LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET # 8

Course Title Philippine Literature

Type of Activity Synchronous/Asynchronous
Activity Title Loloy, the Unreliable Narrator and Pepita’s Story in”At Akoy
Inanod” by Marcel M. Navarra
Duration One Week
Learning Targets

By the end of the lesson, the students should have learned to:

Identify the main characters of the story, particularly the

protagonist and antagonist and describe the dramatic conflict of
the story.

Identify the story’s narrator and construct a character sketch of

the protagonist using his own words.

Use a typical communication model for a first level analysis of the

story, in order to clarify the schema of the discourse of the
narrator.

Use the same communication model for a second level critical

analysis of the story, in order to clarify the narrator’s articulated
purpose of the message and the desired feedback.

Conduct a third-level analysis by close-reading the narrator’s

discursive techniques in order to understand how the narrator
manipulates the story’s meaning for the receiver of his message.

Extend the structure of the story by writing the response letter of

the receiver of the protagonist message.

Construct the story of the silenced “Other in the story by focusing

on the gaps and inconsistencies in the narrative.

Understand the specific cultural values represented in the story,

particular to its setting in, time, and place.
Reference/s A Manual For Teaching Philippine Literature

Baytan, Ronald

A. Concept Digest Rationale:

 Philippine Literature is rich treasure of trove of writings in various
languages and dialects used in archipelago. Among this languages is
Cebuano, and through literary scholarship and translation, some of
these stories are now available for readers in Filipino and English.

In Cebuano Literature, the writer considered the fatherofthe modernist

short story is Marcel M. Navarra (1914-1984).In her introduction to
anthology she edited and translated, Dr. Teresita G. Maceda writes:
Ang tapat na paglalarawan sa buhay sa nayon at pagsisikap ni Navarra
na harapin, unawain at bigyang kahulugan and isang-kahig isang-tuka
na pamumuhay ng karamihan sa nanirahan ditto ay siyang dahilan
kung bakit itinuturing si Navarra na kapwa niya manunulat na tunay
na tagapagtaguyod ng realism sa panitikang Cebuano.

Social realism in Cebuano literature gives the Philippine literature

student a variety of memorable characters that represent the rural
population living in barangays, barrios and towns of the Visayas. Most
of these characters, like the ones in the story “At Akoy Inanod” by
Marcel Navarra, are caught in quotidian life conflicts, problems, and
issues, the handling and the resolution of which are detrmined in
informed by the specific cultural norms and various of the place and
times of the stories.

The stories of Navarra are included in the canon of Cebuano

Literature as well as the canon of 20th century short fiction in the
Philippines.

KEY CONCEPTS AND UNDERSTANDING

1. The communication model schematizes the process of

discursive communication from SENDER who sends a
message through a MEDIUM to an intended RECEIVER, who
in turn sends a FEEDBACK to the sender, to complete the
discursive title. This schema is useful to clarify the sender’s
discursive intent for the message, the sender’s message in
terms of content, form and style, and the sender’s choice of
medium with which to reach the intended receiver. The
shaping of the message determines to a large extent the
feedback given to the sender In most cases, if the feedback
sent to the sender is the feedback desired by the sender, then
the sender can conclude that the communicative process has
succeeded as far as his/her intent is concerned.
2. Reading for character in characters of the fiction invite’s the
reader’s close attention t the way each character is constructed
through the character’s own words of other characters about
 him/her, the actions of other characters towards him/her, and
the description given by the narrator.
3. The narrative point of view functions as the shaper of the
story’s meanings. Thus the subjectivities or subject positions
of the various characters in fiction are seen through the lens of
the one telling the story. Changing the point of view of the
story can drastically change the way the story is told and the
way its meanings are manipulated. This element of fiction
helps the reader understand the way reality is constructed by
the narrator.
4. The concept of unreliable narrator is important in modern
fiction and illustrates that factors that influence the first-person
narrator’s choices on what to reveal and how to reveal these
aspects of the story. An astute and careful reader can recognize
the unreliable narrator in terms of the deliberate and
unconscious gaps and silences in the telling of the story. The
special challenge to the reader is thus to uncover the untold
story of the silenced Other/s and to understand why the
narrator manipulates the story being told. Wayne c. booth in
the Rhetoric of fiction (!961) first coined this term to refer to
to a first-person narrator whose self interest, bias or ignorance
shapes the story with inaccurate lies. This literary device is
seen as a crucial characteristic of Modernism.
5. Post colonial Gayatr Spivak first used the term ‘Othering” ih
her study of the dialectic studies of the discursive
constructions of the colonizing ” Other” and its colonized
“others”. Strategies of of Othering operate in the social milieu
where power is not equally shared, using the categorie of sex,
class and other categories of differentiation. I stories about
male- female relationships within a patriarchial social milieu ,
the female side of the story is usually suppressed or silenced,
with the female character as unprivileged Other in the
relationship, where the male character is the protagonist in his
story as told by him.The challenged for the reader is to
uncover the suppressed story and intuate the probable story,
were it to be told by the female character in the story.
6. The Cebuano idiom of “GIANOD AKO” EXPRESSES THE
NARRATOR’S HELPLESSNESS OR POWERLESSNESS
AGAINST THE FORCE REFERRED TO THE
METAPHORIC “ANOD” OR “FLOOD”in the story. The
syntax of the Tagalog translation, “At Akoy Inanod uses the
structure of English rather than Tagalog. The translation
should have been “at Inanod Ako”, since in the Malayo-
Polynesian languages, the verb position is more is important
than the subject, i.e. V-S-O. The English translation of the
 story is available.
PART II DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIVITY SEQUENCE

I.Pre-Reading Exercise

Read the story before it is discussed in the class.

II. Feeding of the Literary Text for the Study

a. Show specific lines and paragraphs of the story which reveals

the character of Loloy.
b. A lecture on the Communication Model used.
Identify the sender, the Receiver, The Message, The Medium,
and the Desired Feedback.
c. Application of the communication Model on “At Akoy
Inanod”
Students will work in small groups and support their output
with specific parts of the story.

III. Close Reading of the Story (second level of Critical Analysis)

1. Why does Loloy choose the personal letter as the best medium
for telling his story to his friend KID?
2. Are there other ways of telling the story?
3. How would this compare in the effectiveness of the personal
letter.
THIRD-LEVEL Critical Analysis
1. Why does Loloy begin his letter in the form of negation?
2. How does the negative tone work in terms of his purpose and
desired feedback?
3. Why does Loloy tell his dream? How do the words he placed
in the mouth of “Kid” the lion in the dream serve his purpose
in the desired feedback?
4. Why does Loloy recall to his friend how the family accepted
him as one of their own?
How does the story of mother’s response to Loloy work for his
purpose and desired feedback.
5. Why does Loloy recall for his friend the question of Pepita
while he was reading Jose Garcia Villa’s list of winning
stories? Why is Jose Garcia Villa mentioned?
6. Why does Loloy tell his friend about that crucial morning in
July when Pepita was “mabigat at matalas ang pananalita
towards him?
7. Why does Loloy follow Pepita into the house? How is this
action made to look logical and justified?(paragraph 21)
 8. Why does Loloy put words into the mouth of Pepita when she,
according to his own narration, did not speak but that “ang
kanyang mga mata ang sumagot”. How do these words work
toward his purpose and desired feedback?
9. Why does Loloy tell that he and Pepita were alone in the living
room? How does this revelation in one short paragraph work
toward his purpose?
10. Why does Loloy follow up his revelation with the metaphor of
a violent turbulent flood” dumadagundong na baha”
“rumaragasang tubig” nakakapangilabot na agos”
“naglalakihang mga agos’ AND HIS REACTION TO SUCH
FORCE?
11. How do the water images in metaphoric language work toward
his purpose?
12. Why does Loloy end his narration with a short one sentence
paragraph about Pepita’s smile? How does this work work
toward his desired feedback?

B. Examples

C. Exercises Enriching the Critical Reading of the Text (by group of 10

members)

Prompts: Write your reflection on your analysis of the story by

considering the following :

1. On the reliability of Loloy as narrator of his own story

2. Uncover the suppressed story of Pepita (creative writing)