Bananas Symbol Analysis

Bananas appear in Foreign Soil’s third story, “Hope,” and symbolize the limits of hope. After Willemina offers Millie Lucas an apprenticeship at her sewing shop in Kingston, Millie’s father, Mr. Lucas, plants extra bananas so that he can afford to send Millie from their rural village in Cidar Valley, St. Thomas, to Kingston, Jamaica. Like most everyone else in their village, the Lucas family doesn’t have a lot of money, and Mr. Lucas has always wanted Millie to have the opportunity to make a better life for herself, so he does everything he can to ensure that he can make his hopes become reality. At first, the bananas grow fat and ripe, and it seems that Mr. Lucas’s hopes for Millie’s future haven’t been in vain. But a bad wet season results in a fungus infecting and killing the banana crops, and though Mr. Lucas eventually finds another way to secure the funds for Millie’s journey, the failed banana crops show just how tenuous Millie’s future is. Though Mr. Lucas might work hard and hope that he can give his daughter a better future, the poverty and unforgiving natural elements of his family’s village in the Cidar Valley create a great distance between hope and reality, severely limiting Millie’s access to opportunity. Though Millie and her father can dream of a better, brighter future, the bananas suggest that whatever future that awaits them is more often a consequence of chance than of hard work and personal ambition.