The Cabin in Heaven

Irish Pauline L. Ereño

I sat patiently in the car as my family drove down the highway. I sat, I looked around and I frowned. I had
a very bad feeling about this little trip. My insides were spasming with fear, yet everyone else seem
oblivious to what I was feeling as I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t talk. I’m only four, yet I was intelligent
for my age. I ignored my tummy’s feelings as I turned into the conversation that my family was having.
“Weather…fine…aunty…house,” my mommy was saying. For even though I couldn’t talk, if I listened
very carefully, I could pick out bits of what my mommy, daddy, and older brother Danny, were saying.

As me and my family turned down the highway, I saw a very big truck with blue paint on it. I stopped
listening to anything and just stared at this funny-looking truck as it turned in front of my family’s car.
The truck was going very slow and my family’s car were going very fast. My mommy, who was driving,
was still facing daddy whilst he was talking to her. Neither saw the incoming truck, not even my brother
Danny as he was staring aimlessly out the window on his left.

I knew what was going to happen as she had seen this collision happen many times in her dreams. I would
close my eyes and suddenly a bright light would appear. Then I would live with mommy and daddy and
Danny in a pretty cabin up in heaven where we all have beautiful white wings. I closed my sweet brown
eyes, thinking about my new life was to come.

But when I opened them, I was still in the car and still heading towards the slow-moving truck. Yet this
time, mommy and daddy had stopped talking, Danny wasn’t staring aimlessly out the window on his left.
Now, all of them stared forwards through the wide screen with big, fearful eyes at the funny-looking
truck.

I tried to open my small mouth to try and tell my lovely family that all would be splendid, that we were
going to live in the most beautiful cabin up in heaven. But before I could even try, my mommy turned to
look at me with a scared expression and held my hand.

“I love you,” said mommy.

“I love you,” I repeated, as I had heard this phrase repeated from mommy to daddy multiple times.

The truck got closer. Mommy told me to close my eyes, yet we still held hands across the seats of the car.

I heard the horrid sounds of the grinding metal and smelly the burning rubber of the tires. But I wasn’t
afraid, for I was picturing the pretty cabin in heaven in my head, where everyone had wings and we could
fly. I counted to ten three times before opening my eyes. But what I saw wasn’t my pretty cabin in heaven
but the most horrific sight of my whole life.

There was our car, covered in red. The front of my family’s car wasn’t as it was before. It was battered
and molded to resemble a flat can. Where was daddy? Where was mommy? Where was Danny? I looked
around left and right, but they were all out of sight. It was at this point that I noticed that I was holding
something that was soft and long. But when I carefully looked down, my blood ran cold. This sickening
sight, appalling to see, I closed my eyes to make it disappear yet when I opened my eyes, it was still
there…my mother’s arm, brutally torn from her shoulder, lying just beneath my lap.

I started to cry, my eyes teared up because I was left here all alone. My mommy, daddy, and my older
brother Danny had left me and gone to visit the pretty cabin in heaven where they now all have wings and
can fly.

“Mummy,” I whimpered as the pain set in. My shoulder was slashed by the window’s glass and my legs
were crushed by mommy’s front seat. As I sank into the foggy blackness, all I could think were three
simple yet heartfelt words that I would remember forever.

“They left me…”

-End-
 The Summer Solstice

Nick Joaquin

Theme

The theme for this story is the portrayal of the collision between instincts and refined culture. The
underlying theme is that the mutual love, care, and understanding relationship between couples. We must
be sensitive to the feelings of another because insensitivity may cause a lot of trouble definitely with the
relationship between you and the one you love. It also expressed in the story that we must love and adore
women and not taken them for granted. Because I believed that women compliments all men. Lastly, we
must be somehow change the principle that men are always dominant or superior because I can see
nowadays that some women already reached the expectations of a man. They are now highly educated
and mannered and thus they achieve success in their career.

Setting

The primary action takes place on the Moretas residence wherein they will spend St. John's Day with the
children's grandfather, whose feast day it was. Donya Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound
of screaming in her ears. In the dining room the three boys already attired in their holiday suits, were at
breakfast, and came crowding around her, talking all at once.

The time setting of the primary action was done at exactly seven in the morning. This story happened
wither on the Spanish era or after the World War II. The story focuses on the season of harvesting. The
dominant time of the day for the story is in the evening.

The story covers before and after the Feast Day of St. John. So it started on the morning before the
celebration begins and until the last day of the said celebration that Don Paeng licked and kissed Donya
Lupeng.

Characters

The two main characters are Don Paeng and Donya Lupeng. Don Paeng is the type of person who is stiff
and very strict of her wife. The author wants to realize to us that even if that is the trait of Don Paeng, he
loves Donya Lupeng. For the reason that she kissed and licked Donya Lupeng’s feet is an act to show
respect and adoration to her. Of course, in a relationship, they should have the same feelings for each
other that they are being loved and being cared for. In the start of the story, Don Paeng has this gestures
that are so insensitive to the feelings of Donya Lupeng. Maybe it came to a point that Donya Lupeng
realize in the Tadtarin that she has not felt that love and adoration from her husband, that is why she
wants to insists to Don Paeng to say and do what she orders in the story.

The story reveal that Donya Lupeng is inferior of the characteristics of Don Paeng but after the ritual of
Tadtarin, it had change, turning 360 degrees that now Don Paeng is under the control of Donya Lupeng.
And thus it showed that women can also be superior in terms of relationship.

There is no villain in the story hence there is a hero and somehow a dynamic character in the story. And
that is Guido, who tries to draw her out from her moral stiffness by enticing her with the Tadtarin ritual he
is the one who influenced Donya Lupeng to join the ritual.

Point of view

The writer is the one liable in revealing the account of Summer Solstice. The third person omniscient is a
narrative mode in which both the reader and author observe the situation either through the senses and
thoughts of more than one character, or through an overarching godlike perspective that sees and knows
everything that happens and everything the characters are thinking. Third-person omniscient simply
means that the narrator can tell the reader things that the main character does not know, or things that
none of the characters know, or things that no human being could ever know

Characterization

It is a mixture of action and description of each character. It is action in a sense that, Lupeng joined to the
ritual for her to experience dominance to Don Paeng. Also you can see the action when Don Paeng
disgusts Donya Lupeng when they are in the ritual; it shows the insensitivity of Don Paeng. Then the
description of the characters was also an element of characterization that Nick Joaquin place. Nick
Joaquin definitely differentiates all the characters through their descriptions and appearances. And for
that, he had to describe also the negative traits of the characters that will somehow intertwine in the story.

Plot

The Summer Solstice is about a Doña Lupeng's gradual discovery of women's power over men. Doña
Lupeng epitomizes a perfect wife -- submissive, caring and devoted to her husband Don Paeng. But she
later realizes that something is missing in her life. So for the first time in their marriage she rebels against
her husband by attending the final rights of Tadtarin with Amada. And there, she seems to lose control of
her emotions--- expressing herself through wild dancing. When Don Paeng saw Doña Lupeng, he tried to
stop her but she prevailed. Soon, Don Paeng realizes that he has long been taking his wife for granted.
And when she arrives at their house, she is changed. She is no longer the meek type of wife. She becomes
over-demanding that, when Paeng has become helpless at the sudden change of his wife, she has asked
him to kiss her feet. And she has felt extremely good at her husband's submission. 

Exposition

The story started when Donya Lupeng saw Amada doing the Tadtarin ritual. That Amada is on the bed
merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows contracted, as if in an effort to understand. Then her face relax
her mouth sagged open humorously and, rolling over on her back and spreading out her big soft arms and
legs, she began noiselessly quaking with laughter—the mute mirth jerking in her throat; the moist pile of
her flesh quivering like brown jelly. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth.

Rising action

The rising action of the story is when the girls broke away from their parents and wives from their
husbands to join in the orgy. And when Don Paeng said to his wife that they must leave the ritual dance,
Donya Lupeng was shaking with fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and
allowed herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off, and ran into the
crowd of dancing women. She flung her hands to her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then,
planting her arms akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an indistinctive folk-movement. She tossed
her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth
with laughter.

Conflict

Internal conflict confronts the leading character. It is internal character in a way that Don Paeng is so
insensitive to the feelings of Donya Lupeng that he doesn’t comply with the love and care that Donya
Lupeng gives to him. He has this insensitive side that in fact came to a point that he disgust Donya
Lupeng when she did the Tadtarin.

Climax

Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head and darted deeper into
the dense maze of procession. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughing—and through the
thick of the female horde they lost and found and lost each other again—she, dancing and he pursuing—
till, carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbulent darkness of the
chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight among milling
female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out. Angry voices rose all about him in the
stifling darkness. Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strength—
but they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and pinned his arms helpless,
while unseen hands struck and struck his face, and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh,
as—kicked and buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood—he was pushed down, down
to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the doorway and rolled out to the street. He picked himself
up at once and walked away with a dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity.
Entoy came running to meet him.

Falling action

When they are home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she was still as light-hearted. Don
Paeng argues with Donya Lupeng on what she did on the ritual that makes him disgust to her and to
himself. Then there came to a point that Don Paeng would whip Donya Lupeng but never did because she
love Lupeng and adored her he cannot do it in spite that Lupeng insisted it. Then because of love and
respect given by Don Paeng to her, she will do anything to prove it and now, Donya Lupeng ordered him
to lie down and kissed her feet. Without moment's hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his
arms and legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the woman steadily
backing away as he approached. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor. She raised her
skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and
kisses it savagely—kissed the step, the sole, and the frail ankle.

Resolution

The conflict was resolved when Donya Lupeng joined in the Tadtarin wherein, Don Paeng realizes that
Donya Lupeng did the ritual because she wants him to comply with her love and to adore her forever.
Don Paeng’s realization made him love Donya Lupeng again.
 The Chieftest Mourner

Aida Rivera Ford

Theme

The general theme is a story with a focal point focused on love and innocence in the context of death. The
underlying theme is the disloyalty of people through their love ones. The purpose of the author is to show
the consequences of having infidelity in a relationship. Furthermore, it pays more attention on fondness
and virtuousness in the perspective of bereavement.

Setting

The primary action takes place on the college boarding house of the poet’s niece in Manila. Here, she
read on the newspaper that her Uncle was dead.

It was on the morning before class that the niece read the news about the death of her Uncle. It is
somewhat from Spanish era up to the present time. The season was during the school days. The story on
the wake happened merely all throughout the day.

The story covers from the day that her Aunt and Uncle were separated until the 2 nd wife leaves the wake.
The period of the story is somewhat quite long and the ending of the story will be also take a quite longer
time because, I know that the 2 nd wife would not have this so called “finished business” for the poet and
his legal wife.

Characters

The single main character about whom the story centers is the poet who passed away. Because this poet
has two wives, wherein these wives are arguing about their rights to him most especially on his wake. He
is the one on why he was separated from his legal wife and he is also the one who gets another one to be
his wife. Also he has this close connection to his niece wherein his niece is the speaker of the story.

The villain in the story was the 2nd wife. She was the one who made the scandal at the funeral and made
more scandal when she entered the life of the Poet. The hero for that fact is the relatives of the poet
because they don’t want to make the wake a scandalous one, so they don’t tolerate the situation and they
forcedly fixed it. The dynamic hero in the story is the niece because she is the one who is experiencing
the more hardships on the life of his uncle. Because she is the one who sees all these and because she is
the one who is close to her Uncle’s heart.
Point of view

The niece of the poet is the one who tells the story for what happened on the wake and the flashback
scenes. The first person is used as the point of view wherein the narrator is a character in the story, the
story is told in the first-person point of view. The narrator uses the first-person pronouns I and me.

Characterization

The author handles the characterization by combing the action of the characters and also the conversation
on the wake. The actions made by characters are making enough statement that the reader can see. For
example, the cry of the legal wife means that it is already enough that she wants the 2 nd wife to stop. Then
the conversation make the whole emotion complete. Because on the last part, they were quarrelling, there
conversations were tough and so deep that you can observe the personality and individuality of the
characters.

Plot

The man commits adultery because he can't perform his responsibilities at the same time. Being a
husband and a great poet is a very confusing job that's why sometimes his wife didn't understand him. He
was force to leave his wife because he wants a partner who is willing to share with him in times of sorrow
and happiness. But the man soon became sick and dies. In the story the wife and the mistress fights in
who will get to stay in the funeral or who is the real legal wife is. But in the end the mistress give way and
she leaved the funeral.

Exposition

The story started when the poet’s niece together with her friends got to read the news about her Uncle.
And in the news, it was aid that her Uncle was dead. And because it was morning before their classes’
starts, she thought that she must be brave to face this reality. Then there are flashback scenes that came to
the niece’s mind.

Rising action

The rising action of the story is when the poet’s niece went over to sit with her aunt who was gazing not
so steadily at nothing in particular. At first the women spoke in whispers, and then the voices raised a
trifle. Still, everybody was polite. There was more talking back and forth, and suddenly the conversation
doesn’t seem polite anymore.

Conflict
The external conflict confronts the characters. Because it is in the “Man vs. Man” situation die to the
battle and argument of the two wives of the poet having to whom the recognition to be the right wife for
the poet. Also the poet and the legal wife, as you can see in the story, they was a situation that they had
this quarrel and it reached to the point that the wife tie him on the chair for that the poet could not again
do his vices. And because of these, the poet struggles to his wife and as a result, the poet decides to
escape and separate from the legal wife.

Climax

The highest point in the story is when the two wives were arguing already and making a scene on the
wake. The 2 wives are now talking and battling their rights to whom the wake should be handed and then
the legal wife started to cry and shutting up the second wife.

Falling action

One of the clan said, taking up Aunt Sophia that they don not care for the honors and they don’t want it to
themselves and they want the poet to be honored in death and to have a descent and respectable funeral
without a scandal. And they utter to the second wife that the least that she should do is to leave the poet in
peace as he lies there. Then the second wife’s face went livid with shock and rage. She stood speechless
then her face began to twitch and then sobs came into her that spilled tears on her eyes and then the
young man guided her on the casket where the poet is smiling and then she lose the battle and walk away.

Resolution

The conflict was resolved by the help of the relatives and friends of the poets. Because the two wives are
already making a scandal on the wake, the relatives of the poet tries to stop them and talks to them that
the one whom they are battling with is already dead and they must respect his wake and just honor it. And
they commented on the second wife that she made enough scandal that the relatives could not go to the
poet when he was sick. And for the 2nd wife, it was a big slap for her and it was a realization that makes
her stay away to the wake. In the battle between the legal wife and the poet, the poet did not result the
problem but he made a solution that it will be better for him to have another confidante different from her
legal wife. So the issue between him and the legal wife sort of not resolved then making another conflict
out of it which is the battle of the 2 wives.