The sugar that piled up on the docks near the plantations was something new in the world: pure sweetness, pure pleasure, so cheap that common people could afford it. scientists have shown that people all over the world must learn to like salty tastes, sour tastes, mixed tastes. but from the moment we are born, we crave sweetness. cane sugar was the first product in human history that perfectly satisfied that desire. and the bitter lives of the enslaved africans produced so much sugar that pure sweetness began to spread around the world. how do the authors support their claim and purpose with their choice of words?

Since the main subject in the text is "Sugar" - a theme that would commonly be associated with taste -, the authors deemed it a clever idea to use dials of flavor (sweet, sour, bitter, salty...) as adjectives to describe the individuals (characters) involved.

For example:

in ray bradbury's short story "a sound of thunder", mr. eckels's fearfulness leads to drastic consequences for the rest of the world.

in the story, mr. eckels, who is a hunter, hires a time travel company to travel to the age of dinosaurs. although he is excited for the hunting expedition at the beginning, when they reach there and mr. eckels sees the tyrannosaurus, he feels frightened. as he is afraid of the tyrannosaurus, he steps off the path although he has been warned not to do it. by stepping off the path, the entire course of the future is affected: mr. eckart alters the future by stepping on a butterfly, which causes a new man to be elected president in the future. in that way, it is mr. eckart's fearfulness what triggers 'the butterfly effect' and what leads to drastic consequences for the rest of the world.