SAPIO, JUMARI S.

“Armor”: Depicting Humanity and Inevitability

through Different Lenses
By: Jumari Sapio
Reading a story that projects the current trend here in Mindanao even Nationwide, is a
good hook to young readers like me. Armor is a story that depicts the life of a gay wishing to
have his last spotlight before he dies. Most of the gays dreamed to have a crown in their heads
just like a beauty queen. Ronnie believing that his coffin is calling him sooner than what he
expects, this flourished the reason that he must have his last ramp in a Miss Gay scene. With this,
it is inevitable for a certain individual to really strive hard in order to attain one’s goal.
The story depicts the perspective of being a Filipino gay and somehow illustrate their
current setup with respect to the mainstream. In my own understanding, I have absorbed many
points in the story reflecting the current “human nature” of a Filipino, specifically in Davao
setup. However within this narrative, the nature of LGBT and how the society perceives them is
what I will tackle.
In the story, somehow they have illustrated that gays are one of the most goal-oriented
people living in this planet. In the story, the main character shows his determination on achieving
his last wish. He take drugs to lose weight, had done procedures that could less the items he want
in ukay-ukay and many more. It was also described that gays has had the ironic personality for
they made others laugh but they can’t make themselves happy during their saddest moments.
Also, in the lens of the society now, we can somehow confirmed that there still that wall between
the mainstream culture and to those culture LGBT have. They see gays as source of
entertainment nothing more and nothing less.
This somehow proves that culture imprints of the past still stuck to almost all of the
people. That is why the gap of those LGBT and the majority is still visible. Furthermore, with
those tangible reasons and differences the story had successfully pulled the entirety of human
nature. Which is we tend to be insecure, we tend to compare ourselves to other people and we
tend to do acts that may/may not harm us or other people, due to self-satisfaction and to obtain
self-actualization.
The story displays events that is more likely to happen in real world. Events like, how the
story detailed the preparation of a gay in a pageant. Another is somehow we tried to pulled down
people in order for us to forward our goals in life. Just like in the case of Oliver in which he is
the one who told Ronnie about the death squad, in order to frighten him and this will give Oliver
a larger chance to win the crown.
To end this, Armor, I guess is an effective literary work, for it bring us entirety of what is
the current trend now, to what is the nature of humans now in different lenses. Thus, makes
inevitability visible and was glued through the minds of each readers of this said story.
For me, nature of humanity is constantly changing through time thus inevitability exist. With
this, co-existence of humanity and inevitability is an essential tool in order to produce what we
called a good literary work.