Analyse af Catherine Merrimans novelle 'Eating Sugar'

Whether we want to admit it or not, it is a fact that we are afraid of the unknown. It scares us not to know what we are dealing with and at the same time, we dissociate us from it. We are sceptical and insecure. But is it really the right way to deal with the unknown? We will never be familiar with if we don’t give it a chance, otherwise it will always be “the unknown”. Sometimes you have to take a chance. Catherine Merriman expresses the fear of the unknown in the short story “Eating Sugar”. She describes a clash of cultures between a high-class British family and a group of Thai men.

The short story takes place in Thailand, where the young woman, Suzanne is a teacher. Her parents Alex and Eileen who live in England visit her. They are on a family trip in Song Khran to see a waterfall. There is one flashback in the text that takes place in their London flat. The narrator is a third person narrator, actually a non-omniscient, third person narrator. But the narrator knows what Alex is thinking, which makes it omniscient in proportion to Alex. It gives you a conception of that Alex might be more like a main character than Suzanne and Eileen. Though, the narrator is very helpful, because he or she tells a lot about Suzanne and Eileen as well.