Analyse af 'Eating sugar' og kulturmøder

We all know how frightening it is to meet persons with a culture so different from your own. You do not know how to act, speak and appear. Everything is so different and scary that we often choose the easy way out; to act like “they” are unpredictable and unreliable. But when we do that we prevent ourselves from living life as it should. This is how the main characters in “Eating sugar” have chosen to live their life.

The story takes place in Thailand. Alex and Eileen have come to Thailand in April because their daughter, Suzanne, is working as an English teacher. Alex and Eileen are in Thailand in the week of the Thai New Year holiday, Song Khran, where the weather is hundred degrees, even under lowering skies.

In the story we meet three main characters the parents Alex and Eileen and their daughter Suzanne. The father, Alex is a man who is uncomfortable outside his private comfort zone. Alex´s metal condition changes through the ending of the story. As we first get familiar with Alex we get an impression that he is a man who is afraid to live life including its dangers. A long the way Alex draws parallels between an experience he and Eileen have had. Back in the days they have tried LSD with gave them a terrible anxious for a few minutes and then it had turned to a sugar moment. Line 84-85 and 90-91 “ She had taken a tab of LSD – as he himself had done – and was having a bad, deeply anxious, few minutes.” and “ But after the sugar moment Eileen had gone on to enjoy herself.” . Exhaustion, hopelessness and anxiety are three dominating adjectives that describe Alex in this unknown situation. We meet his exhaustion and hopelessness in his frustration for these four Thai men. Alex sees Thailand as filled with pirates and bandits even though it is the Land of Smiles also described as “Amazing Thailand”. This is not a country where Alex can find his “old self”. Through Alex´s thoughts we get a picture of a man who back in the days was wild, free and not afraid to live life. But all that have changed as he became older.