The Lady in the Pink Mustang by Louise Erdrich - Essay Example

The writer has ironically used the term ‘lady’ to denote this nameless woman who is a prostitute. What puzzles the reader is the expression ‘lady’ which is commonly used in the European society to symbolize women who have a social standing and is considered to be respectable in the community. The use of phrase like “bare lap”, “the body as disposable cups” and “painting her nipples silver for a show” has reiterated the impression that the woman mentioned in the poem is a prostitute.

She rebukes her readers and customers that they don’t know what she goes through by the phrase “ you out there, what do you know” and gains sympathy by voicing out that men use her body like disposable cups and after every night she has a part of her missing. Many individuals have this façade through the daytime of being moderate and serene but as soon as the night starts they indulge in activities that are not acceptable by respectable society. The same is true for this girl referred in the poem .

In the second stanza the writer has provided beautiful imagery by choosing a pink Mustang for the prostitute’s car as Mustang is known to be speedy, strident and licentious it is supposed to have a connotation. She travels on a high way to find her customers; most of the times truck drivers (semis) who show interest, conformity and price by using Morse code by flashing headlights at her. The writer put into words the weariness of the life of this hooker and the revulsion she has for her profession.

The third and the fourth stanza provides the reader the impression that the woman is mobile, flexible and most of the times on road. She doesn’t have a place or a person to belong to, with no sense of the community and is alone all the time. “ Erdrich began her mature literary career as a poet and the evidence of her origins can be found in her lyrical prose, in her deft use of imagery and metaphor and in her employment within her fiction of patterned designs and recurring motifs” (Lorena Laura Stookey).

Erdrich with her expressive phrases has provided her readers a deep insight of the feelings of a prostitute who is a part of our society yet aloof from it. The first and the fifth stanza gave me the “in- between “impression in the poem beginning with expression such as “the sun goes down for hours”, “on the road”, “must shed”, “coming or going” and “torn forward”. This implies that she has no past and no hope for future she is being forced to move forward with her life.

The lady except her title and her profession has no identity and this is maybe because of the fact that she sells her body for a living she feels she is not entitled to have one. She is being just reduced to a status of commodity that is on sale and everyone can use it and then move ahead with no strings. The last stanza of the poem “kissing these bits of changes, stamped out, ground to a luster. I don’t sell for nothing else” indicates the lady’s thoughts to be defiant and rebellious as it is her body and she has the power and authority to make a sexual encounter good or bad for the men who buy her body depending on the price they pay her.

She tries to find a shelter and comfort in this thought as she