34) Black-and-white negatives from a picture
35) history of the sugar trade develop
36) in my dreams, a dozen able-bodied slaves
37) hacking forward through a field of cane.
38) Sweat trickles down from forehead into eye
39) as they sheave up stalks and cart them to the mill
40) where grinding iron rollers will express a thin
41) sucrose solution that, when not refined,
42) goes from blackstrap molasses on into rum,
43) a demon conveniently negotiable for slaves.
44) The master under the impression he owned
45) these useful properties naturally never thought
46) of offering them a piece of the wedding cake,
47) the big white house that bubbling brown sugar built
48) and paid for, unnaturally processed by Domino.
Again, in the fourth stanza, the theme of color is dominant. Again, there is the oppositional relationship of black and white. Back-and-white is idiomatic expression, meaning an issue is simple, clear, and without controversy. This can be read as ironic. The idy of binary and identy comes into question with the technology of photography. Corn creates an image of an image --- the image is a negative, meaning that the colors are reversed. What would appear to the human eye as dark appears light in the negative, and what appears light to the human eye is then dark in the negative. There is another play on words with the term "develop." Film is developed from negative to create the photo image... when events develop, they progress in time and sometimes in complication.
Lines 37 and 38 also contain references to the Genesis. Corn writes "able-bodied slaves" which means healthy and strong slaves... however, this could also mean that they have the bodies of the innocent son of Eve from Genesis. The slaves laboring in the field have bodies like Abel... These slaves are "hacking forward through a field of cane" literally meaning that they are cutting the cane grass and harvesting it, however, this can be interpreted also as a reference to Genesis. The context of this stanza is a dream, it is something that did not happen. Another condition of the context of this dream is that it is a dream of a photographic negative. Photographic negatives reverse colors, but by the same token, roles may also be reversed. The field of cane can also be interpreted as a "field of Cain." Cain has therefore been cut down by Abel in these lines, offering another subversion of the binary.
There are parallel images in this stanza. The sweat running from the forehead to eye parallels the this sucrose solution. The transporting, harvesting, and the processing of sugar cane seems to be mirrored by the slaves in the field. There is a mirroring happening in this stanza which reverses images. The color theme continues, the unrefined sugar product is thick, dark, black molasses -- which is integral in the making of rum.
Again, words from Wheatley's poem are adapted for the use in "Sugar Cane." the word refined appears in line 41.Demon also recalls Wheatley's use of the devil "diabolic dye" in "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
In contrast to the previous two stanza's which focused on individuals, the scale of the narrative is larger. The narrative is historic, economic, and on an industrial scale. In line 34 sugar is part of a two word phrase "sugar trade."
Again, there is transformation. This stanza centers on
contrasting color is again the opposition The binary
There is also a repetition of alcoholic drink. Here it is not the upscale crystal champagne to intoxicate those with status, but the strong dark rum. The symbol of the cake returns, and it is a monolith, like the estate houses on plantations. Big white symbols of decadence. Again the cake may symbolize the whole. The phrase "slice of the cake" means the portion, or ones share of something. Another subtle allusion may be that the white house and cake represent the America as a whole, And the White House refers to the home of the President in the US Capitol of Washington, D.C. If this wedding cake and the estate house and the White House are mirror images then, this stanza is also insinuated that the exploitation and denial of the individual master on the plantation is the same exploitation and denial which the nation participates in with respect to African Americans.
The end of the stanza returns to the binary of the slave and master. Lines 44 through 48 deal with contrasting the slave and master dichotomy. There is also the dichotomy of natural and unnatural. The "bubbling brown sugar" "built and paid for" the
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