#three comrades

However, he has some unusual friends that provide him platonic love and support. They're not his only friends, but they are the ones whose friendship most affected me.

Prostitutes. Sex workers that work in and around the shitty, run-down bar he goes to every day to spend his day's wages. They all have tragic stories: a widow whose husband died in debt and so left her penniless, a handicapped single mother that was missing an arm, a young woman raised by abusive parents. They generally don't like men, but they like the protagonist because he's never once made any advances on them or insulted them.

If he buys them a drink it's not to make them drunk and therefore an easier lay. No, if he buys one of them a drink, it's because they're upset and need someone to talk to. The sex workers aren't the titular 'Three Comrades', but they're his comrades, too.

The sex workers are all people, and they are never treated with anything but utmost respect both by the protagonist and by the author. They have thoughts, feelings, wants and dreams, and the protagonist and author both address these things with sincerity. It's crazy that this book written by a man in the 50s treated this subject matter with such delicacy.

I read this book in sixth grade and it certainly impacted my views on sex workers. It wasn't assigned reading, honestly the book is so difficult that even some college students would struggle with it. I read it simply because I knew the book was written by the author of All Quiet on the Western Front. I went into it expecting another war story, instead what I got was a deeply thoughtful story about love, loss, friendship, and the every day pains of being alive.

Had I known it was a romance story going into it, I never would've read it. But I did, and it's the book that most defined who I am now. More than ten years later and the protagonist still is so much like me it almost hurts to read sometimes. And it helped me learn, before society at large had the chance to inculcate a bias in me, that sex work is work and that working in that field isn't a moral failing. That the people working in that profession are people too, with thoughts that should be taken just as seriously as anyone else's.

It's not just "that's someone's daughter"-- no, that's someone's own person, and they should be treated as such.

And we learn that Kat had a sick wife at home and A CHILD HE NEVER GOT TO KNOW I’M GONNA CRY WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO UUUSSSS