Poem Analysis Chart

Title: The March of Death

Meter: Trochaic
Poet: Bienvenido Santos Form: Free Verse
Tetrameter
Meaning Devices Sound Devices
Tactile: Alliteration:
“And flogged to bleeding along the roads we “March, my brother, march!”
knew and loved?” “And we would walk those roads again one April
“Ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the morn,”
corn fields”
“What matters if the winters were bitter cold”
Aural: Assonance:
“The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo ō ō ō ə ə ə
bridge, “Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun,”
The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves”
y ger Ima

Olfactory: Consonance:
“By the fragrance of garden hedge” “March, my brother, march!”
Visual: Onomatopoeia:
“Brown pools and mud in the December “The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves”
rains;”
“The springs are clear beyond the road”
“The many young bodies that lay mangled by
the roadside;”
Gustatory: Rhyme:
“What matters if the winters were bitter cold” “Share our dreams of a better place
Beyond those winding trails.” (place – trails)

Metaphor:
“I have felt your prayer touch my heart”

Simile:
“Hand in hand like pilgrims marching”

Personification:
“And loneliness stalked my footstep on the snow?”
“The agony and the moaning and the silent tears,”
Pun:

Allusion:
“The grin of yellow men”

Paradox:
“Did you see through the blood in your eyes”

Symbolism:
“The grin of yellow men, their bloodstained blades opaque in the sun;”

Apostrophe:
“Were you one of them, my brother
Whom they marched under the April sun
And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved?”
Inversion:
Devices Linguistic

“Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun”

Parallelism:
“Listen to the sound of working men
Dragging tree trunks from the forests,
Rebuilding homes- laughing again-
Sowing the field with grain,”

Personal Response: (this could also be written as a short essay)

I didn’t really wholly understand the poem, perhaps due to the effects of the prolonged lockdown to my
brain (I haven’t really exercised my brain with educational materials the whole time as I’ve mainly been
playing video games) or perhaps my fascination with history, particularly with wars, that desensitized me to
works like this. As insensitive as it may seem, I felt little to no emotion reading the piece about the
portrayed event as the death march is just one of the many abhorrent cruelties committed during the
List down at least one effects of Japanese Occupation or World War 2 to the following
aspects:

 Filipino culture and way of living

 Philippine Literature 

As the Japanese only had the Philippines for a mere 3 years, they didn’t have any, as far as I know,
permanent or long-lasting effect to Filipino culture or way of living. Admiral Yamamoto, the Commander-in-chief
of the Japanese Combined Fleet during WW2, was famously quoted for saying that the Japanese forces could,
against the combined forces of the United States and Great Britain, put up a tough fight for the first 6 months,
but the following two or three years would be left to uncertainty. As such, during the Japanese occupation of the
Philippines, the Japanese concentrated most of their efforts onto pacifying the populace, stomping insurgence,
curbing down pro-American and anti-Japanese sentiments, and most importantly, pushing the population into
forced labor, creating supplies for the front lines or constructing defensive fortifications for the inevitable Allied
counterattack and invasion.
The Japanese had to put the country and its people on a tight leash. Any voice of dissidence was met with
violent response. Therefore, the people, for the most part, lost their freedom of speech and expression. Or at
least, under surveillance and restrictions. Literature made in English, for example, were strictly prohibited. This
led to the propagation of literature made in either the Filipino or native language/dialect of the region the
literature was made in like bodabil and kundiman. As writing anti-Japanese literature in the Philippines would
have been a death sentence, some would resort to writing for underground newspapers like The Flash, Ing
Masala and others, while writers outside the Philippines, particularly those fortunate enough to be in the United
States, had the freedom to voice out their people’s sufferings and desperation through literary works such as
Bienvenido Santos’ March of Death. This is just an assumption though, as I can’t find the date of when the poem
was made or published, but Bienvenido Santos did served for the exiled Philippine government at that time.
 I liked this essay so much that I went to read the first part. Bienvenido Lumbera gave a nice insight to the
evolution of a Filipino writer’s audience as the Philippine society goes through social changes. And I agree the
most with how accurate the third to his last paragraph is, where he asked that decades from when he wrote the
essay, would the masses, with the educational level attained where everyone could read, continue to read
literature? I would say no.

I would like to preface this by saying that I didn’t give my answer much thought, I’ve done no research to
base my answers on, and I’m mostly relying on experience, guesswork, and the prejudice I have of the current
masses. And its not that the entirety of the masses do not read literature, there’s only a small subset who do.
These are the ones who do read literature, not out of an academic requirement nor social responsibility but out
of interest, may it be for pleasure, entertainment, or educational/self-enrichment purposes.

Lumbera attributed a writer’s having difficulty finding readers to comics, television, or film. As this was
written decades ago, our consumption of media, or literature, have long changed since then. Comics have fallen
to irrelevancy, yeah there’s still the television and film but it is the internet which has been reigning as king of
information propagation. Literature back then could probably barely compete with television and film, but the
internet’s a whole different beast. It brought with it a lot of positives, but also a whole lot of negatives. I think it’s
a double-edged sword for literature. Works of literature which a reader would have trouble finding in libraries
could easily be looked up on the internet. Gone were the days of scrounging up books to look for something, or
photocopying articles off of anything. Everything’s online. It also opened up new worlds, foreign works which a
reader would probably never hear of has become available to them, communities of like-minded individuals, or
groups of people who share the same preference towards a certain genre would form and is easily accessible.

But as easy as it is to look for literature online and read them, it also incredibly easy to be distracted from
them, which the masses have fallen into. An overabundance of video games, films, videos, etc. has made it
extremely hard for literature to compete for an audience. This is based on my personal experience but I find it
difficult to concentrate reading something when my friends are inviting me to play a game, or my favorite
YouTubers have uploaded new videos, or a Netflix or Anime series I’m following have released new episodes.
Everyday there is something that I discover that I must consume, no matter how old it is, as long as it’s relevant
or share the same qualities as something I enjoy, it would compete for my time. I think this is true for the masses
as well. Everything online competes for somebody’s time. Why read a book when it has been turned into a
movie or a TV series? Why read a book when you can use the free time you have to play video games or watch
a YouTube channel’s entire backlog of videos? I’m not even gonna go into the Social Networking Sites and their
endless scrolling as it’s a whole can of worms. Anyway, this has been a mess so I’m just gonna say it again, in
my opinion, despite the masses’ capability of reading, most do not read literature.
Lumbera is still accurate though in his last sentence that men (and women) who require more substance
from art or entertainment will always give the writer a reading. Just ask George R.R. Martin’s readers.
 Character Sketch Web
Direction: Think of a symbol/object to identify the person in the short story/novel. Draw it and
label it with the character’s name. Below the name, write adjectives to describe that person
and the examples/scenes in the story to support that trait. Add lines/rows and arrows when
necessary. Use this web to fill out your character chart.
1. Brainstorming

__________Pablo Cabading_________
Name

_________________ _________________ _________________

Adjective Adjective Adjective

_________________ _________________ _________________

_________________ _________________ _________________
_________________ _________________ _________________
Example Example Example

_________________ _________________
Adjective Adjective

_________________ _________________
_________________ _________________
_________________ _________________
Example Example
stern - "Everybody in that house must be in by a certain hour. Otherwise, the gates are locked, the doors
are locked, the windows are locked. Nobody can get in any more!"

egocentric - And within that house he wanted to be the center of everything, even of his daughter's
honeymoon.

unsympathetic - When Lydia took her path as a physician, Cabading announced that only he and his wife
would accompany Lydia to the ceremony. It would not be fair, he said, to let Leonardo, who had not borne
the expenses of Lydia's education, to share that moment of glory too.

abusive - She told them of Cabading's baffling changes of temper, especially, toward her; how smiles and
fond words and caresses could abruptly turn into beatings when his mood darkened

Tyrannical - Leonardo became anxious to take his wife away from that house. He talked it over with her,
then they went to tell her father. Said Cabading bluntly: "If she goes with you, I'll shoot her dead before
your eyes."

They didn't have to talk at all; he would do all the talking himself so long as they sat there in the sala
before his eyes.