My Critique for

“THE BED OF ROOTS”

The story of Justine U. Camacho entitled

“The Bed of Roots” is a beautiful story of love.

That will makeyou realize about how wonderful love is. That heart feels amind cannot remember. Love
is a strong feeling that holds ourheart. The story also letting us see a strong connectionbetween family
and culture.The first paragraph means that we have tospend time to our love ones. That we have to
cherish everymoment with them. Because we'll never know what willhappen in the future. It

s better to make time with them thanhaving time. On the other hand the story tells us that
everymoment is precious and that we have to make some memorieswith them as long as they lived and
show our love towardsthem for us to be happy and as well as them. Because thatmemories will become
the treasure of tomorrow.Furthermore, love came to where it belong. Her Tita menchuwas mention she
lives in New Jersey. As well as her Tita emswho lives in Switzerland but she came back for her family.

They came back for the same reason “ LOVE ”.this concept

convey that family is where we all belong to. We can alsorelate this quote "We came from soil and we're
going back tothe soil".No matter what happens in our lives, we still go back to wherewe belong because
of love.The Second paragraph deals of hard work withlove.

This concept is loving what you do. You’ll

see that thegrave digger is doing well in his work because he loves it andhis doing it for his family. Then
he did a great job. Similarlyrepresents how hardworking a Filipino could be. They doeverything to
achieve their goals and most of all they work

with a heart. Same way around working with a heart can bringyou to a great success..Thirdly both third
and fourth paragraph conveysexchanging love to each other. Here the people are getting thefruit from
the langka tree in which show same manner thatdead gives love. It is realizing that even dead can give
love tothe living. In a way of memories which the living treasuresfrom the dead. At the same time our
love to them is like the

langka tree’s

roots, its deep same with our love towards ourfamilies, so deep that can reach them no matter how far
theyare underground. In the same manner the long roots of langkatree represents our eternal love
towards them. And that theynever stop on loving us. Keep in mind that love is a strongfeeling that holds
our heart. Remembering the dead well notmake them lonely but happiness.Addition to that it also said
here by the digger

it was a younggirl wrap by the roots of langka tree. And it

s like the tree hadtaken every fleas from her

” and

“ the langka’s fruit the ones webought were always sweet” these two statement wants to

imply the exchange of love to each other.And lastly the loneliness turns to happiness. The restof the
paragraphs deals with the pain we had when we our loveones past away and the happiness their
memories brings. Theauthor wants us to see here that when our loves gone it feelslike you are the same
with the dead being buried. Thedifference is that you are buried in pain not in the soil. But asthe time
past we learn to accept it. Then we

realized that it’s

not too late to show our love to them. It

s like believing in a

saying that “

The de

ath is not the end of everything” I

t is thebeginning that will never end because our love will continue atthe other side of the world..

In addition the story “

The Beds of R

oots” over all represents

the culture of Filipino and the different concept of a family. Theauthor let us see how deep Filipinos love
towards their family.That they spend time to their family and make memorablememories. They work
hard for them because they love theirfamily. And shows love of eternity.The author also make us
realized that Filipinos heart neverforgets . Visiting the cemetery to pay your respects and

remember. Most of us have loved ones who have passed on.Because of our respect and love towards
the deads make thecemetery a community of love not scary . They puts everythingin the heart not in the
mind. That what Filipino all about wetreasure our love ones as much as we treasure our culture. By the
way The gravesite is not a lonely and scary place but full ofhappiness and love memories. To sum it all
giving The author of the story want us tounderstand clearly the concept of importance of
theremembering our beloveds that gone away. Because they haped us to became a strong person that
will give happinessto other same with the langka tree. Importance to the dead is agift to you and your
loved ones that is dead because youtreasure them.

They’ve

been part of your life same with the langka they help you grow to be strong and became sweettowards
other people.

Furthermore, Filipino culture is like the langka tree it's growingand giving sweet fruits. Same with our
culture as it grows it gives more and sweet information for us to developed our culture and make
everyone impressed in our culture. The ref ore lets treasure everything we have.
This short story shows the tradition and beliefs of a Filipino that is still practiced nowadays.
Furthermore, it reflects for what it believes not just in giving emotions but it is the reflection on how it
shows the love for the family and a symbol for being a Filipino.

Based from what I observed, the story was more on narrating and describing. The young character here
tells about what happened in Saturday in a detailed way. This was happened in a cemetery in which the
family wanted to check for the gravesite after their lola’s funeral. It says that the other part of the shrub
has a langka tree in which it has a story behind. According to the young character, she/he met a
gravedigger who told a story behind that langka tree in which it is carefully wrap by a newspaper
obviously to be sold that was planted behind the grave. According to the gravedigger, they’re once a
young girl buried. Its bones wrap by the langka roots seemingly it is lovingly embraced carefully by a
lover. Not to mention its bone was white and like the tree takes every bit of her flesh. For as to the
young character, no wonder where the langka was sold and what stole it could be. Every time they are
going to buy at the market, it is always sweet. And to think of it, his/her mother was buried there. And
maybe the one they always bought was came from her/his mothers’ love showing that the taste of
sweet representing that they felt was a love after all.

If I will be putting myself or taking its place as a young character here, I can’t stop embracing that if I
also ended up my journey, I would also want to be with the one that I love for infinity. Why? Because
each one of use wants to be happy at the end. If I will be choosing my own, I would choose to be with
everybody instead of being lonely. Thus, the young character here wanted to feel some kind of embrace
that actually pure with heartedly.

For us Filipino, we can’t actually hide the fact that our culture results from what we believe. Like for
example this short story In a Bed of Roots greatly represents us. The character we always portray to
others and the love and for being wise is part of our personality that was still the effect or cause of what
we believe that was actually came from our deities. To keep in mind, we show our sincerity not just to
our family, to others, but also to ourselves.

I therefore conclude, the roots symbolized the love that embraced us. This story fits to a person who
lost their love ones. Why do I say so? Because they can actually relate especially about family. I’m not
specifically saying that this In a bed of Roots is tragic and making someone to feel lonely. Practically
speaking no, the author actually intended to show what exactly on how strong we are in terms of
strength to measure exactly to the family.