Eating Sugar

one who protects and guards his family. However, he doesn’t really represent a strong or a good father or a man in the text. Because when his daughter asks him how he is. Alex lies and says that he is fine and he is dishonest with his daughter: “You OK, Dad” Suzanne asked…Fine, Fine just hot” . “How would we find the flat again? She was right, of course. He didn’t want to think about it – their utter helplessness – but at least she did” . This quotation shows that he isn’t a strong father because his daughter leads them to the right way for the reason that he feels helpless and powerless and weak. He doesn’t know how to find the road. He doesn’t either want to think about it. He lets his daughter to worry about it and think about it. Alex is also very grateful to Eileen because Eileen’s constantly-expressed nervousness and fear keeps Alex own fear covered up. Although, they are lost, his daughter, Suzanne, is more calmed and she is very positive. She tries to calm her parents down. Suzanne is an English teacher in Thailand and her parents were forced to take the trip to Thailand in the month April because “the week of the Thai New Year holiday, Song Khran, was the only time she had off” . When they were to the waterfall there were some other Thai people and they were the only one who was westerns. The Thai people called the western people “Farangs” because they were white and high status freaks. However, on their way they meet four stocky Thai men, who didn’t really speak very well English, but one of them did understand English, but he spoke English and Thai mixed. He is described as a “dark-skinned muscular man maybe around thirty” . “Then was distracted by his companions who were waving their arms at the emptiness, uttering cries of astonishment (…)”. This quotations shows that the four Thai men were very surprised and astonished when they saw Alex and Suzanne and Eileen, because they are not used to see tourists or a foreigners in their country. They were very curious to know where they are from. They also thought that Suzanne was a film star perhaps because she looked good and she is a white girl. They were disappointed when they found out that she was a teacher and they were stunned that she could speak Thai. One of the Thai men was very open about himself. He told them that his name was Wirut and that he is from the east, near Surin. Unlike Eileen who was very cruel and prejudiced because of the way the Thai men spoke English. She thought that he was drunk and she fears the four Thai men. But Suzanne tries to reprove her mom: “An Issan. Very rural. I don’t suppose he meets many westerners (…)” . In this quotation it shows that Suzanne is more friendly and open towards stranger, perhaps because she is a teacher and she meets a lot of different kinds of people, who have different cultures. Unlike her Mother and father who takes distances from the Thai men. Alex gets very scared at the end of the story. He shows his fear in the last page where he finds out that he is the only man to protect his family: “Alex was aware again of his heart thumping. There were four of them, and only himself, with his wife and daughter” . Suzanne gives a bottle of beer to Wirut and it seems that Wirut haven’t tasted it before. The beer is something new for him. He gets a little excited. Eileen gets more relaxed when she realizes that they are also human beings and they behave as human beings. “Eileen picked up the beer bottle Wirut had opened for her, and sat down beside Suzanne (…) Alex heard the words, and looked up. She should have sounded anxious. But she didn’t. So no one was responding, reassuring him. He felt suddenly deserted” . In this quotation Alex shows more of his fear because now Eileen doesn’t keep Alex fear covered up. He realizes that he has responsible for his family. “This place was dangerous. Danger on all sides. The heat. The dark. The men. The forest” .This quotation illustrates that his fear takes over. He thinks that everything in Thailand is dangerous. Suzanne tries to calm his father down. But Alex freaks more out. He thinks that the four men are dangerous and they could be up to anything. He is getting more prejudiced towards the four guys. He doesn’t trust the four guys because they are strangers and they are in a foreigner country where their culture, language and race are different. He realizes that his wife is chatting with the four guys and he calms down. As we can see in this quotation: “Energy, life, was flooding back into him(…) Alex felt he had never seen anything so beautiful” . When he and his family are in the car, for the first time Alex realizes how beautiful Thailand is and he enjoys his vacation.The story “Eating sugar” can be related to text 4 and text 5. Text 4 discusses about trust between cultures. When you are a tourist it is hard to trust someone you don’t know, also for the reason that they have different kinds of culture, language and race, short said they are strangers. They are more impersonal when they have encounter “with the other” as it is illustrated in the text. It is easy for the tourists to create an “other”, because as it says in the text; impersonal relationship is hard to communicate with or share social and interpersonal meaning. According to text 4 the native and the tourist defines “us” in opposition to “them”. We can relate text 4 with Eileen and Alex. They are very scared and prejudiced when they meet the four Thai men. They don’t trust them and they are also afraid of them because they are different from them.In text 5 there is a picture, where we can see a man and a woman who is in vacation. They have holiday clothes on. We can relate the man and the woman with Eileen and Alex because they are also in vacation. B.) English has reached high status world-wide because it is the mother tongue of millions of people all over the world. English is used to establish and keep connection and relationship between people with different backgrounds from different cultures. We are able to communicate with people in almost all countries all over the world and it is a good thing. As we can see in the text “Eating sugar” Suzanne and the four Thai men can communicate although, the four Thai men are not that good to speak English, but they do understand each other. If you are tourist it is good to have a global language as English because if you are lost somewhere, then you can speak English, so they can help you out.