The Light at the end of the Alley

A review of the Caribbean film " Sugar Cane Alley" written by Euzhan Palcy.

Palsy’s movie “Sugar Cane Alley” strongly illustrates the kind of significance that Caribbean individuals place on education. Despite being set in a post emancipation period, the plantation society structure was evident and emphasized by the main character, Jose, who fiercely believed that education would better his circumstances.

Education has always represented a means of escape and hope for Caribbean individuals. Education is associated with wealth, power, high social status and acceptance, as a result has been treated with the highest level of esteem by the Caribbean people. This way of thinking can be linked back to the plantation society.

A plantation society was based on a strict hierarchy in which the whites were at the top of social and economical ladder while individuals of mixed race were in the middle with a suitable amount of wealth and less power. At the bottom of this hierarchy were the blacks who were significantly more in numbers but also very poor. According to sociologist George Beckford this kind of stratification is still retained in today’s Caribbean society.

This kind of marginalization resulted in slaves or blacks having the least access to education. Illiteracy was one of the ways in which the slaves were disadvantaged because slave masters knew that educating slaves would cause more insurrection. The blacks in return saw education as their way of coming out of the darkness which the whites were trying to keep them. Therefore education was seen as a novelty, their own version of a light at the end of the tunnel and despite having been released from the shackles of slavery this representation of education is still retained by Caribbean individuals today.

Education is viewed as the light at end of the tunnel or in Jose’s case, “the light at the end of the alley”; the hope that this signifies is a fundamental part of the Caribbean culture.