Friday, October 16, 2009

SIN CITY, AN KHE

I felt that this poem was pretty powerful in a sense thats from the authors point of view but then shows the girls point of view at the end. It talks about the bars in An Khe. They are named after states in America. They have decorations that will remind the soldiers of home; football pennant, plastic fruit, and the Beach Boys on the jukebox. Talks about a bar girl who is supposed to be 17 and calls you babysan which basically means baby or sweetie. the author talks about taking her upstairs to a room at the bar where the women would "entertain" him. But then its about what he wont do, he wont touch her in places. He wants to ay next to her and look and wonder what you both doing there. And not for the obvious reason either. In the last paragraph he says "she'll still go down/on you for five dollars MPC,/she'll still pretend you didn't/ burn her village to the ground,/ she'll light you up like napalm." This shows that she will forget the horrible things that you as a soldier did to her people and village but she will still render services for money. It was probably one of the better ways for girls during that time to make money.

3 comments:

  1. I think it's awful how she would still do services for money but that is all that the soldiers had. Never touching here where you please and only lying beside her wondering. Obviously he is curious about it and it is just sad what women had to do for money.

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  2. good job heather and yes, prostitution and the sex trade are always a big part of war, but often not talked about as a taboo subject.

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  3. Yeah- its not something that really gets talked about. and when it does the women are often exploited as whores, not as a means to survive.

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