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.
Themes
Systematic Racism
The evils of racism are amplified exponentially when they have the support of the State. In No Sugar, racism does not merely exist as a series of insults or local interactions. It begins at the highest levels. It is codified in policy. Worst of all, it is seen by those who wield it as the right thing to do. If the laws of the land are predicated on racist actions and ideas, not being racist can itself become a punishable offense. When a leader believes that subjugating another is for the other person’s good, there will be a trickle-down effect to the entire system.
One of the greatest challenges to the eradication of racism is that it is passed down generationally. Over time, the amount of overt racists in a population will decrease. But the fact that forty years from now there may be fewer racists is of little comfort to the people who are the victims of racism today. There is nothing in the world of No Sugar except time that will eventually ease the pains of the Aborigines.
The Importance of Family
The only consistent support the Millimurras and Mundays see in No Sugar is from each other. And it is not just for love and emotional guidance. Traditions are always passed down through the generations, but in the case of the natives, many of those traditions take the form of survival skills. When the government decrees the end to the meat rations, if the natives do not know how to hunt, they will not have meat to eat. If medicine is withheld, they have no recourse to cure themselves of various ailments unless someone teaches them how to do it.
Civilization
Author Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called “The White Man’s Burden,” which mirrors the attitudes of the white authorities in No Sugar. Essentially, the white man’s burden is the idea that occupiers have a duty to care for—and to civilize—the indigenous people whose lands they have colonized. Unfortunately, the conquerors are the ones who get to define what civilization looks like.
In No Sugar, the notion of civilization is hugely contradictory. The whites speak of the Aborigines’ need to become more like them in certain ways, while denying them the resources that would make it possible. They want the Aborigines to be cleaner, but cut their soap rations. They want them to be more educated, ostensibly, but do not allow them books to read. They want them to rely on reason rather than emotion, but then impose unreasonable demands on the natives and punish them when they react emotionally to injustice.
The Aborigines in the play are presented as far more civilized than the whites. They have fewer advantages and privileges, but that is not in their control.
