Brillantes’ Cries of the Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957 shows an

extraordinary style of writing. The present and the future intertwine with the narrative on
the calm tranquility of their youth jolted by a harrowing future.

In the beginning, Bertrand Russell is featured and Ricky, the protagonist, self-describes
as a “agnostic this year.” An excerpt from the book is provided, "If everything must have
a cause, it may just as well be the world as God. . . What the world needs is
reasonableness, tolerance. It is to such considerations that we must look, and not to a
return to obscurantist myths..” Yet, the future is portrayed as dark, bleak and miserable.
The characters are dead, institutionalized or in a state of a “drained or exhausted
peace” - there is no happy ending.

The characters in the story are limited to their milieu. They are limited to their current
experience and are unknowing of the suffering that they will experience in the future.
But must it be their future? The brilliance of the story is that it already has created their
endings even if its setting is in 1957. The interspersal of present and future presents a
critique against agnosticism. Ricky does not know what the future holds for him, who he
will be with, Leny or Mila or what he will become in the distant future. The story presents
that Ricky’s unknowing of how the future will unfold renders him powerless such that it
“is no match for the languor which again presses down upon him, a lassitude induced
by the warm blending light and the muffled sounds of this April afternoon.”

The fate of Ricky is dismal. One begins to wonder how the characters brimming with life
meet such a fate? It is as if that life is already predetermined, and they are only
marching towards a dismal end. Yet, the key to all of the misery is a testament of faith
which the protagonist succumbs to, accepting it all again, powerless as he is to the
unseen forces at work. Truly, as Stephen Fry puts it, "How dare you create a world in
which there is such misery? It's not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why
should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so
full of injustice and pain?"
The lens of religion is at best filled with causation and cautionary tales to non believers.
It portrays the miseries of life as a test of faith. No matter what a scientific or empirical
perspective may offer are disregarded in favor of belief. It is to be regarded that the
future Ricky is set in stone, it is his fault for questioning the supremacy of God.
Ironically, it is a supremacy rooted in misery and suffering.

In a theistic worldview, everything points toward the creator. Man is created after his
image. God is the source of everything. Brillantes’ short story is his critique against
agnosticism and it portrays the future as predetermined. There is no escape from it and
Ricky will be the man with a gun who will hunt down his wife who left him despite
cheating on her. However, going beyond the confines of the story, the future is not set in
stone. Many variables can and will affect Ricky’s life, experiences that shape his
worldview and how he interacts in his present. Exactly what is stopping Ricky from
following Leny to America or even Leny from going to America? Man shapes his own
future and it is not the work of God or his will that shapes our lives. Tragedy is not a
determinant in any life, a cause maybe, but never its sole driving force. Man lives his life
through his own set of rules and Ricky can live the life he wanted if he chooses to do so.