Kisha Honey G.

Serafin Total word count: 309

Dr. Ronald Baytan

GELITPH A59

February 08, 2019

A Perspective through a Candlelight

As how Global Policy Forum defines it, a nation is a large group of people with strong

bonds of identity. It is an "imagined community," a tribe on a grand scale. It is described as

“imagined community” because as explained by Benedict Anderson, “The members of even the

smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them,

yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion, and regardless of the actual

inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep,

horizontal comradeship.” This definition gives a vivid view of Cirilo Bautista’s insights about

the Filipino nation. To Define is to Know highlights the actual inequality and exploitation that

prevails in the Filipinos. It gives an ideal picture of the lives of the poor in the society. Bautista

see the nation as being controlled by the elite ones such as the ones in authority that are powerful

enough to manipulate the ignorant minds of those in the poverty line. The poem concretizes his

insights about our nation and our people particularly in lines 13 and 14, as the candlelight

symbolizes that the poor only see a portion of reality, hence their knowledge is limited. The title

of the poem means that in order to know anything, it has to be defined first. The word “poor” is

defined in the poem as the existence of social inequality that leads to the ignorance of the ones

who are deprived from reality. Looking in a perspective through a candlelight is an unending

quest for freedom from want, from oppression, and from the forces of society that threaten the
dignity of the individual citizen, especially the poor as they are the ones who are prone to

exploitation controlled by selfish powers.

 Bibliography

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism, London: Verso. (1983).

Bautista, Cirilo F. To Define Is to Know. ( n.d.).

Paul, James. “What Is a 'Nation'?” How the Bush Administration's,

www.globalpolicy.org/nations-a-states/what-is-a-nation.html.