Gephilippinelit (Module3)

MODULE 3
LIT 1 – PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
Prepared by:
Marjorie F. Espina
College of Arts and Sciences
General Education Program
A.Y. 2022-2023 – First Semester
MODULE 3 PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
Title: THE ART OF FICTION

Topics: 2.1 What is Fiction?
2.2 Elements of Fiction
2.2.1 Plot
2.2.2 Characters
2.2.3 Setting
2.2.4 Point of View
2.2.5 Theme
2.3 Fictions to read
2.3.1 Dead Stars by Paz Marquez-Benitez
2.3.2 The Dog Eaters by Leoncio P. Deriada
2.3.3 Magnificence by Estrella Alfon
2.3.4 I am One of the Mountain People by Macario Tiu
2.3.5 Footnote to Youth by Jose Garcia Villa
Time Frame: 10 hours
Introduction: Welcome to another literary journey! Indeed, studying

poetry from the previous module felt like wandering the deepest
seas and highest mountains. May your learning and insight from
those well-crafted works of art be with you for the rest of your
life.
Let's move on to another genre that will blend the real
and the imaginary into compelling stories. Fiction will transport
you back in time, visit places in our country, and experience
other cultures. It has the power that no other form of
communication does: the power to insert you wholly and entirely
in someone else's mind. It is a meld between the mind of the
reader and the writer and the minds of the reader and character.
When you read fiction, you will see the world through a
character's eyes. It will help you understand other people's
perspectives and allow you to see the bigger picture.
Objectives: In this module, learners will be able to:

1. Explain the meaning of fiction in their own words;
2. Analyze fiction using its basic elements;
3. Write their insights about the fiction they read;
4. Examine their character development as the protagonists of their
own story.
1
Lit 1 – Philippine Literature (First Semester, AY 2022-2023)
Prepared by Marjorie F. Espina
Pretest:
Read the first ever English short story published in our country, Dead Stars by Paz
Marquez-Benitez. If you are Esperanza, will you continue your wedding after knowing what
Alfredo did? Write your answer in five sentences. See Appendix A (table 1) for rubrics and
Appendix B page 38 for the story.
[Image downloaded from

https://www.wallpaperup.com/848678/Night_moon_romance_love_stars_sky_clouds.html in July 2020]
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
Note:
We will use Dead Stars by Paz Marquez-Benitez as our main story to be analyzed
using the elements of fiction.
2
Discussions and Learning Activities:
Read the meaning and forms of fiction.
WHAT IS FICTION?
FICTION
It‘s from the Latin word It is a story that is
fictio, which means a partially shaped, made
shaping and a up, or imagined.
counterfeiting.
[Figure 1 gives brief meaning of fiction. Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/type-

writer.htm in July 2020]
Modern literary fiction is dominated by two forms: the novel and the short
story but there are other forms of fiction older than these. The fable and the tale are
related varieties of fiction, which date back to the time of word-of-mouth storytelling.
Fables are short stories, which use animals to convey a moral or
message, sometimes stated at the end and sometimes implied. A tale is a
story, usually short, that that forth strange and wonderful event events in more or
less bare summary, without detailed-character drawing (Ranalan, Montebon, Rada,
Abellanosa & Leyte, 2013, p.47).
The short story on the other hand is more than just

a sequence of happenings. A finely written short story has
the richness and conciseness of an excellent lyric
poem(Ranalan, Montebon, Rada, Abellanosa & Leyte,
2013, p.47). Spontaneous and natural as the finished story
may seem, the writer has written it so artfully that there is
meaning even in even seemingly casual speeches and
apparently trivial details. If we read hastily, skipping the
descriptive passages, we miss significant parts. It is often
said that a short story will not contain details that do not
3
contribute to the meaning and effect it is trying to present.
[Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/piles-of-books.htm in July 2020]
The novel, a book-length story in prose, differs from the short story not only in
length. I can focus on many characters and has room to examine their actions and
motivation in greater detail and depth. It can also afford many settings and subplots.
Activity 1: Book Club Sharing
What is your favorite novel? Explain the reason why it is the most unforgettable one
for you in only five sentences. If you don’t have a favorite novel, you may choose a
fable, or a tale, or a short story. See Appendix A (table 1) for rubrics.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
4
Read the elements of fiction.
ELEMENTS OF FICTION
setting
point of view
characters
theme
plot
[Figure 2 is a tree of the elements of fiction. Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-

vector/book-shelves.htm in July 2020]
5
PLOT
Fiction arouses and sustains our interest in many ways. The gradual unfolding of the
dramatic situation from the beginning, the middle, to the end of the story is one of these. This
structure, followed by many short stories is called plot, the sequence of events from the
opening to the closing scene. The story‘s plot involves these phases.
1. Exposition
2. Rising Action
3. Climax
4. Falling Action
5. Resolution or Denouement
[Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/book-shelves.htm in July 2020]
It begins with an exposition: the opening portion that provides background

information that the readers need to understand the events that will follow. It also
establishes the characters and settings.
Example of Exposition using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
The Exposition starts when Alfredo thinks and reflects on his choices from his past.
The flashbacks follow with his father Don Julian and his sister Carmen's conversation about
his prolonged engagement with Esperanza. His reflection then continues when he meets
the woman who almost changes his mind.
IMPORTANT TIP: Use present tense when analyzing a fictional piece.
6
In this phase, the rising action happened when the central character usually
encounters a conflict (complication) where she or he clashes or struggles with
another force in the story.
Example of Rising Action using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
The Rising Action starts when Alfredo goes neighboring with Don Julian to Judge Del
Valle’s house. It’s where he meets Julia Salas. He unconsciously calls her Mrs. Del Valle
and feels embarrassed when he finds out that she isn't. Coming to the judge’s house
becomes so often, and he suddenly realizes that he has romantic feelings for Julia despite
being engaged with Esperanza.
Most common types of Conflict:
Man versus Self

Man versus Man
Man versus Nature
Man versus Society
Example using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
Since the story is from Alfredo’s point of view, he has Man versus Self and Man
versus Society conflicts.
He deals with Man versus Self conflict because he is confused with his feelings and
uncertain with choices in life. He suddenly has romantic feelings for Julia despite
being engaged with Esperanza.
He also deals with Man versus Society conflict because he prioritizes his family's
reputation. He chooses to continue his wedding because it is what society thinks is
right. It is necessary for him to adhere to the norms, traditions, and culture to the
point where he even sacrifices a part of himself.
7
Events then turn into climax, the moment of greatest tension from which the
outcome of the story depends.
Example of Climax using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
The Climax happens after the procession for The Lady of Sorrows. Alfredo catches up
with Julia. It’s when Julia finds out about Alfredo’s wedding, so she congratulates him. This
time, Alfredo needs to make his final choice. Will he choose what he wants to do? Or will
choose what he has to do?
The falling action then happens. It‘s the winding up of the story and occurs
when events and complications begin to resolve. The results of the actions of the
main characters are put forward.
Example of Falling Action using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
The Falling Action starts when Julia wants Alfredo to honor his promise to Esperanza.
She then says goodbye.
Alfredo goes home to Esperanza at last. As soon as he gets home, a situation from
their letter carrier triggers Esperanza's frustration. She then confronts Alfredo about his
emotional infidelity. Despite the prevailing circumstances, Alfredo still decides to continue
their wedding.
8
The resolution or denouement follows and the story ends.
Example of Resolution or Denouement using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
The Resolution starts when Alfredo and Esperanza get married. Eight years later, he
needs to find the elusive old woman named Brigida Samuy--a crucial person for his legal
assignment. This circumstance leads him to a particular lake town where Julia lives. He
grabs the opportunity and finds Julia in her house. She’s still unmarried. All of a sudden,
just like how quickly he catches feelings for her, he also realizes that his love for Julia
doesn’t exist anymore--just like dead stars.
In analyzing the plot, one should make note of such literary devices as Flashbacks
and Foreshadowing. Through flashbacks, the author can bring in the past whenever it is
most relevant to the present. This inverting of the order of narration is useful when reference
to past event is essential to the moving forward of the action of the present. The device of
foreshadowing aids the plot to make certain become clues or indicators of future events.
Literary devices: are various elements and techniques used in writing that construct the
whole of your literature to create an intended perception of the writing for the reader.
Example of Flashback using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
When Alfredo starts to reminisce his past:
“Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was
less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger
that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one
quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees
in the plaza, man wooed maid…”
9
Example of Foreshadowing using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

There is the procession of Lady of Sorrow, which signifies the Lenten season. It
foreshadows the pain (sorrow) that will be felt by Julia and Alfredo. Julia waits for the
procession to be over before he congratulates Alfredo on his coming wedding. Alfredo
even invites her to come, and she says yes. She expresses a strong facade despite
her plan to leave town as soon as possible. True enough, their last encounter leaves
an extreme impact on both of them because even years later, Alfredo still thinks of
Julia while she remains unmarried.
Activity 2: Finding the Clue

Find another foreshadowing in Dead Stars and explain in five sentences. See
Appendix B for rubrics.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
10
Let‘s continue reading the rest of the elements of fiction.
CHARACTERS
The choice of characters is another aspect which makes a story memorable.

This important component of fiction refers to the persons inhibiting the story, and
makes it come alive for the reader. If the story seems ―true to life‖, we generally find
that its characters act in a reasonably consistent manner, and that the author has
provided them with motivation, and sufficient reason to behave as they do. Should a
character behave in a sudden and unexpected way, we conclude that he had reason
for it.
The characters in fictions are commonly categorized into three:
1.1 Protagonist is a main character

who generates the action of a story
1. Major Types of Characters and engages the reader's interest
and empathy.
1.2 Antagonist is a character who

opposes the protagonist.
2.1 A round character is described in

three-dimensional levels. This kind
of character is portrayed with more
2. Characters according to depth and complexity and usually
Development undergoes a change that caused
by a conflict experienced in the
story.
2.2 A flat character exhibits only one

personality trait and remains the
same all throughout the story.
11
3. Characters according to 3.1 A dynamic character is one who
Change goes through some sort of change over the
course of the story.
3.2 A static character is the one

who stays the same
throughout the story.
Character Categories of Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:
Major Types of Characters Protagonist:

Alfredo Salazar
Characters according to Development Round Character:

Alfredo Salazar
Flat Characters:
Esperanza
Julia Salas
Don Julian
The rest of the background characters
Characters according to Change Dynamic Character:

Alfredo Salazar
Static Characters:
Esperanza
Julia Salas
Don Julian
The rest of the background characters
12
Activity 3: Character Analysis

Answer what is asked in only three sentences.
1. Why is Alfredo both a round and a dynamic character? What change has
happened to him in the story?
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
2. Would you consider Alfredo as an antagonist as well? Explain your answer.
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
13
Let‘s continue reading the rest of the elements of fiction.
SETTING
Setting is another important element of fiction. By setting of a story we mean

its time and place. It includes the physical environment of a story besides place.
Setting may crucially involve the time of a story—the hour, year, or century. In an
effective a short story, setting may figure as more than mere background. It can
make things happen. It can prompt characters to act, bring them to realizations or
cause them to reveal their inmost natures.
The setting refers to the time, the geographical locations, and the general
environment and circumstances that prevail in a narrative. The setting helps to
establish the mood of a story.
There are two types of settings:
1. Integral Setting: the setting is fully described in both time and place, usually
found in historical fiction.
Examples using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Geographical: House of Don Julian, House of Judge del Valle, House of Don Julian
in Tanda, Church of Our Lady of Sorrow, Calle Real, Sta.Cruz (Calle
Luz)
Time: Lenten Season
2. Backdrop Setting: the setting is vague and general, which helps to convey a
universal, timeless tale. This type of setting is often found in folktales and simply
sets the stage and the mood. For example, "long ago in a cottage in the deep
woods"
14
POINT OF VIEW
The effective use of point of view is another method of making a story

outstanding. In literature, this refers to the vantage point or the perspective from
which the story is told. A storyteller may use many types of point of view to
emphasize the message of the story. To know the point of view is mainly to identify
the narrator of the story. A narrator who uses “I” and may either be actively
involved or is just a minor character in the events of the story is using the first
person of view. If the narrator is a non-participant, then the story is using the
third person of view. This type is further classified into three: 1. the omniscient
point of view which sees everything and enters into all the minds of the characters; 2.
the third person limited which uses the perspective of only one character and sees
everything through him or her; and 3. the objective point of view which does not
enter the mind of any character but describes events from the outside. The
objectives of scenic point of view tell us what people say and how they look, but
leave us to infer their thoughts and feelings.
The point of view in Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars is a third-person omniscient

point of view. The narrator of the story Alfredo and his narration describe the other
characters. His narration moves freely through time and also reveals their thoughts and
feelings.
15
THEME
After looking at all these elements of fiction, we are left with the general
meaning or insight that the story reveals. This is the theme of the story. In literary
fiction, a theme is seldom obvious. Unlike a fable which usually states a moral at
the end of the story, the theme of a story may not contain a moral or a message.
Trying to sum up the point of the story in our own words is one way to make
ourselves better aware of whatever we may have understood vaguely, and such
statements may bring into focus our scattered impressions of a rewarding story and
may help to clarify and hold fast whatever wisdom the storyteller has offered us.
While the story normally possesses one idea that we call a theme, this does not
mean it cannot have other meanings. The analysis and evaluation of a story‘s
meaning depend largely on the framework or the perspective used by a reader. This
is what makes a story rich and rewarding as it has a fertile ground for varied
interpretations.
Example of Theme using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Dead Stars is an unforgettable literary piece that makes us think about how our
decisions now can extremely affect our future. Alfredo chooses something that needs to
do instead of something that he wants to do. His choice has haunted him for many
years. It‘s a very familiar occurrence in our lives, may it be about love, career, or even
the kind of relationships that we want to keep. I think it‘s always important to follow what
gives you peace and security no matter what your choices are.
16
Activity 4: Share your Insights

Answer what is asked in only three sentences.
1. Give your own insights of the story.

___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Read Leoncio P. Deriada’s The Dog Eaters. See Appendix B on page 55 for the
story.
Activity 5: Check Your Vocabulary

Fiction: The Dog Eaters by Leoncio P. Deriada
Unjumble the letters after each statement to form the synonym of the underlined
word,
1. ―Those filthy men!‖ she snarled. ―Whose dog did they slaughter today?‖
RIDYT = ________________________________
2. Mariana opened her mouth for harsher invectives but a sharp cry from the
bedroom arrested her.
DOSLCING = ________________________________
3. Once again, her eyes surveyed the room with repulsion.

TIDSGUS = ________________________________
4. Mariana dashed out of the room, her right hand tight around the empty bottle.
ARN = ________________________________
5. Their voices offended the ears just as the stench from the garbage dump at
the Artiaga-Mabini junction offended the nostrils.
DBA LEMSL = ________________________________
17
6. He ran upstairs, encircled Mariana once , and then sniffed her hands,
LINDHEA = ________________________________
7. The tall bottle looked grotesque on the table; tiny, gnarled roots seemed in
twist like worms or miniature umbilical cords.
LRMAFEOMD = ________________________________
8. And like a man possessed, he hurled the bottle out of the window,
RETWH = ________________________________
9. Mariana laughed deliriously.

HALTREYSICLY = ________________________________
10. She released the chain and the canine carcass dropped with a thud on the
ground below.
ADDE GDO = ________________________________
Activity 6: Analyzing a literary piece using the elements of fiction

Analyze Leoncio P. Deriada’s The Dog Eaters using the elements of fiction. See
Appendix B on page 55 for the story.
1. Summarize the story using the different parts of a plot. You may write in three
to five sentences. See appendix A (table 2) for rubrics.
EXPOSITION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RISING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
18
______________________________________________________________
CLIMAX:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
FALLING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. What is the setting of the story? Describe in one to two sentences.

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
19
3. What is the conflict? Write your answer in only one sentence.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. What is the point of view of the story? Write your answer in only one
sentence.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Activity 7: Check your understanding

Using Leoncio P. Deriada’s The Dog Eaters, answer the following questions below
in three to five sentences. See Appendix A (table 2) for rubrics and see Appendix B
on page 55 for the story.
1. What is the real cause of Mariana‘s anger towards her husband?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. Analyze the personality of Victor. What kind of a husband and father is he?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
20
3. Why does Mariana want to abort her baby? Discuss Victor‘s reaction to this
decision.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. Why did Mariana kill the dog?

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Explain the last paragraph of the story. What does this reveal of Mariana‘s
situation in the light of what she experienced during her stay in Artiaga St.?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
21
Read Estrella Alfon’s Magnificence. See Appendix B on page 71 for the story.

Fiction: Magnificence
Choose the word/phrase from the list that shows the meaning of the words in Italics.
Fashion Light
Harshness Squeezing
Retreated in fear Picked up
Soft sob Strange
Like Twisted
Unforgettable
_____________1. He would stand for a while just beyond the pond of light, his feet
in the circle of illumination, the rest in shadow.
_____________2. In those days, the rage was for pencils.
_____________3. The man‘s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the
little girl squirmed out of his arms.
_____________4. I have watched him with the children, and he seems to dote on
them.
_____________5. But the little girl felt very queer, she didn‘t know why, all of a
sudden she was immensely frightened, and she jumped up
away from Vicente‘s lap.
_____________6. He snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to
his stomach, turning away from the mother‘s coming.
_____________7. Before the silence and the grimness of her attack he cowered,
_____________8. retreating, until out of his mouth issued something like a
whimper.
_____________9. Always also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated
_____________10. with terror, the girl was to remember the touch of that hand on
her shoulder, heavy, kneading at her flesh.
22

Analyze Estrella Alfon’s Magnificence using the elements of fiction. See Appendix
B on page 71 for the story.
EXPOSITION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RISING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
CLIMAX:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
FALLING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
23
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
sentence.
___________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
24
Activity 10: Check your understanding

Using Estrella Alfon’s Magnificence, answer the following questions below in three
to five sentences. See Appendix A (table 2) for rubrics and see Appendix B on page
71 for the story.
1. What did Vicente do to win the trust of the mother and the children?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. What did Vicente do to the little girl, which caused the mother‘s anger?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. How did the mother show her magnificence? Would you agree she is the
magnificent character in this story?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. What symbolism does the author use to describe the mother‘s cleansing of
the little girl? What other symbols are used in the story?
______________________________________________________________
25
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Do you think that the title of the story best describes what the mother does?
Why? What qualities should a mother possess?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Activity 11: Prepare to Read

What comes into your mind when you hear the word Lumad? Have you ever
met one? What problems are they experiencing nowadays? In your opinion, what
possible solutions can be offered to help ease the problems of the lumads? Explain
your answers in five sentences. See Appendix A (table 1) for rubrics.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Read Macario D. Tiu’s I Am One of the Mountain People. See Appendix B on

page 76 for the story.
26

Read how the italicized words below are used in the story. Determine the meaning of
these words by answering YES or NO to the following questions.
_______1, Would an idle man be always busy?

_______2, When a journey is hazardous, is it dangerous?
_______3, Is a glamorous person beautiful and attractive?
_______4, When you win a great prize, would you expect jubilation from your
friends?
_______5, Is an infidel a friend who shares the same faith with you?
_______6, Would a person who muttered shout loud his words for everyone to hear?
_______7, Is a person in agony happy and content?
_______8, Does a person who feels awkward feel comfortable and relaxed?
_______9, Is a person who languished about all day active and full of energy?
_______10, When a person is in unbearable conditions, is he in a state of pain and
suffering?
Activity 13: Check Your Understanding

Using Macario D, Tiu’s I Am One of the Mountain People, answer the following
questions below in three to five sentences. See Appendix A (table 2) for rubrics and
see Appendix B on page 76 for the story.
1. Who is the narrator? Why does he refer to himself as one of the mountain
people?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
27
2. Discuss the reasons of Datu Magdum in wanting his son to study in a

Christian school. Do you consider his reasons justifiable?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. What was the conflict experienced by the narrator during his stay at Santa
Barbara?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. When the narrator went home for a visit, what changes became evident in his
beliefs and attitudes? Discuss how the tribe reacted to these changes.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Why did the narrator decide to go back home against his father‘s will?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
28
Read Jose Garcia Villa’s Footnote to Youth. See Appendix B on page 81 for the
story
Activity 14: Venn Diagramming

Compare and contrast the three generations of this story. On the Venn diagram
below, write the reactions of Dodong‘s father, Dodong and then Blas when their
son‘s /they requested for marriage.
Father of Dodong Blas

Dodong
29

Analyze Jose Garcia Villa’s Footnote to Youth using the elements of fiction. See
Appendix B on page 81 for the story.
EXPOSITION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RISING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
CLIMAX:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
30
FALLING ACTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
31
sentence.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. What does the line ―love must triumph now, afterwards it will be life‖ mean to
you?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
32
Self-Evaluation:
[Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/young-author-writer-working-new-article_827

13.htm in July 2020]
Read the following statements and right BLACK if it is a characteristic of fiction and
PINK if it is not.
________ Stories are easier to read than poems because they are realistic.
________ Fiction is a written composition which narrates a true story.
________ Reading fiction gives me insights into the nature of people and events in the
world.
________ Fiction could also narrate a tale based only on the writer's imagination.
________ I like to read short stories because they contain rhyme and rhythmic sentences.
________ A fictional story must be based on a real life event.
________ When reading a story, what I want to know most is how the action unfolds and
how it ends.
________ A short parable can also be considered fiction.
________ A fictional story contains setting and characters to make it believable.
________ A proverb is another example of fiction.
________ Reading tales is pleasurable because they take me to another world.
33
Review of Concepts:
Read over again the following important concepts in the language of poetry.
[Image downloaded from https://www.shutterstock.com/search/literature in July 2020]
 Fiction is a story that is partially shaped, made up, or imagined.

 Modern literary fiction is dominated by two forms: the novel and the short story.
 A short story is more than just a sequence of happenings. It is a finely written
short story has the richness and conciseness of an excellent lyric poem
 A novel is a book-length story in prose, differs from the short story not only in
length.
 The five most common elements of fiction are plot, characters, settings, point of
view, and theme.
 Plot is the structure and order of events of the story. It consists of exposition,
rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
 Literary devices are various elements and techniques used in writing that
construct the whole of your literature to create an intended perception of the
writing for the reader.
 A Flashback is a literary device which describes some past events related to the
present
 Foreshadowing is a literary device which gives allusion (possibly implicit) to some
future events of the story.
 Characters are the people, animals, or aliens in the story. Readers come to know
the characters through what they say, what they think, and how they act.
 Conflict is the struggle between two entities. In story writing the main character,
also known as the protagonist, encounters a conflict with the antagonist, which is
an adversary.
 The point of view is the vantage point of the narrator.
 The theme is the underlying truth that is being conveyed in the story. Themes can
be universal, meaning they are understood by readers no matter what culture or
country the readers are in.
34
Post-Test: This will be given on our gmeet.
References:
Novel (n.d.). In Online Dictionary online. Retrieved from

https://www.dictionary.com/e/novel/
Ranalan,R., Montebon, M.C., Rada, M.T.,Abellanosa, N., & Leyte, P. (2013).
Crossing boundaries through literature. (pp. 49-68). Malabon City. Mutya
Publishing House.
35
APPENDIX A
Rubrics for Essay Writing
Table 1
Criteria Rating
Clarity of content/message cited 10
Appropriateness of ideas cited 5
Mechanics 5
Total 20
Table 2
Criteria Rating
Answer is incorrect but there is some correct support 1 point
Answer is correct but no support is provided. 2 points
Answer is correct and there is some support. 3 points
Answer is correct and the support is developed. 4 points
Answer is correct and the support is fully developed. 5 points
36
APPENDIX B
Dead Stars by Paz Marquez-Benitez
THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly
enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he
had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush–
they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of
conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were
busy puttering away among the rose pots.
―Papa, and when will the ‗long table‘ be set?‖
―I don‘t know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to
be next month.‖
Carmen sighed impatiently. ―Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over
thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting.‖
―She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either,‖ Don Julian nasally commented,
while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
―How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?‖ Carmen
returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. ―Papa, do you
remember how much in love he was?‖
―In love? With whom?‖
―With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of,‖ she
said with good-natured contempt. ―What I mean is that at the beginning he was
enthusiastic–flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that–‖
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was
less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger
that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one
quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in
the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love–he seemed to
have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid
37
imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid
monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of
circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still
the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it
might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those
days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when
something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time
to see. ―Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it,‖ someone had seemed to urge in his ears.
So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while
in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very
much engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so
many. Greed–the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to
squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but
half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for
immediate excitement. Greed–mortgaging the future–forcing the hand of Time, or of
Fate.
―What do you think happened?‖ asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
―I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think
they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been
allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament–or of affection–on
the part of either, or both.‖ Don Julian loved to philosophize. He was talking now with
an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue
pitch. ―That phase you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides,
that, as I see it, was Alfredo‘s last race with escaping youth–‖
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother‘s perfect physical repose–almost
indolence–disturbed in the role suggested by her father‘s figurative language.
―A last spurt of hot blood,‖ finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had
amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence. Tall
and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight
recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer‘s
eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips–indeed Alfredo Salazar‘s appearance
betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a
fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
38
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps;
then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate
which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road
bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open
porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house,
rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas
meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now–
One evening he had gone ―neighboring‖ with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence,
since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge.
This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. ―A little
mental relaxation now and then is beneficial,‖ the old man had said. ―Besides, a
judge‘s good will, you know;‖ the rest of the thought–―is worth a rising young lawyer‘s
trouble‖–Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own
worldly wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the
Judge‘s children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic
Filipino way formal introductions had been omitted–the judge limiting himself to a
casual ―Ah, ya se conocen?‖–with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del
Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed
her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge‘s sister, as he
had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very
dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady should have
corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that he should
explain.
To his apology, she replied, ―That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you,
but I remembered a similar experience I had once before.‖
―Oh,‖ he drawled out, vastly relieved.
―A man named Manalang–I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the
young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, ‗Pardon me, but my name is
Manalang, Manalang.‘ You know, I never forgave him!‖
39
He laughed with her.
―The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out,‖ she pursued, ―is to
pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help.‖
―As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I–‖
―I was thinking of Mr. Manalang.‖
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of
chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory
conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered
porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and banged away as
the player‘s moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas
could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a
sister of the Judge‘s wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether.
She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and
delicately modeled hips–a pretty woman with the complexion of a baby and the
expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously pretty. She had the
same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown with
underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding
vitality.
On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel
road to the house on the hill. The Judge‘s wife invariably offered them beer, which
Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the chessboard
would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out to the porch to chat.
She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the hours–warm, quiet
March hours–sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it was evident that she liked
his company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it
seemed a matter of course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly
about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo
suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza to
come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go
―neighboring.‖
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually
untruthful, added, ―Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle‘s.‖
40
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked
jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power
to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married, why, of course, he

loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another woman.
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving
Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something
that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy
and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the
shadows around, enfolding.
―Up here I find–something–‖
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted
intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, ―Amusement?‖
―No; youth–its spirit–‖
―Are you so old?‖
―And heart‘s desire.‖
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
―Down there,‖ he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, ―the road is too
broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery.‖
―Down there‖ beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the
darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere,
bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.
―Mystery–‖ she answered lightly, ―that is so brief–‖
―Not in some,‖ quickly. ―Not in you.‖
41
―You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery.‖
―I could study you all my life and still not find it.‖
―So long?‖
―I should like to.‖
Those six weeks were now so swift–seeming in the memory, yet had they been so
deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because
neither the past nor the future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present,
day by day, lived it intensely, with such a willful shutting out of fact as astounded him
in his calmer moments.
Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend Sunday
afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach.
Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most
of the time indoors directing the preparation of the merienda and discussing the
likeable absurdities of their husbands–how Carmen‘s Vicente was so absorbed in his
farms that he would not even take time off to accompany her on this visit to her
father; how Doña Adela‘s Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes
going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a
thriving young coconut looked like–―plenty of leaves, close set, rich green‖–while the
children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand
left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water,
indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were
her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear
which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
―I hope you are enjoying this,‖ he said with a questioning inflection.
―Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely
beach.‖
There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and
whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was
42
something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace,
distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the
more compelling because it was an inner quality, an achievement of the spirit. The
lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and body, of a thoughtful,
sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm.
―The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn‘t it?‖ Then, ―This, I think, is the last
time–we can visit.‖
―The last? Why?‖
―Oh, you will be too busy perhaps.‖
He noted an evasive quality in the answer.
―Do I seem especially industrious to you?‖
―If you are, you never look it.‖
―Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be.‖
―But–‖
―Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm.‖ She smiled to herself.
―I wish that were true,‖ he said after a meditative pause.
She waited.
―A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid.‖
―Like a carabao in a mud pool,‖ she retorted perversely
―Who? I?‖
―Oh, no!‖
―You said I am calm and placid.‖
―That is what I think.‖
43
―I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves.‖
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert
phrase.
―I should like to see your home town.‖
―There is nothing to see–little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on
them, and sometimes squashes.‖
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal
more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him.
―Nothing? There is you.‖
―Oh, me? But I am here.‖
―I will not go, of course, until you are there.‖
―Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn‘t even one American there!‖
―Well–Americans are rather essential to my entertainment.‖
She laughed.
―We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees.‖
―Could I find that?‖
―If you don‘t ask for Miss del Valle,‖ she smiled teasingly.
―I‘ll inquire about–‖
―What?‖
―The house of the prettiest girl in the town.‖
―There is where you will lose your way.‖ Then she turned serious. ―Now, that is not
quite sincere.‖
―It is,‖ he averred slowly, but emphatically.
44
―I thought you, at least, would not say such things.‖
―Pretty–pretty–a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that
quite–‖
―Are you withdrawing the compliment?‖
―Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye–it is more than
that when–‖
―If it saddens?‖ she interrupted hastily.
―Exactly.‖
―It must be ugly.‖
―Always?‖
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer
of crimsoned gold.
―No, of course you are right.‖
―Why did you say this is the last time?‖ he asked quietly as they turned back.
―I am going home.‖
The end of an impossible dream!
―When?‖ after a long silence.
―Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to
spend Holy Week at home.‖
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. ―That is why I said this is the last time.‖
―Can‘t I come to say good-bye?‖
―Oh, you don‘t need to!‖
―No, but I want to.‖
―There is no time.‖
45
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a
pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects the senses
as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a cessation of tumult
when all violence of feeling tones down to the wistful serenity of regret. She turned
and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.
―Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life.‖
―I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old
things.‖
―Old things?‖
―Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage.‖ He said it lightly, unwilling to
mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for one whirling
second.
Don Julian‘s nasal summons came to them on the wind.
Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her face
away, but he heard her voice say very low, ―Good-bye.‖
II
ALFREDO Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and
entered the heart of the town–heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung
roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-repairing
establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith‘s cubbyhole where a consumptive bent
over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint hand-and-ball
knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of ancient
church and convento, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as
the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the voice of the biggest of the
church bells kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their
long wax candles, young women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the
Lord was still alive), older women in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in
droves, elbowing each other under the talisay tree near the church door. The gaily
decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display while from the windows of the
older houses hung colored glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith wicks
floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device.
Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the length
of the street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters where the
saints‘ platforms were. Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the
choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of burning wax.
46
The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows
suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines of light into
component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried to look unaware,
and could not.
The line moved on.
Suddenly, Alfredo‘s slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was coming
down the line–a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that could cause
violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and then
back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions end.
At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir,
whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the close of the
procession.
A round orange moon, ―huge as a winnowing basket,‖ rose lazily into a clear sky,
whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still
densely shadowed streets the young women with their rear guard of males loitered
and, maybe, took the longest way home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The
crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived
farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while:
yet the thought did not hurry him as he said ―Good evening‖ and fell into step with
the girl.
―I had been thinking all this time that you had gone,‖ he said in a voice that was both
excited and troubled.
―No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go.‖
―Oh, is the Judge going?‖
―Yes.‖
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned
elsewhere. As lawyer–and as lover–Alfredo had found that out long before.
47
―Mr. Salazar,‖ she broke into his silence, ―I wish to congratulate you.‖
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
―For what?‖
―For your approaching wedding.‖
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not offend?
―I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are
slow about getting the news,‖ she continued.
He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He heard
nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones of early
acquaintance. No revelation there; simply the old voice–cool, almost detached from
personality, flexible and vibrant, suggesting potentialities of song.
―Are weddings interesting to you?‖ he finally brought out quietly
―When they are of friends, yes.‖
―Would you come if I asked you?‖
―When is it going to be?‖
―May,‖ he replied briefly, after a long pause.
―May is the month of happiness they say,‖ she said, with what seemed to him a
shade of irony.
―They say,‖ slowly, indifferently. ―Would you come?‖
―Why not?‖
―No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?‖
―If you will ask me,‖ she said with disdain.
―Then I ask you.‖
―Then I will be there.‖

48
The gravel road lay before them; at the road‘s end the lighted windows of the house
on the hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so keen that it
was pain, a wish that, that house were his, that all the bewilderments of the present
were not, and that this woman by his side were his long wedded wife, returning with
him to the peace of home.
―Julita,‖ he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, ―did you ever have to choose
between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?‖
―No!‖
―I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man
who was in such a situation.‖
―You are fortunate,‖ he pursued when she did not answer.
―Is–is this man sure of what he should do?‖
―I don‘t know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and
rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to ask
whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on him.‖
―But then why–why–‖ her muffled voice came. ―Oh, what do I know? That is his
problem after all.‖
―Doesn‘t it–interest you?‖
―Why must it? I–I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house.‖
Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope
trembled in his mind though set against that hope were three years of engagement,
a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the parents, his own
conscience, and Esperanza herself–Esperanza waiting, Esperanza no longer young,

Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the intensely acquisitive.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind
of aversion which he tried to control.
49
She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable
appearance. She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor with startling
reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the street, she was always herself, a
woman past first bloom, light and clear of complexion, spare of arms and of breast,
with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman dressed with self-conscious care, even
elegance; a woman distinctly not average.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about
Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened,
understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: ―Well, what of
it?‖ The remark sounded ruder than he had intended.
―She is not married to him,‖ Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice.
―Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her up. We never
thought she would turn out bad.‖
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?
―You are very positive about her badness,‖ he commented dryly. Esperanza was
always positive.
―But do you approve?‖
―Of what?‖
―What she did.‖
―No,‖ indifferently.
―Well?‖
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her mind.
―All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked.‖
―Why shouldn‘t it be? You talked like an–immoral man. I did not know that your ideas
were like that.‖
―My ideas?‖ he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. ―The only

test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody? No?
50
Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is
not married–is that it? It may be wrong, and again it may not.‖
―She has injured us. She was ungrateful.‖ Her voice was tight with resentment.
―The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are–‖ he stopped, appalled by the
passion in his voice.
―Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you have
been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what perhaps
some are trying to keep from me.‖ The blood surged into his very eyes and his
hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. What would she say next?
―Why don‘t you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me and
of what people will say.‖ Her voice trembled.
Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What
people will say–what will they not say? What don‘t they say when long engagements
are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?
―Yes,‖ he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, ―one tries to be

fair–according to his lights–but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one‘s self first.
But that is too easy, one does not dare–‖
―What do you mean?‖ she asked with repressed violence. ―Whatever my

shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of my
way, of my place, to find a man.‖
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or was
that a covert attack on Julia Salas?
―Esperanza–‖ a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. ―If you–suppose I–‖ Yet
how could a mere man word such a plea?
―If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of–why don‘t you tell
me you are tired of me?‖ she burst out in a storm of weeping that left him completely
shamed and unnerved.
The last word had been said.
III
51
As Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the
lake, he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this trip of his. He
was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of the Philippine
Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he would have been if Brigida Samuy
had not been so important to the defense. He had to find that elusive old woman.
That the search was leading him to that particular lake town which was Julia Salas‘
home should not disturb him unduly Yet he was disturbed to a degree utterly out of
proportion to the prosaicalness of his errand. That inner tumult was no surprise to
him; in the last eight years he had become used to such occasional storms. He had
long realized that he could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and
not to remember too much. The climber of mountains who has known the back-
break, the lonesomeness, and the chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths
made easy to his feet. He looks up sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk
of evening, but he knows he must not heed the radiant beckoning. Maybe, in time,
he would cease even to look up.
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of
capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of
character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of
emotions that got a man nowhere. From his capacity of complete detachment he
derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the himself that had its being in the
core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and alone. When claims
encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner
fastness, and from that vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and
alien, as incidents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and
helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-tilted town
nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood beside the
ancient church. On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the
sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost themselves in the purple shadows of the
hills. There was a young moon which grew slowly luminous as the coral tints in the
sky yielded to the darker blues of evening.
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on
the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to
meet the boat–slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore
speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of
knowing whether the presidente was there to meet him or not. Just then a voice
shouted.
―Is the abogado there? Abogado!‖
52
―What abogado?‖ someone irately asked.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with
Brigida Samuy–Tandang ―Binday‖–that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar‘s second
letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said, ―Go and meet the abogado
and invite him to our house.‖
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since
the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had
received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an
answer. ―Yes,‖ the policeman replied, ―but he could not write because we heard that
Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her.‖
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do
something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.
Eight o‘clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a
somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare
to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town.
His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry
piles driven into the water.
How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light
issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional
couple sauntered by, the women‘s chinelas making scraping sounds. From a
distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street–tubigan
perhaps, or ―hawk-and-chicken.‖ The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled
him with a pitying sadness.
How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to
her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a
sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married–
why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful memory. It
was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability.
Irrelevant trifles–a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a
dream–at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent,
unfinished prayer.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon
wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its
53
angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock‘s
first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would
surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The
house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable
relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise.
―Good evening,‖ he said, raising his hat.
―Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?‖
―On some little business,‖ he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.
―Won‘t you come up?‖
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the
window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came
downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last–he was shaking her hand.
She had not changed much–a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something
had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark
eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a sober,
somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though with a
growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her
face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity
creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a
blush.
Gently–was it experimentally?–he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt
undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly
interested him.
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-
studded sky.
So that was all over.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?
So all these years–since when?–he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long
extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
54
An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some
immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and
where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
This is the 1925 short story that gave birth to modern Philippine writing in English.
[Retrieved from https://www.sushidog.com/bpss/stories/stars.htm in August 2020]
The Dog Eaters by Leoncio P. Deriada
Mariana looked out of the window toward the other side of Artiaga Street. A group of
men had gathered around a low table in front of Sergio's sari-sari store. It was ten
o'clock, Tuesday morning. Yet these men did not find it too early to drink, and worse.
They wanted her husband to be with them. Victor was now reaching for his shirt
hooked on the wall between Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos. Mariana turned to him,
her eyes wild in repulsion and anger.
"Those filthy men!" she snarled. "Whose dog did they slaughter today?"
Victor did not answer. He put on his shirt. Presently, he crawled on the floor and
searched for his slippers under the table. Mariana watched him strain his body
toward the wall, among the rattan tools. He looked like a dog tracking the smell
hidden carrion.
"My God, Victor, do you have to join them every time they stew somebody's pet?"
Victor found his slippers. He emerged from under the table, smoothed his pants and
unbutton his shirt. He was sweating. He looked at his wife and smiled faintly, the
expression sarcastic, and in an attempt to be funny, "it's barbecue today."
"I'm not in the mood for jokes!" Mariana raised her voice. "It's time you stop going
with those good-for-nothing scavengers."
Her words stung. For now she noted an angry glint in Victor's eyes. "They are my
friends, Mariana," he said.
"You should have married one of them!" she snapped back. Suddenly, she
straightened. She heard Sergio's raspy voice, calling from his store across the street.
It was an ugly voice, and it pronounced Victor's name in a triumphant imitation of a
55
dog's bark.
"Victor! Victor! Aw! Aw!" the canine growl floated across Artiaga Street. Mariana
glared at her husband as he brushed her aside on his way to the window. She felt
like clawing his face, biting his arms, ripping the smelly shirt off his back. "I'm
coming," Victor answered, leaning out of the window. Mariana opened her mouth for
harsher invectives but a sharp cry from the bedroom arrested her. It was her baby.
She rushed to the table, pick a cold bottle of milk, and entered.
In ITS rattan crib that looked like a rat's nest, the baby cried louder. Mariana shook
the crib vehemently. The baby - all mouth and all legs - thrust in awkward arms into
the air, blindly searching for accustomed nipple.
The baby sucked the rubber nipple easily. But Mariana's mind was outside the room
as she watched her husband lean out of the window to answer the invitation of the
dog-eaters of Artiaga Street.
"Aren't you inviting your wife?" she spoke loud, the hostility in her voice unchecked
by the dirty plywood wall. "Perhaps your friends have reserved the best morsel for
me. Which is the most delicious part of a dog, ha, Victor? Its heart? Its liver? Its
brain? Blood? Bone? Ears? Tongue? Tail? I wish to God you'd all die of
hydrophobia!"
"Can you feed the baby and talk at the same time?" Victor said. She did not expect
him to answer and now that he had, she felt angrier. The heat from the unceilinged
roof had become terrible and it had all seeped into her head. She was ready for a
fight.
The baby had gone back to sleep. Mariana dashed out of the room, her right hand
tight around the empty bottle. She had to have a weapon. She came upon her
husband opening the door to little porch. The porch was at the top of the stairs that
led out into Artiaga Street.
"Why don't you do something instead of drinking their stinking tuba and eating that
filthy meat? Why don't you decent for a change?"
Victor turned her off. It seemed he was also ready for a fight. The glint in his eyes
had become sinister.
And what's so indecent about eating dog meat?" His voice sounded canine, too, like
Sergio's. "The people of Artiaga Street have been eating dog meat for as long as I
56
can remember." "No wonder their manners have gone to the dogs!"
"You married one of them."
"Yes, to lead a dog's life!"
Victor stepped closer, breathing hard. Marina did not move. "What's eating you?" he
demanded.
"What's eating me?" she yelled. "Dog's! I'm ready to say aw-aw, don't you know?"
Victor repaired his face, amused by this type of quarrel. Again, he tried to be funny.
"Come, come, Mariana darling," he said, smiling condescendingly.
Mariana was not amused. She was all set to proceed with the fight. Now she tried to
be acidly ironic.
―Shall I slaughter Ramir for you? That pet of yours does nothing but bark at strangers
and dirty the doorstep. Perhaps you can invite your friends tonight. Let‘s celebrate.‖
―Leave Ramir alone,‖ Victor said, seriously.
―That dog is enslaving me!‖
Victor turned to the door. It was the final insult, Mariana thought. The bastard! How
dare he turn his back on her?
―Punyeta!‖ she screeched and flung the bottle at her husband. Instinctively, Victor
turned and parried the object with his arm. The bottle fell to the floor but did
not break. It rolled noisily under the table where Victor moment had hunted for his
rubber slippers.
He looked at her, but there was no reaction in his face. Perhaps he thought it was all
a joke. He opened the door and stepped out into the street.
Mariana ran to the door and banged it once, twice, thrice, all the while shrieking, ―Go!
Eat and drink until your tongue hangs like a mad dog‘s. Then I‘ll call a veterinarian.‖
57
Loud after came across the street.
Mariana leaned out of the window and shouted to the men gathered in front of
Sergio‘s store.
―Why don‘t you leave my husband alone? You dogs!‖
The men laughed louder, obscenely. Their voices offended the ears just as the
stench from the garbage dump at the Artiaga-Mabini junction offended the nostrils.
There were five other men aside from the chief drinker, Sergio. Downing a gallon of
tuba at ten o‘clock in the morning with of Artiaga‘s idle men was his idea of
brotherhood. It was good for his store, he thought, though his wife languish behind
the row of glass jars and open cartons of dried fish – the poor woman deep in
notebooks of unpaid bills the neighbors had accumulated these last two years.
Mariana closed the window. The slight darkening of the room intensified the heat on
the roof and in her head. She pulled a stool and sat beside the sewing machine
under the huge pictures of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, under the altar-like alcove
on the wall where a transistor radio was enshrined like an idol.
She felt tired. Once again, her eyes surveyed the room with repulsion. She had
stayed in this rented house for two years, tried to paste pictures on the wall, hung up
classic curtains that could not completely ward off the stink from the street. Instead
of cheering up the house, they made it sadder, emphasizing the lack of the things
she had dreamed of having when she eloped with Victor two years ago.
Victor was quite attractive. When he was teen-ager, he was a member of the
Gregory Body Building Club on Cortes Street. He dropped out of freshmen year at
Harvadian and instead developed his chest and biceps at the club. His was to be Mr.
Philippines, until one day, Gregory cancelled his membership. Big Boss Gregory -
who was not interested in girls but in club members with the proportions of Mr.
Philippines – had discovered that Victor was dating a manicurist named Fely.
Victor found work as a bouncer at Three Diamonds, a candlelit bar at the end of
Artiaga, near Jacinto Street. All the hostesses there were Fely‘s customers. Mariana,
who came from a better neighborhood, was a third year BSE student at Rizal
Memorial Colleges. They eloped during the second semester, the very week Fey
drowned in the pool behind Three Diamonds. Just as Mariana grew heavy with a
child, Victor lost his job at the bar. He quarreled with the manager. An uncle working
in a construction company found him a new job. But he showed up only when the
58
man did not report for work.
These last few days, not one of the carpenters got sick. So Victor had to stay home.
Mariana felt a stirring in her womb. She felt her belly with both hands. Her tight faded
dress could not quite conceal this most unwanted pregnancy. The baby in the crib in
the other room was only eight months, and here she was - carrying another child.
She closed her eyes and pressed her belly hard. She felt the uncomfortable swell,
and in a moment, she had ridiculous thought. What if she bore a pair or a trio of
puppies? She imagined herself as a dog, a spent bitch with hind legs spread out
obscenely as her litter of three, or four, or five, fought for her tits while the mongrel
who was responsible for all this misery flirted with the other dogs of the
neighborhood.
A dog barked. Mariana was startled. It was Ramir. His chain clanked and she could
picture the dog going up the stairs, his lethal fangs bared in terrible growl.
―Ay, ay, Mariana!‖ a familiar, nervous voice rose from the din. ―Your dog! He‘ll bite
me. Shoo! Shoo!‖
It was Aling Elpidia, the fish and vegetable vendor.
―Stay away from the beast, Aling Elpidia!‖ Mariana shouted. She opened the door.
Aling Elpidia was in the little yard, her hands nervously holding her basket close to
her like a shield. Ramir was at the bottom of the stairs, straining at his chain, barking
at the old woman.
Mariana pulled the chain. The dog resisted. But soon he relaxed and stopped
barking. He ran upstairs, encircled Mariana once, and then sniffed her hands.
―Come on up, Aling Elpidia. Don‘t be afraid. I‘m holding Ramir‘s leash.‖
The old woman rushed upstairs, still shielding herself with her basket of fish and
vegetables.
59
―Naku, Mariana. Why do you keep that crazy dog at the door? He‘ll bite a kilo off
every visitor. The last time I was here I almost had a heart attack.‖
―That‘s Victor‘s idea of a house guard. Come, sit down.‖
Aling Elpidia dragged a stool to the window. ―Why, I‘m still trembling!‖ she said. ―Why
must you close the window, Mariana?‖
Mariana opened the window. ―Those horrible men across the street, I can‘t stand
their noise.‖
―Where‘s Victor?‖
―There!‖ Mariana said contemptuously. ―With them.‖ The old woman looked out of
the window.
―He is one of them!‖
―One of what?‖
―The dog-eaters of Artiaga Street!‖ Mariana spat out the words, her eyes wild in
anger.
Aling Elpidia sat down again. ―What is so terrible about that?‖ she asked.
Mariana looked at the old woman. For the first time she noticed that Aling Elpidia had
been dying her hair. But the growth of hair this week had betrayed her.
―Do you eat dog meat, Aling Elpidia?‖ Mariana asked.
60
―It‘s better than goat‘s meat: And a dog is definitely cleaner than a pig. With the price
of pork and beef as high as Mount Apo – one would rather eat dog meat. How‘s the
baby?‖ ―Asleep‖
Aling Elpidia picked up her basket from the floor. ―Here‘s your day‘s supply of
vegetables. I also brought some bangus. Cook Victor a pot of sinigang and he‘ll
forget the most delicious chunk of aw-aw meat. Go, get a basket.‖
Mariana went to the kitchen to get a basket as Aling Elpidia busied herself sorting
out the vegetables.
―I hope you haven‘t forgotten the green mangoes and – and that thing you promised
me,‖ Mariana said, laying her basket on the floor.
―I brought all of them,‖ assured the old woman. She began transferring the
vegetables and fish into Mariana‘s basket. Mariana helped her.
―I haven‘t told Victor anything,‖ Mariana said in a low, confidential tone.
―He does not have to know,‖ Aling Elpidia said.
The old woman produced from the bottom of the basket a tall bottle filled with a dark
liquid and some leaves and tiny, gnarled roots. She held the bottle against the light.
Mariana regarded it with interest and horror. ―I‘m afraid, Aling Elpidia,‖ she
whispered.
―Nonsense. Go, take these vegetables to the kitchen.‖
Mariana sped to the kitchen. Aling Elpidia moved to the table, pushed the dish rack
that held some five or six tin plates, and set the bottle beside a plastic tumbler that
contained spoon and forks. She pulled a stool from beneath the table and sat down.
Soon Mariana was beside her.
―Is it effective?‖ Mariana asked nervously.
61
―Very effective. Come on let me touch you.‖
Mariana stood directly in front of the old woman, her belly her belly almost touching
the vendor‘s face. Aling Elpidia felt Mariana‘s belly with both hands.
―Three months did you say, Mariana?‖
―Three months and two weeks.‖
―Are you sure you don‘t want this child?‖ Aling Elpidia asked one hand flat on
Mariana‘s belly. ―It feels so healthy.‖
―I don‘t want another child,‖ Mariana said. And to stress the finality of her decision,
she grabbed the bottle and stepped away from the old woman. The bottle looked like
atrophy in her hand.
―Well, it‘s your decision,‖ Aling Elpidia said airily. ―The bottle is yours.‖
―Is it bitter?‖
―Yes.‖
Mariana squirmed. ―How shall I take this?‖
―A spoonful before you sleeps in the evening and another spoonful after breakfast.‖
―May I take it with a glass of milk or a bottle of coke?‖
―No. You must take it pure.‖
62
―It‘s not dangerous, is it, Aling Elpidia?‖
―Don‘t you worry. It is bitter but it is harmless. It will appear as an accident. Like
falling down the stairs. Moreover, there will be less pain and blood.‖
―Please come everyday. Things might go wrong.‖
Aling Elpidia nodded and stood up. ―I think I must go now,‖ she said. Then she
lowered her voice and asked, ―Do you have the money?‖
―Yes, yes,‖ Mariana said. She went to the sewing machine and opened a drawer.
She handed Aling Epidia some crumpled bills.
The vendor counted the bills expertly, and then dropped the little bundle into her
breast. She picked up her basket and walked to the door. Suddenly she stopped.
―Your dog, Mariana.‖ Her voice became nervous again.
Mariana held Ramir‘s leash as the old woman hurried down the stairs. ―You may
start taking it tonight.‖ It was her last piece of medical advice. Loud laughter rose
from the store across the street. Mariana stiffened. Her anger returned. Then her
baby cried.
She hurried to the bedroom. The tall bottle looked grotesque on the table: tiny,
gnarled roots seemed to twist like worms or miniature umbilical cords. With a
shudder, she glanced at the bottle. The sharp cry became louder. Mariana rushed
inside and discovered that the baby had wetted its clothes.
She heard somebody coming up the stairs. It must be Victor. Ramir did not bark.
―Mariana!‖ Victor called out. ―Mariana!‖
―Quiet!‖ she shouted back. ―The baby‘s going back to sleep.‖
The house had become hotter. Mariana went out of the bedroom, ready to resume
the unfinished quarrel. Victor was now in the room, sweating and red-eyed. He had
taken off his shirt and his muscular body glistened wit animal attractiveness. But now
63
Mariana was in a different type of heat.
―I met that old witch Elpidia,‖ Victor said, ―What did she bring you today?‖
―The same things. Vegetables. Some fish.‖
―Fish! Again?‖
―You are drunk!‖
―I‘m not drunk. Come Mariana dear. Let me hold you.‖
―Don‘t touch me!‖ she screamed. ―You stink!‖
Victor moved back, offended. ―I don‘t stink and I‘m not drunk.‖
Mariana stepped closer to her husband. He smelled of cheap pomade, onions, and
vinegar.
―Do you have to be like this all the time? Quarreling every day? Why don‘t you get a
steady job like any decent husband? You would be out the whole day, and perhaps, I
would miss you.‖
―You don‘t have to complain,‖ Victor said roughly. ―True, my work is not permanent
but I think we have enough. We are not starving, are we?‖
―You call this enough?‖ her hands gesticulated madly. ―You call this rat‘s nest, this
hell of a neighborhood – enough? You call these tin plates, this plastic curtains –
64
enough? This is not the type of life I expect. I should have continued school. You
fooled me!‖
―I thought you understood. I-―
―No, no I didn‘t understand. And still I don‘t understand why you – you –―
―Let‘s not quarrel,‖ Victor said abruptly. I don‘t want to quarrel with you.‖
―But I want to quarrel with you!‖ Mariana shouted.
―Be reasonable.‖
―You are not reasonable. You never tried to please me. You would rather be with
your stinking friends and drink their dirty wine and eat their dirty meat. Oh, how I hate
it, Victor!‖
―What do you want me to do – stay here and boil the baby‘s milk?‖
―I wish you would!‖
―That‘s your job. You‘re a woman.‖
―Oh, how are you admire yourself for being a man,‖ Mariana sneered in utter
sarcasm.
―You miserable-―
―Don‘t yell. You wake up the baby.‖
65
―To hell with your baby!‖
―You are mad, Mariana.‖
―And so I‘m mad. I‘m mad because I don‘t eat dog meat. I‘m mad because I want my
husband to make a man of himself, I‘m mad because – ―
―Stop it!‖
―Punyeta!‖
―Relax, Mariana. You are excited. That‘s not good for you. I want my second baby
healthy.‖
―There will be no second baby.‖
―What do you mean?‖
―You met Aling Elpidia on your way.‖
―And what did that witch do? Curse my baby? Is a vampire?‖
―She came to help me.‖
Mariana went to the table and snatched the bottle. She held high in Victor‘s face.
―See this, Victor?‖ she taunted him. Victor was not interested. ―You don‘t want me to
drink tuba, and here you are with a bottle of sioktong.‖
66
―How dull you are!‖ her lips twisted in derision. ―See those leaves? See those roots?
They are very potent, Victor.‖
―I don‘t understand.‖
―One spoonful in the morning and one spoonful in the evening. It‘s bitter, Victor, but I
will bear it.‖
Like a retarded, Victor stared at his wife. Then the truth dawned upon him and
exclaimed in horror, ―What? What? My baby!‖
Mariana faced her husband squarely. ―Yes! And I‘m not afraid!‖ she jeered.
―You won‘t do it.‖
―I‘m not afraid.‖
―Give me that bottle.‖
―No!‖
―What kind of woman are you?‖
―And what kind of man are you?‖
―It‘s my baby!‖
―It‘s mine. I have the right to dispose of it, I don‘t want another child.‖
67
―Why, Mariana, why?‖
―Because you cannot afford it! What would you feed your another child, ha, Victor?
Tuba milk? Dog meat for rice?‖
―We shall manage, Mariana. Everything will be all right.‖
―Sure, sure, everything will be all right – for you. I don‘t believe in that anymore.‖
―Give me that bottle!‖
―No!‖
They grappled for a moment. Mariana fought like an untamed animal. At last Victor
took hold the bottle. He pushed his wife against the wall and ran to the window, his
right hand holding the bottle above his head.
And like a man possessed, he hurled the bottle out f the window. The crash of the
glass against the gravel on the road rendered Mariana speechless. But she
recovered. She dashed to the window and gave out almost inhuman scream at what
she saw. The bottle was broken into countless splinters and the dark liquid stained
the dry gravel street. Bits of leaves and roots stuck to the dust. Presently, a dog
came along and sniffed the wet ground suspiciously, then left with his tail between
his legs.
Mariana screamed again in horror and frustration. In the glare of the late morning
sun she had a momentary image of the men – now faceless and voiceless – in front
of the store across the street. This time they did not laugh, but they watched her from
certain blankness. She turned to her husband and flung herself at him, raising her
arms, her fingers poised like claws. She scratched his face and pounded his chest
with her fists.
―Damn you! Damn you!‖ she shrieked in fury.
68
Victor caught her arms and shook her. ―Stop it, Mariana!‖ he mumbled under his
breath.
―Let me go! You are hurting me!‖
―Behave you woman!‖ Victor shook her harder.
Mariana spat on his face. Then she bit on the right arm. She spat again, for she had
a quick taste of salt and dirt.
Victor released her. She moved back, her uncontrollable rage shaking her. ―You
threw it away! You destroy it! I paid forty pesos for it and it‘s not your money!‖
―Forty pesos,‖ Victor murmured. ―That is a lot of milk.‖
Mariana caught her breath. She allowed dryly and said, ―What do you want me to do
now – cut children‘s dresses?‖
―You are unnatural. You don‘t act like a mother, you want to kill your own child.‖
―It‘s my own child.‖
―It‘s murder!‖
―Nobody will know.‖
―I will know. You will know. And God – and God – will know!‖
―Ahhh!‖ Mariana sneered sontemptuously. ―Now who‘s talking? When was the last
time you went to church, ha Victor? That was the time the Legion of Mary brought us
to Fatima Church to be married and you fought with the priest in the confessional.
And now here you are mentioning God‘s name to me.‖
69
―Please, please, Mariana,‖ Victor was begging now. ―That‘s our child!‖
―I told you I didn‘t want another child. You broke that bottle but I‘ll look for other
means.
I‘ll starve myself. I‘ll jump out of the window. I‘ll fall down the stairs.‖
―Mariana!‖
―You cannot afford to buy pills or hire a doctor.‖

―I want a child.‖
―You men can talk because you don‘t have to bear the children. You coward!‖
Victor raised his hand to strike her. Mariana offered her face, daring him to complete
his own humiliation. Victor dropped his hand. He was lost, totally unmanned.
A bit of his male vanity stirred inside him. He raised his hand again, but Mariana was
quick with the nearest weapon. She seized a stool with both hands, and with the
strength all her arms could muster, throws the stool at him. Victor caught the object
with his strong shoulder. The stool dropped to the floor as Mariana made ready with
another weapon, a vase of plastic flowers.
―Go away from me! Get out! Get out!‖
Victor went out of the room. Mariana was left panting, giving vent to her anger by
pulling down the plastic curtains and the printed cover of the sewing machine. She
stooped to the table and with a furious sweep of her hand, cleared it of dish rack, tin
plates, spoons, and forks. Then she went to the kitchen and tossed the basket of
vegetables and fish out of the kitchen window. A trio of dogs rushed in from nowhere
and fought over the fish strewn in the muddy space under the sink.
70
Then Ramir barked.
―Shut up, you miserable dog!‖
Ramir continued barking.
Mariana paused. Ramir, she taught. Victor‘s dog. A cruel thought crossed her mind
and stayed there. Now she knew exactly what to do. She reached for the big kitchen
knife of a shelf above the sink. Kicking the scattered tin plates on the floor, she
crossed the main room to the porch.
Downstairs, Ramir was barking at some object in the street. Noticing Mariana‘s
presence, he stopped barking. Mariana stared at the dog. The dog stared back, and
Mariana noticed the change in the animal‘s eyes. They became fiery, dangerous. My
God, Mariana thought. This creature knew! Ramir‘s ears stood. The hair on the back
of its neck stood, too. Then he bared his fangs viscously and growled.
Mariana dropped the knife. She did not know how to use it at this moment. She was
beginning to be afraid.
Slowly, she climbed up the stairs. He moved softly but menacingly. Like a hunter
sizing up his quarry. His yellowing fangs dropped with saliva.
Meanwhile, Mariana was untying the chain on the top of the stairs.
And the dog rushed into the roaring attack. Quicker than she thought she was,
Mariana slipped the end of the chain under the makeshift railing of the stairway and
pulled the leash with all her might. As she had expected, the dog hurtled into the
space between the broken banisters and fell. The weight of the animal pulled her to
her knees, but she was prepared for that, too. She braced herself against the rails of
the porch, and now, the dog was dangling below her. A crowd had now gathered in
front of the house to witness the unexpected execution. But Mariana neither saw
their faces nor heard their voices.
71
Ramir gave a final yelp and stopped kicking the air.
Mariana laughed deliriously. She watches the hanging animal and addressed it in
triumph: ―I‘ll slit your throat and drink your blood and cut you to pieces and stew you
and eat you!
Damn you Victor. Damn this child. Damn everything. I‘ll cook you, Ramir. I‘ll cook
you and eat you and eat you and eat you!‖
She released the chain and the canine carcass dropped with a thud on the ground
below.
Mariana sat on the topmost step of the stairs; she put her hands between her legs
and stared blankly at the rusty rooftops in front of her. And for the first in all her life
on the Artiaga Street, Mariana cried.
[Retrieved from http://compilationofphilippineliterature.blogspot.com/2011/04/magnificence-estrella-d-
alfon.html in August 2020]
Magnificence by Estrella Alfon
There was nothing to fear, for the man was always so gentle, so kind. At night when
the little girl and her brother were bathed in the light of the big shaded bulb that hung
over the big study table in the downstairs hall, the man would knock gently on the
door, and come in. he would stand for a while just beyond the pool of light, his feet in
the circle of illumination, the rest of him in shadow. The little girl and her brother
would look up at him where they sat at the big table, their eyes bright in the bright
light, and watch him come fully into the light, but his voice soft, his manner slow. He
would smell very faintly of sweat and pomade, but the children didn‘t mind although
they did notice, for they waited for him every evening as they sat at their lessons like
this. He‘d throw his visored cap on the table, and it would fall down with a soft plop,
then he‘d nod his head to say one was right, or shake it to say one was wrong.
It was not always that he came. They could remember perhaps two weeks when he
remarked to their mother that he had never seen two children looking so smart. The
praise had made their mother look over them as they stood around listening to the
goings-on at the meeting of the neighborhood association, of which their mother was
president. Two children, one a girl of seven, and a boy of eight. They were both very
72
tall for their age, and their legs were the long gangly legs of fine spirited colts. Their
mother saw them with eyes that held pride, and then to partly gloss over the
maternal gloating she exhibited, she said to the man, in answer to his praise, But
their homework. They‘re so lazy with them. And the man said, I have nothing to do in
the evenings, let me help them. Mother nodded her head and said, if you want to
bother yourself. And the thing rested there, and the man came in the evenings
therefore, and he helped solve fractions for the boy, and write correct phrases in
language for the little girl.
In those days, the rage was for pencils. School children always have rages going at
one time or another. Sometimes for paper butterflies that are held on sticks, and
whirr in the wind. The Japanese bazaars promoted a rage for those. Sometimes it is
for little lead toys found in the folded waffles that Japanese confection-makers had
such light hands with. At this particular time, it was for pencils. Pencils big but light in
circumference not smaller than a man‘s thumb. They were unwieldy in a child‘s
hands, but in all schools then, where Japanese bazaars clustered there were all
colors of these pencils selling for very low, but unattainable to a child budgeted at a
baon of a centavo a day. They were all of five centavos each, and one pencil was
not at all what one had ambitions for. In rages, one kept a collection. Four or five
pencils, of different colors, to tie with strings near the eraser end, to dangle from
one‘s book-basket, to arouse the envy of the other children who probably possessed
less.
Add to the man‘s gentleness and his kindness in knowing a child‘s desires, his
promise that he would give each of them not one pencil but two. And for the little girl
who he said was very bright and deserved more, ho would get the biggest pencil he
could find.
One evening he did bring them. The evenings of waiting had made them look
forward to this final giving, and when they got the pencils they whooped with joy. The
little boy had tow pencils, one green, one blue. And the little girl had three pencils,
two of the same circumference as the little boy‘s but colored red and yellow. And the
third pencil, a jumbo size pencil really, was white, and had been sharpened, and the
73
little girl jumped up and down, and shouted with glee. Until their mother called from
down the stairs. What are you shouting about? And they told her, shouting gladly,
Vicente, for that was his name. Vicente had brought the pencils he had promised
them.
Thank him, their mother called. The little boy smiled and said, Thank you. And the
little girl smiled, and said, Thank you, too. But the man said, Are you not going to
kiss me for those pencils? They both came forward, the little girl and the little boy,
and they both made to kiss him but Vicente slapped the boy smartly on his lean hips,
and said, Boys do not kiss boys. And the little boy laughed and scampered away,
and then ran back and kissed him anyway.
The little girl went up to the man shyly, put her arms about his neck as he crouched
to receive her embrace, and kissed him on the cheeks.
The man‘s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the little girl squirmed out
of his arms, and laughed a little breathlessly, disturbed but innocent, looking at the
man with a smiling little question of puzzlement.
The next evening, he came around again. All through that day, they had been very
proud in school showing off their brand new pencils. All the little girls and boys had
been envying them. And their mother had finally to tell them to stop talking about the
pencils, pencils, for now that they had, the boy two, and the girl three, they were
asking their mother to buy more, so they could each have five, and three at least in
the jumbo size that the little girl‘s third pencil was. Their mother said, Oh stop it, what
will you do with so many pencils, you can only write with one at a time.
And the little girl muttered under her breath, I‘ll ask Vicente for some more.
Their mother replied, He‘s only a bus conductor, don‘t ask him for too many things.
It‘s a pity. And this observation their mother said to their father, who was eating his
evening meal between paragraphs of the book on masonry rites that he was reading.
It is a pity, said their mother, People like those, they make friends with people like us,
and they feel it is nice to give us gifts, or the children toys and things. You‘d think
they wouldn‘t be able to afford it.
The father grunted, and said, the man probably needed a new job, and was
softening his way through to him by going at the children like that. And the mother
said, No, I don‘t think so, he‘s a rather queer young man, I think he doesn‘t have
74
many friends, but I have watched him with the children, and he seems to dote on
them.
The father grunted again, and did not pay any further attention.
Vicente was earlier than usual that evening. The children immediately put their
lessons down, telling him of the envy of their schoolmates, and would he buy them
more please?
Vicente said to the little boy, Go and ask if you can let me have a glass of water. And
the little boy ran away to comply, saying behind him, But buy us some more pencils,
huh, buy us more pencils, and then went up to stairs to their mother.
Vicente held the little girl by the arm, and said gently, Of course I will buy you more
pencils, as many as you want
And the little girl giggled and said, Oh, then I will tell my friends, and they will envy
me, for they don‘t have as many or as pretty.
Vicente took the girl up lightly in his arms, holding her under the armpits, and held
her to sit down on his lap and he said, still gently, What are your lessons for
tomorrow? And the little girl turned to the paper on the table where she had been
writing with the jumbo pencil, and she told him that that was her lesson but it was
easy.
Then go ahead and write, and I will watch you.
Don‘t hold me on your lap, said the little girl, I am very heavy, you will get very tired.
The man shook his head, and said nothing, but held her on his lap just the same.
The little girl kept squirming, for somehow she felt uncomfortable to be held thus, her
mother and father always treated her like a big girl, she was always told never to act
like a baby. She looked around at Vicente, interrupting her careful writing to twist
around.
His face was all in sweat, and his eyes looked very strange, and he indicated to her
that she must turn around, attend to the homework she was writing.
But the little girl felt very queer, she didn‘t know why, all of a sudden she was
75
immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicente‘s lap.
She stood looking at him, feeling that queer frightened feeling, not knowing what to
do. By and by, in a very short while her mother came down the stairs, holding in her
hand a glass of sarsaparilla, Vicente.
But Vicente had jumped up too soon as the little girl had jumped from his lap. He
snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to his stomach, turning
away from the mother‘s coming.
The mother looked at him, stopped in her tracks, and advanced into the light. She
had been in the shadow. Her voice had been like a bell of safety to the little girl. But
now she advanced into glare of the light that held like a tableau the figures of Vicente
holding the little girl‘s papers to him, and the little girl looking up at him frightenedly,
in her eyes dark pools of wonder and fear and question.
The little girl looked at her mother, and saw the beloved face transfigured by some
sort of glow. The mother kept coming into the light, and when Vicente made as if to
move away into the shadow, she said, very low, but very heavily, Do not move.
She put the glass of soft drink down on the table, where in the light one could watch
the little bubbles go up and down in the dark liquid. The mother said to the boy,
Oscar, finish your lessons. And turning to the little girl, she said, Come here. The
little girl went to her, and the mother knelt down, for she was a tall woman and she
said, Turn around. Obediently the little girl turned around, and her mother passed her
hands over the little girl‘s back.
Go upstairs, she said.
The mother‘s voice was of such a heavy quality and of such awful timbre that the girl
could only nod her head, and without looking at Vicente again, she raced up the
stairs. The mother went to the cowering man, and marched him with a glance out of
the circle of light that held the little boy. Once in the shadow, she extended her hand,
and without any opposition took away the papers that Vicente was holding to himself.
She stood there saying nothing as the man fumbled with his hands and with his
fingers, and she waited until he had finished. She was going to open her mouth but
she glanced at the boy and closed it, and with a look and an inclination of the head,
she bade Vicente go up the stairs.
76
The man said nothing, for she said nothing either. Up the stairs went the man, and
the mother followed behind. When they had reached the upper landing, the woman
called down to her son, Son, come up and go to your room.
The little boy did as he was told, asking no questions, for indeed he was feeling
sleepy already.
As soon as the boy was gone, the mother turned on Vicente. There was a pause.
Finally, the woman raised her hand and slapped him full hard in the face. Her
retreated down one tread of the stairs with the force of the blow, but the mother
followed him. With her other hand she slapped him on the other side of the face
again. And so down the stairs they went, the man backwards, his face continually
open to the force of the woman‘s slapping. Alternately she lifted her right hand and
made him retreat before her until they reached the bottom landing.
He made no resistance, offered no defense. Before the silence and the grimness of
her attack he cowered, retreating, until out of his mouth issued something like a
whimper.
The mother thus shut his mouth, and with those hard forceful slaps she escorted him
right to the other door. As soon as the cool air of the free night touched him, he
recovered enough to turn away and run, into the shadows that ate him up. The
woman looked after him, and closed the door. She turned off the blazing light over
the study table, and went slowly up the stairs and out into the dark night.
When her mother reached her, the woman, held her hand out to the child. Always
also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated with terror, the girl was to
remember the touch of that hand on her shoulder, heavy, kneading at her flesh, the
woman herself stricken almost dumb, but her eyes eloquent with that angered fire.
She knelt, She felt the little girl‘s dress and took it off with haste that was almost
frantic, tearing at the buttons and imparting a terror to the little girl that almost made
her sob. Hush, the mother said. Take a bath quickly.
Her mother presided over the bath the little girl took, scrubbed her, and soaped her,
and then wiped her gently all over and changed her into new clothes that smelt of the
clean fresh smell of clothes that had hung in the light of the sun. The clothes that she
had taken off the little girl, she bundled into a tight wrenched bunch, which she threw
into the kitchen range.
77
Take also the pencils, said the mother to the watching newly bathed, newly changed
child. Take them and throw them into the fire. But when the girl turned to comply, the
mother said, No, tomorrow will do. And taking the little girl by the hand, she led her to
her little girl‘s bed, made her lie down and tucked the covers gently about her as the
girl dropped off into quick slumber.
[Retrieved from http://compilationofphilippineliterature.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-am-one-of-mountain-

people-macario-d.html in August 2020]
I Am One of the Mountain People by Macario D. Tiu
I did not want to go to Santa Barbara, but Ita Magdum forced me to go there. He
wanted me to have a Christian education. He told me that he was not going to let me
remain idle in the mountains, and consequently become as stupid as ignorant as the
rest of his people. He said that I could learn many things from the Christian and in
that way I could help improve the lot of the whole tribe.
I was then seven summers old and I didn‘t understand what he was talking about.
Although he made the prospect of going there very tempting, I refuse to go. Not even
the trace of the three-storey school building, of running houses and plenty of food
and toys convinced me that I should leave my home and my friends for Santa
Barbara. And so Ita had to beat me to make me go with him to the Christian town.
We traveled for five days before we reached our destination. The trip was hazardous
and formidable. W crossed the river, Subangdaku, which was infested with deadly
crocodiles, on a raft. We struggled in the deep
marches and inched our way through thick forest.
It was nightfall when we reached the town. Ita immediately left me to the care of the
elderly woman called Nana Loling. She was a kind woman. She assured me that
everything would be alright. But I was not comforted. That night, a nagging desire to
escape a run home kept me awake. But how? In the still of the night, dogs were
howling intermittently. A bad Omen? Then I feared I might get lost on the way or a
sawa might be waiting for me.
In school, I was the laughing stock, because I was not of their kind. How they
laughed when I told them I came from the Green Area, that part of land where no
Christian had ever gone. For that, I was always in trouble. And I was always brought
to the principal‘s office for disciplinary action. Why did you pull Elinita‘s hair, he
would ask. Or why did you box Berto‘s ears? And I would answer, because Elinita
kicked me and Berto called me ―pig‖ and ―monkey‖. But I was whipped anyway, no
matter what reason I gave. That was the only way to tame me, I heard them say.
Ita visited me once every two months. Every time he would visit me, I‘d plead with
him to bring me home. But he would refuse. It was not yet time for me to go home,
he would say.
I was terribly homesick. How I wish I could be at Ina‘s side. I‘d plead with him to be
78
with my own people; to sit by the bonfire and listen to the weird stories of the long
past – of how the early Balangays at the seacoast of Caraga were attacked by fierce
Allah worshippers and how gallantly our early forebears fought, but were forced to
move out to the mountains. I loved to hear the vaunting of the hunters on how they
got the fangs of the wild boars and crocodile teeth that decorated their necks. I
wanted to be like them.
The three-storey building in Santa Barbara was indeed tall, but the trees in Kapalong
were much taller. These was nothing glamorous with those running houses either.
They only frightened me as they whizzed by carrying logs on their backs and
screaming infernally at people to keep out of the road. Food was plenty so were the
fruits. But money was needed before we could get them. At Kapatagan, I could get
all the fruits I wanted for free.
Six years I suffered. Then Ita brought me home for a visit as a gift for my graduation.
How happy I was to home again! I was so happy I didn‘t mind the hardships of the
trek, I even about the sawa. But my Ita, really I feared nothing. He was the master of
the jungle. He had said once that he owned the vast tract of land from Caraga to
Santa Barbara, but that some parts of it were stolen by the outsiders.
I expected some Jubilation upon my return. But our place was bleak. Later I learned
that my own people now considered me as Christian, therefore an infidel. Indeed,
what was there to be happy about the return of an infidel? I found them to be
indifferent to me, even hostile. Ita told me not to mind them. They didn‘t understand
what was his design for me, he said, and the whole tribe.
Bal-og, my younger brother, thought me as a hero. He said he envied me. He

confessed that dislike the tattoos he had. How he cursed the man who pierced his
earlobes. It was in one of these talks with Bal-og that I realized how different I was
from them, from my own people. I had no tattoos. I had no holes in my earlobes. Yet
I knew deep inside me I was one of them. There was a deep pain of being unwanted.
The agony I felt. Constantly I cried: ―I am of the mountains. I am one of the mountain
people.‖ And yet somehow I was not.
It would still be some four r five years before Bal-og was allowed to go to Santa
Barbara. Therefore he had a great thirst to know more of the other Christian town. I
told him many stories about it: my studies, the three-storey school building, the
running houses and the Christians.
―What does Christian mean?‖ he asked me once.
I didn‘t know too, to be honest. But I told him about the big house with steeples and a
belfry. It was owned by the tall white man who always wore a white dress. I
described it to him: there were big anitos inside it. Beautiful anitos. Their hands were
outstretched as if ready to embrace. I told him that these anitos were quite different
from ours. Our anitos grasped their knees and their eyes were abnormally large and
79
protruding.
―How else do we differ from them?‖ he became more curious.
―Well, for one thing,‖ I told him, ―the Christian do not worship big trees or flying wild
geese like we do. In fact they cut big trees and shot wild geese.‖
He muttered a curse upon hearing this. ―Then, they would also cut the Magu?‖ he
asked in disbelief. How naïve my brother is, I thought and I laughed. The Magu was
the biggest tree in the forest. It was said to be abode of the anitos. We gave offerings
to the Magu during the full moon to appease the anitos.
I learned while in Santa Barbara, however that there was only one God. Our teacher,
Mrs. Martinez, taught us that this God was to be loved by all, not feared. The
mountan people feared the Magu, therefore the Magu must be a fake God. So I told
Bal-og that ―Magu‖ was just another big tree, and when the and when finally the
place would be accessible to the Christians, they would cut it. Bal-og ran away from
horror when I said that.
I did not know what prodded me to go to the Magu one day and make a dirty mark, a
big cross, on its gnarled bark. Perhaps I just wanted to test the veracity of Mrs.
Martinez teachings. When the elders heard about it, they immediately went to the
Magu to offer sacrifices. I could have been the one sacrificed; but then I was the son
of Datu Magdum. So they burned instead five chickens, a pig, wild fruits and sack of
rice. They danced hysterically around the Magu. The priest, after the sacrificed
offerings shook his head, and said that surely the anitos would punish me. I wouldn‘t
see another tomorrow he said, for the would get me in my sleep.
I was afraid of what the priest said. Meanwhile, Ita just kept silent. He didn‘t comfort
me nor scold me. And that night, I prayed myself to sleep. I prayed hard to the
Blessed Virgin as I never prayed before. I also asked forgiveness from the Magu,
promising not to do a thing like that again. And I survived to see another tomorrow.
The elders then thought that maybe the anitos were pleased with the offerings did
not have to punish me. They again went to the Magu and offered sacrifices. They
scrapped off the mark I made.
When the furor over the incident died down, I started going openly to the bonfire said
sat with the younger group and listened to the tales of the old men and warriors. The
80
stories usually centered on the exploits of our ancestors and the glory of our tribe
before the Allah-worshippers came. How the elders cursed these infidels! Never,
never befriend an infidel of this kind for the Magu wouldn‘t like it.
I didn‘t believe them ofcourse. In Santa Barbara, my only friend was Abdul. My
classmates were afraid to chide and make fun of him because he had warned them
that his grandfather was a baraungan and owned a tame bee colony that could kill a
man at his command. Abdul never went inside the big house. He said that the
pandita told him it was the house of the devil. See those idols there? He asked.
People who worshipped in that house would be punished by Allah, he said.
I felt awkward, whenever I was with my old friends whom I befriended again seeing
how different I was from them. I just loved their tattoos. I had none. And my earlobes
were desperately unattractive. However, I let myself forget to brush my teeth and I
started chewing betel nut. I let my fingernails grow, I dirtied my body with charcoal
dust. And I enjoyed everything of it. I loved that kind of life.
Ita, however, didn‘t like what I was doing. He had tried hard to spare me the tribal
customs how of tattooing and boring the earlobes so I could be presentable to the
people of Santa Barbara. Now I must not destroy his hopes for me. He warned. But
everyday, I was drawn closer and closer to the ways of my people. Finally, forgetting
Ita warnings I let Apo Ugpo carve a tattoo on my chest. When Ita discovered this, he
whipped me! You disobeyed me! His whole body shook with anger as he hit my back
with a lash.
I told him I wanted his kind of life and I pleaded him to let me stay forever, but it
made him angrier. He told me I was his only hope, his people‘s hope. That I must
learn from the Christians and discover their source of power, for they were
continually advancing toward the Green Area, stealing large tracts of our land. He
said that I should learn from them so that our tribe would know how to deal with them
when, as Allah worshippers did the Christians would drive us out from our homes.
Learn from them, and stay in Santa Barbara to speak for us. Try to love the place, he
said, I told him I tried but that I failed for I still hated Santa Barbara. Try again, and
he left me.
The next morning, Ita sent me back with Isog as my guide. He was as old as I was.
He was being trained as a warrior. On a way, he showed me a village burned by the
Christians at the edge of the Green Area. It was my uncle‘s village. He said the
81
Christians killed many of my uncle‘s people, and now all the tribes were arming
themselves except ours. Your father, Datu Magdum, wants us to change according
to Christian ways, he said, spitting at the word Christian. We are a great tribe, he
added, I say we fight them when they touch us, like our forefathers did when Allah
worshippers came. And he looked at me with angry eyes.
I languished in Santa for another year. What was there to learn? High school
education was worthless. It hadn‘t done anything good for me nor my classmate. On
the contrary, Berto became a habitual drunkard and was expelled from school.
Elenita became pregnant and was driven away by her own parents.
As days rolled by, my desire to go home became more intense. It was getting
unbearable. Too, it had been seven years already that I had stayed in Santa
Barbara, but I was considered an outsider, an outcast. That was more unbearable.
And at night I always pray to the Blessed Virgin to make my classmates love me.
Then maybe I could like Santa Barbara and stay there, forever like what Ita wanted.
But my prayers were not heard. Everything was wasted. Not even kneeling for hours
and kissing each bead of the rosary over and over again did much good. The Virgin
seemed to have forgotten me.
The last time Ita visited me, I was surprised to see how he changed. He looked very
old. He told me to be patient and to be stronger in my determination. With him was
Isog who took me aside when Ita was talking with Nana Loling. There was another
massacre in Kapatagan, he said. Many are discontented with your father. He talks of
you learning the Christian magic. They don‘t have magic, they have guns. That‘s
their source of power, he said. His eyes burned with hate, I knew he was mocking
me.
I thought of nothing else for days but Isog‘s angry words. My people! My people!
They were being slaughtered like pigs while I did nothing but try to learn something I
didn‘t want to learn. And I was ashamed of myself.
So I decided to go home, I pierce my earlobes with a needle and forced sharpened

matchsticks into the holes t enlarge them. It hurt, but, I cried silently. Now, I was one
of them, and Ita wouldn‘t be able to do anything anymore but accept me.
I didn‘t let Nana Loling know of my plan because she would object to it. She would
do everything to keep me, even call the police. She knew also that it was it was
impossible for me to reach our place. Only Ita Magdum and a selected few knew the
way. But I slipped out of the house one night a week ago, anyway. It was the full
82
moon and I ran and ran away from Santa Barbara.
When daylight came, I knew that I was lost. Yet I walked on and on. Maybe far
ahead was Subangdaku, I amused myself. It was my only hope.
I didn‘t want to go Santa Barbara but Ita Magdum forced me to go there.
[Retrieved from http://compilationofphilippineliterature.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-am-one-of-mountain-

people-macario-d.html in August 2020]
Footnote to Youth by Jose Garcia-Villa
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he
would tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the
carabao from the plow, and led it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying
it, he wanted his father to know what he had to say was of serious importance as it
would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, but a thought
came to him that his father might refuse to consider it. His father was a silent
hardworking farmer, who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his
mother, Dodong‘s grandmother.
He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the
housework.
I will tell him. I will tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a
sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft worm emerged from the further rows and
then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to
Dodong‘s foot and crawled clammilu over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot,
flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where into the air, but
thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young anymore.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and fave it a healthy tap on the
hip. The beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it
a slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of
grass before it and the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interest.
Dodong started homeward thinking how he would break his news to his
father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his
face, then down on his upper lip was dark-these meant he was no longer a boy. He
was growing into a man – he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought
of it, although he was by nature low in stature.
Thinking himself man – grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone
bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe
83
and then went on walking. In the cool sundown, he thought wild young dreams of
himself and Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and
straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him want to touch her,
to hold her. She made him dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscle of his arms. Dirty. This
fieldwork was healthy invigorating, but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He
turned back the way he had come, then marched obliquely to a creek.
Must you marry, Dodong?‖
Dodong resented his father‘s question; his father himself had married early.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray under shirt and
red kundiman shorts, on the grass. Then he went into the water, wet his body over
and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward
again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling was
already lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. He and his
parents sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried
freshwater fish, and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe
and when one held the,, they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of
caked sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and
wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parent.
Dodong‘s mother removed the dishes when they were through, and went with
slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out. But he was
tired and now, feld lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who
could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework
alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him,
again. Dodong knew, Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist
pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but
Dodong guessed it. Afterward, Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed
tooth, he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his
father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry
Teang. There it was out, what we had to say, and over which he head said it without
any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relived and looked at his
father expectantly. A decresent moon outside shed its feebled light into the window,
graying the still black temples of his father. His father look old now.
―I am going to marry Teang,‖ Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth, The
silenece became intense and cruel, and Dodong was uncomfortable and then
became very angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
―I will marry Teang,‖ Dodong repeated. ―I will marry Teang.‖
His father kept gazing at him in flexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his
seat.
I asked her last night to marry me and she said… ―Yes. I want your
permission… I… want… it…‖ There was an impatient clamor in his voice, an
84
exacting protest at his coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly.
He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sound it made broke dully the
night stillness.
―Must you marry, Dodong?‖
Dodong resented his father‘s question; his father himself had married
early. Dodong made a quick impassioned essay in his mind about selfishness, but
later, he got confused.
―You are very young, Dodong.‖
―I‘m seventeen.‖
―That‘s very young to get married at.‖
―I… I want to marry… Teang‘s a good girl…
―Tell your mother,‖ his father said.
―You tell her, Tatay.‖
―Dodong, you tell your Inay.‖

―You tell her.‖
―All right, Dodong.‖

―All right, Dodong.‖
―You will let me marry Teang?‖
―Son, if that is your wish… of course…‖ There was a strange helpless light in
his father‘s eyes. Dodong did not read it. Too absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he has asserted himself. He lost his resentment
for his father, for a while, he even felt sorry for him about the pain I his tooth. Then
he confined his mind dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dreams…
***
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely so that
his camiseta was damp. He was still like a tree and his thoughts were confused. His
mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He wanted to get out of it
without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt afraid of the house. It had
seemingly caged him, to compress his thoughts with severe tyranny. He was also
afraid of Teang who was giving birth in the house; she face screams that chilled his
blood. He did not want her to scream like that. He began to wonder madly if the
process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not
cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. ―Father, father,‖ he whispered the
word with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now contradicting
himself of nine months ago. He was very young… He felt queer, troubled,
uncomfortable.
Dodong felt tired of standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close
together. He looked at his calloused toes. Then he thought, supposed he had ten
children…
The journey of thought came to a halt when he heard his mother‘s voice from
the house.
Some how, he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made
him feel guilty, as if he had taken something not properly his.
―Come up, Dodong. It is over.‖
85
Suddenly, he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow, he was
ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he has
taken something not properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust off
his kundiman shorts.
―Dodong,‖ his mother called again. ―Dodong.‖
He turned to look again and this time, he saw his father beside his mother.
―It is a boy.‖ His father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. His parent‘s eyes seemed
to pierce through him so he felt limp. He wanted to hide or even run away from them.
―Dodong, you come up. You come up,‖ his mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up. He‘d rather stayed in the sun.
―Dodong… Dodong.‖
I‘ll… come up.
Dodong traced the tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the
bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his
parent‘s eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt
guilty and untru. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to
burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to
punish him.
―Son,‖ his father said.
And his mother: ―Dodong..‖
How kind their voices were. They flowed into him, making him strong.
―Teanf?‖ Dodong said.
―She‘s sleeping. But you go in…‖
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his wife,
asleep on the paper with her soft black hair around her face. He did not want her to
look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched
her lips. But again that feeling of embarrassment came over him, and before his
parent, he did not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child Dodong heard him cry. The thin voice
touched his heart. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
―You give him to me. You give him to me,‖ Dodong said.
***
Blas was not Dodong‘s only child. Many more children came. For six
successive years, a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more
children. But they came. It seemed that the coming of children could not
helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children tolled on her. She was
shapeless and thin even if she was young. There was interminable work that kept
her tied up. Cooking, laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes,
wishing she had no married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike
her. Yet, she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong whom she loved. There
had neen another suitor, Lucio older than Dodong by nine years and that wasw why
she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong who was only seventeen. Lucio had
married another. Lucio, she wondered, would she have born him children? Maybe
86
not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong… in the moonlight, tired and
querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to
be wise about many thins.
Life did not fulfill all of Youth‘s dreams.
Why must be so? Why one was forsaken… after love?
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of the youth‘ dreams. Why it must be
so. Why one was forsaken… after love.
Dodong could not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be
answered. It must be so to make youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully
sweet.
Dodong returned to the house, humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know
little wisdom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen, he came home one night, very flustered and
happy. Dodong heard Blas‘ steps for he could not sleep well at night. He watched
Blass undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could
not sleep. Dodong called his name and asked why he did not sleep.
You better go to sleep. It is late,‖ Dodong said.
Life did not fulfill all of youth‘s dreams. Why it must be so? Why one was
forsaken after love?
―Itay..‖ Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
―I‘m going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.
―Itay, you think its over.‖
Dodong lay silent.
I loved Tona and… I want her.‖
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the
yard where everything was still and quiet.
The moonlight was cold and white.
―You want to marry Tona, Dodong said, although he did not want Blas to
marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard…
―Yes.‖
―Must you marry?‖
Blas‘ voice was steeled with resentment. ―I will mary Tona.‖
―You have objection, Itay?‖ Blas asked acridly.
―Son… non…‖ But for Dodong, he do anything. Youth must triumph… now.
Afterward… It will be life.
As long ago, Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely
sad and sorry for him.
[Retrieved from http://literature-westfieldsos.blogspot.com/2010/07/footnote-to-youth-by-jose-garcia-

villa.html in August 2020]
87
88

Gephilippinelit (Module3)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Gephilippinelit (Module3)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gephilippinelit (Module3)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

MODULE 3

LIT 1 – PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

Title: THE ART OF FICTION

Time Frame: 10 hours

Introduction: Welcome to another literary journey! Indeed, studying

Objectives: In this module, learners will be able to:

[Image downloaded from

Discussions and Learning Activities:

Read the meaning and forms of fiction.

[Figure 1 gives brief meaning of fiction. Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/type-

The short story on the other hand is more than just

[Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/piles-of-books.htm in July 2020]

Activity 1: Book Club Sharing

Read the elements of fiction.

[Figure 2 is a tree of the elements of fiction. Image downloaded from https://www.freepik.com/free-

It begins with an exposition: the opening portion that provides background

Example of Exposition using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

IMPORTANT TIP: Use present tense when analyzing a fictional piece.

Example of Rising Action using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Most common types of Conflict:

Man versus Self

Example using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Example of Climax using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Example of Falling Action using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

The resolution or denouement follows and the story ends.

Example of Resolution or Denouement using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Example of Flashback using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

When Alfredo starts to reminisce his past:

Example of Foreshadowing using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Activity 2: Finding the Clue

Let‘s continue reading the rest of the elements of fiction.

The choice of characters is another aspect which makes a story memorable.

1.1 Protagonist is a main character

1.2 Antagonist is a character who

2.1 A round character is described in

2.2 A flat character exhibits only one

3.2 A static character is the one

Character Categories of Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Major Types of Characters Protagonist:

Characters according to Development Round Character:

Characters according to Change Dynamic Character:

Activity 3: Character Analysis

2. Would you consider Alfredo as an antagonist as well? Explain your answer.

Let‘s continue reading the rest of the elements of fiction.

Setting is another important element of fiction. By setting of a story we mean

Examples using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

The effective use of point of view is another method of making a story

The point of view in Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars is a third-person omniscient

Example of Theme using Paz Marquez-Benitez‘ Dead Stars:

Activity 4: Share your Insights

1. Give your own insights of the story.

Activity 5: Check Your Vocabulary

3. Once again, her eyes surveyed the room with repulsion.

9. Mariana laughed deliriously.

Activity 6: Analyzing a literary piece using the elements of fiction

2. What is the setting of the story? Describe in one to two sentences.

3. What is the conflict? Write your answer in only one sentence.