The cage
The most important metaphor in the play is the cage in which the two Indigenous people are locked in. This cage is the central metaphor and is used to suggest the oppression which the Indigenous people had to experience. In addition, the cage is used to suggest how the people who find themselves in those situations are unable to escape form what they are experiencing.
Like going out in the woods
The people who looked and analyzed the couple in the cage from afar was question by the presenters who wanted to find out what the viewers thought about the way the Natives interacted with the objects in their cage. One man who was interviewed compared the way the Natives chose their favorite objects with the way they may have interacted with their natural environment on the island, the is going into the woods and picking up what interested them the most. The comparison is used in this context to show just how little the audience thought about the Natives in the cage and how they saw them as savages, incapable of understanding the civilized world.
Rubber gloves
During one instance, when a presenter feed the man in the cage a banana, she was wearing thick rubber gloves, to create a barrier between her skin and a possible contact with the man in the cage. The rubber gloves are used here as a metaphor to suggest the barrier many want to exist between the civilized world and what they perceive as being the savage world. Just like the gloves were meant to separate the presenter from the man in the cage, the barrier has the purpose of making sure the two worlds never collide and meet.
Like a slap in the face
In D.C., a woman is interviewed and asked about what she thought about the performance she saw. The woman compared seeing the performance with the feeling of being slapped in the face. The comparison has the purpose of showing how uncomfortable the performance makes the viewers felt.
Now and Columbus
The performance play starts with the presenter comparing the present exhibition with the way black people and indigenous Americans were exhibited during Christopher Columbus’s time. The comparison is meant to show to the audience just how little things changed in time and how much the modern society still has to go until we can say that a level of equality was reached and accomplished.
