to take away the next one.
Songs
Singing is a pleasant pastime, a means of preserving the indigenous culture of the Aborigines, as well as a weapon. The songs of the natives are often used in No Sugar to make statements. When the children sing the hymn on Australia Day, it is meant as a tribute. However, given the hypocrisy and tone-deafness of the event itself, the song is almost a mockery. When the Aborigines burst into a parody of the song, it infuriates Neville as much as anything that has happened so far. When Jimmy sings in jail, it nearly drives his jail keepers out of their minds. It is even worse that the natives can sing in their own language, because their own music provides them an impenetrable refuge that the white authorities cannot stop.
