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WHAT lute and WHY

Like, of course it's tragic. It's a devastating story with a harrowing ending; she shoots herself to secure her child's future in a final, broken act of desperation.

But it doesn't end there. What is she desperate for? America. The American dream. The dream that haunts the minds of so many, yet rarely comes into fruition. It's almost impossible to achieve, because it basically doesn't exist. Yet this is a constant theme throughout the musical - Movie in my Mind; Last Night of the World; there's even a song called "The American Dream". It's what they live for.

I was just listening to Last Night of the World, and this bit stuck out to me-

"On another side of the earth

There's a place where life still has worth

I will take you, I'll go with you

You won't believe all the things you see

I know cause you see them all with me

If we're together that's when we'll hear it again." (Chris singing to Kim)

It's all just wrong. As we know, Kim never gets to see America, but she lives her life with hope. Yet in reality, there never really was any hope. What would really happen when she got to America? Poverty, work, stress, all these things exist in America as in Vietnam. But she doesn't see that. She sees only what she is told.

And then there's Chris, too. Chris is a very immature character - though immature as in sheltered, rather than childish. (We see this in his song Why God Why - he has no idea of the realities of war, and experiences quite a culture shock when seeing Vietnamese culture. There's a part of the song where the tone changes entirely and we see what was going through his mind on signing up for the war - "I went back and re-upped/Sure Saigon is corrupt/It felt better to be/Here driving for the embassy/'Cause here if you can pull a string/A guy like me lives like a king/Just as long as you don't believe anything...".) He has no idea that what he has experienced in America is nothing like what Kim will experience if she goes. He's been living the American dream, he believes in the American dream, and he knows no truth other than the American dream.