POST 5: Revision of POST 4

The short stories "Little Cog-Burt" and "Cotton Candy" both reflect on the social injustices that were happening in the Caribbean during that time period.  Although there are many differences between the two stories, they are also some similarities.

The author of "Little Cog-Burt", Phyllis Shand Allfrey, used her story to express the unfair differences in the social classes in Dominica. Allfrey highlighted the differences between the plantation owners’ and the plantation workers many times throughout the story. On page seven in "Little Cog-Burt", Allfrey wrote, " 'Well, I won't,' she said again, firmly; and in the words which she did not add, but which he so clearly heard her thinking: 'I won't give a party for those dark children, those dark children, those dark children...' ". By including this quote, you can be sure that the character Moira believed she was better than "those dark children", thus putting herself on a higher level, or class, than the workers and their children.

The author Dora Alonso used her story "Cotton Candy" to portray the suffering of the lower class in Cuba during the Cuban revolution. On page fourteen in "Cotton Candy" Alonso wrote, "The monotonous years, for her repetitions of frustrations and renewed desires, killed her grandparents and uncles, and forced her relatives to emigrate. Her lonely forty years fought then, like a dog biting a chain, and her mother agreed to move to Havana". Dora Alonso added this statement because she wanted to describe what the Cuban Revolution was doing to Lola and her family and show how much that they suffered during it all.


Allfrey was an activist in social affairs and equality and Alonso focused on writing for marginalized characters that struggle in a corrupt society. The authors’ messages were not about the same exact struggles, but they are both alike in that they focus on the social injustices that were going on in the Caribbean.