Embassy of Cambodia Q&a Essay

Pock, smash, pock smash…
Who do you think the narrator of the story is supposed to be? Even though the narrator talks in first person as well as talking for a group of people, I think that the narrator is just one member of the neighborhood who speaks for the people and observes the strange occurrences that happen in that neck of the woods. The narrator witnesses the struggle of so many in that time when race dominated everything. The narrator represents nearly the whole world as she watches Fatou and her people struggle to gain independence and a sense of belonging. The narrator and the people living on that street represent the side of humanity that is an onlooker when it comes to tragedy and wrong-doing, turning their heads as if an ignored problem will solve itself. This theme of the narrator connects to how Fatou experienced the deaths of the children near the hotel she worked at and in Rome. The narrator is the majority of people who kept walking when nine children showed up dead on the shore, people who could see it but didn’t want to deal with it. In Rome, nearly the whole city was mourning for the death of just one boy. No one ignored and easily forgot about the death. These people chose to act upon a situation that was in need of help. That is where the good side of people come in, but by the end of this story the characters still will not have embraced this form of aid.

What do you think the two unseen badminton players refer to? I think their shots, hard and soft, refer to the good-natured people in the world and the hard, unsympathetic people in the world… One player has the gentle pock while the opponent has a violent smash. The two players also somewhat represent good and evil in a way. The player who smashes is violent and you can tell that he puts all his effort into his hits so I see him as evil because of his violence. But then there is the player who calmly hits the shuttlecock back after each mad drive from his opponent. This player represents someone who likes to keep peace and is good. The two players or forces never cease to stop playing and not one seems to be either winning or losing. “At one point it seemed to Fatou that the next lob would blow southward, sending the shuttlecock over the wall to land lightly in her own hands. Instead the other player, with his vicious reliability (Fatou had long ago decided that both players were men), caught the shuttlecock as it began to drift and sent it back to his opponent-another deathly, downward smash.”

How did the end of the story relate to “A tap runs fast the first time you switch it on.” said by Andrew? When Andrew says this to Fatou it is in reply to her stories about her time working at a hotel and a different time when she was living in Rome. When working at the hotel she had witnessed a bunch of dead children who had drowned in the ocean. Only a few people were crying and everyone else “just shook their heads and carried on walking to where they were going”. Then later when she was in Rome there was another death of a child who was knocked off his bicycle time the reaction of the populace was the opposite. People were “screaming and crying in the street”.

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