EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Saint Jerome translating the Vulgate.

By Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1605-06)

MODULE 2
Conflict and the World

37
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

MODULE 2
Resolving Conflicts
OBJECTIVES
a) Define popular literature;
b) Define Marxism;
c) Explain the conflicts of the story read;
d) Identify the opposing forces in the story; and
e) Write an analysis of a story using Marxism.

POPULAR LITERATURE
WHAT IS POPULAR LITERATURE?

Popular Literature, sometimes called genre fiction, is a type of literature that is widely
accepted by the masses. Works under popular literature do not generally mean to be discussed in
academic circles, and often are left to the taste of the masses. Popular literature is reliant to the
masses; as time progresses, works under popular literature may also change. Hence, popular
literature writers always write stories that entertain the masses and include topics which are
prevalent in society.

The most common genres of popular literature are crime fiction, romance, fantasy, science
fiction, inspirational, historical fiction, thriller, and horror. However, popular literature is not
limited to these genres as there are others who consider young adult (YA) to be an example of
popular literature.

LITERARY THEORY: MARXISM

“As Marxists we have maintained that peaceful coexistence
among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiters
and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed.” – Che
Guevarra

Marxism is a philosophical idea introduced by German

philosopher Karl Marx in his books Communist Manifesto and Das
Kapital. His works was considered to be the chronological start of
Marxist literary criticism. In this perspective, literary texts are one
register of the superstructure, which is determined by the economic base
of any given society. Therefore, literary texts are a reflection of the
economic base rather than "the social institutions from which they
originate" for all social institutions, or more precisely human–social Fig. 3. Karl Marx
relationships, are in the final analysis determined by the economic base.
38
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Marxism views works of

literature or art as the products of
historical forces that can be studied
by looking at the material
conditions in which they are
produced. This theory generally
focuses on the conflict between the
dominant and repressed classes in
any given age. In other words,
Marxist literary theory starts from
the assumption that literature must
be understood in relation to
historical and social reality of a
certain society.
According to Marxists,
even literature itself is a social
institution and has a specific
ideological function, based on the
background and ideology of the
author. The English literary critic
and cultural theorist Terry
Eagleton defines Marxist criticism
Fig. 4. Relationship of superstructure and base.
this way: "Marxist criticism is not
merely a 'sociology of literature',
concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is
to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and,
meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the product of a
particular history."

It is through the theories of class struggle, politics and economics that Marxist literary
criticism emerged. The thought behind Marxist criticism is that works of literature are mere
products of history that can be analyzed by looking at the social and material conditions in which
they were constructed. Marx’s Capital states that "the mode of production of material life
determines altogether the social, political, and intellectual life process. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their being, but on the contrary their social being, that determines their
consciousness." Put simply, the social situation of the author determines the types of characters
that will develop, the political ideas displayed and the economical statements developed in the
text.
Hegemony is the processes by which dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for
example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make
power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the
populace in the ideals of the hegomonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.;
the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition.

Superstructure, according to Marx, is the set of ideologies that dominate a particular era,
all that "men say, imagine, conceive," including such things as "politics, laws, morality, religion,
39
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

metaphysics, etc." (Marx and Engels, German Ideology). For Marx, the superstructure is generally
dependent on the modes of production that dominate in a given period.

Advantages of Marxist Literary Theory

 The reader can relate the society in explaining the background of the text.
 It highlights the class struggle between the opposing forces.
 It explains the discrepancy and presence of conflict – and how it can be resolved.
 It allows people to practice check and balance through literature.

Disadvantages
 Marxism overlooks alternative ideas that might shape behavior. With a focus on class
conflict, other issues affecting behavior like gender, race and individuals are not given
attention.
 The text is as an extension of society, hereby reducing the text as a justification of problems
in society.
 It focuses only on one aspect of the text in its analysis.

Guide Questions for Marxism

 Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
 What is the social class of the author?
 Which class does the work claim to represent?
 What values does it reinforce?
 What values does it subvert?
 What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
 What social classes do the characters represent?
 How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Process Questions:
1. How does Marxism transcend its application from other fields of study into literature?
2. What are the things one must look for in a story when using Marxist literary theory?

 LITERARY FOCUS: CONFLICT

What is a Conflict?
Conflict is one of the major literary elements in literature that show struggles and opposition
between two sides. This creates the illusion of unattainability of the goal of the character. In literature, this
serves as the major challenge the characters (or lead character) must solve to achieve the goals. While
traditional stories and narrative are limited to single conflict, major trends in literature has given rise to
multiple conflicts, normally a series of conflicts the character must solve and lead to one major resolution.
In literature, conflict may be driven by various forces or characters. It may be categorized into
internal and external conflicts. Internal conflict involves a dilemma within the character’s mind, belief, or
points of view. An external conflict, on the other hand, involves dilemma shared with other people or
forces.
A conflict is easily recognizable between two or more characters, usually between the lead
character (protagonist) and villain or enemy (antagonist), but it may also be shown in different forms. The
protagonist may find other than a person, such as an animal (Captain Ahab’s hunt of the whale Moby Dick

40
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

in Moby Dick), natural calamity (a chechaquo trying to start a fire in To Build a Fire), or nature itself
(Crusoe shipwrecked in an island in Robinson Crusoe).

Characters may have various desires or struggle against multiple opposing forces, resulting in
multiple sources of conflict in a single story. A sense of closure is created when a conflict is concluded and
the reader learns which force or character triumphs. Conflicts can be resolved at any moment in a story,
especially if there are multiple conflicts, but stories do not always do so. A story is said to have an "open"
conclusion if it ends without resolving the main or major conflict(s). Open endings, which can encourage
readers to think about the issue more personally, may not please them, but a clear conflict resolution may
also leave them unhappy in the novel.

Process Questions
1. What is the theme of Cinderella?
2. How does theme help in understanding the text?

MORE THAN WE MEAN

Directions: The following words are taken from the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Give their denotative (specific, dictionary) meaning and the connotative (suggested idea or
concept) meaning of the word. Remember that connotative meaning must be a positive or negative
emotion. Then, construct a sentence using the word. Complete the table below by referring to the
example.

Difficult Connotative
Denotative Meaning Sample Sentence
Words Meaning
Disgrace Dishonor Loss of self-respect When the men looked
at his face, they feel
disgraced.
wink
incongruity
skitoma
pious
decorum

CONTROVERSIAL WORLD
Directions: Identify if the sentences below are controversial or not.
Sentence Controversial Factual
"Learning the truth has become my life's love."
The Last Supper is a painting of thirteen men."
Many of the photographs in art books were taken before 1954,
when the details were still hidden beneath layers of grime and
several restorative repaintings done by clumsy hands in the
eighteenth century.

41
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

"That, my dear," Teabing replied, "is Mary Magdalene." Sophie

turned. "The prostitute?"
"The early Church needed to convince the world that the mortal
prophet Jesus was a divine being.”

Process Question
1. How do you resolve your conflicting views with another person?
2. Why is it difficult to accept other’s opinion?

TREAD THE PATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
DAN BROWN is an American thriller author best known for his Robert
Langdon novels Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003),
The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013), and Origin (2013). (2017).
His works are treasure hunts which take place over the course of a day
and a half. Cryptography, art, and conspiracy theories are all central
themes.
The Robert Langdon novels are deeply engaged with Christian
themes and historical fact, and have generated controversy as a result.
He claims that his book The Da Vinci Code is simply "an entertaining
story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that
the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and
exploration of our faith."

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

(An Excerpt, Chapter 58)

Teabing's "study" was like no study Sophie had ever seen. Six or seven times larger than
even the most luxurious of office spaces, the knight's cabinet de travail resembled an ungainly
hybrid of science laboratory, archival library, and indoor flea market. Lit by three overhead
chandeliers, the boundless tile floor was dotted with clustered islands of worktables buried beneath
books, artwork, artifacts, and a surprising amount of electronic gear—computers, projectors,
microscopes, copy machines, and flatbed scanners.

"I converted the ballroom," Teabing said, looking sheepish as he shuffled into the room. "I
have little occasion to dance."

Sophie felt as if the entire night had become some kind of twilight zone where nothing was
as she expected. "This is all for your work?"

"Learning the truth has become my life's love," Teabing said. "And the Sangreal is my
favorite mistress."

42
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

The Holy Grail is a woman, Sophie thought, her mind a collage of interrelated ideas that
seemed to make no sense. "You said you have a picture of this woman who you claim is the Holy
Grail."

"Yes, but it is not I who claim she is the Grail. Christ Himself made that claim."

"Which one is the painting?" Sophie asked, scanning the walls.

"Hmmm..." Teabing made a show of seeming to have forgotten. "The Holy Grail. The
Sangreal. The Chalice." He wheeled suddenly and pointed to the far wall. On it hung an eight-
foot-long print of The Last Supper, the same exact image Sophie had just been looking at. "There
she is!"

Sophie was certain she had missed something. "That's the same painting you just showed
me."

He winked. "I know, but the enlargement is so much more exciting. Don't you think?"

Sophie turned to Langdon for help. "I'm lost."

Langdon smiled. "As it turns out, the Holy Grail does indeed make an appearance in The
Last Supper. Leonardo included her prominently."

"Hold on," Sophie said. "You told me the Holy Grail is a woman. The Last Supper is a
painting of thirteen men."

"Is it?" Teabing arched his eyebrows. "Take a closer look."

Uncertain, Sophie made her way closer to the painting, scanning the thirteen figures—
Jesus Christ in the middle, six disciples on His left, and six on His right. "They're all men," she
confirmed.

"Oh?" Teabing said. "How about the one seated in the place of honor, at the right hand of
the Lord?"

Sophie examined the figure to Jesus' immediate right, focusing in. As she studied the
person's face and body, a wave of astonishment rose within her. The individual had flowing red
hair, delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom. It was, without a doubt... female.

"That's a woman!" Sophie exclaimed.

Teabing was laughing. "Surprise, surprise. Believe me, it's no mistake. Leonardo was
skilled at painting the difference between the sexes."

Sophie could not take her eyes from the woman beside Christ. The Last Supper is supposed
to be thirteen men. Who is this woman? Although Sophie had seen this classic image many times,
she had not once noticed this glaring discrepancy.

43
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

"Everyone misses it," Teabing said. "Our preconceived notions of this scene are so
powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes."

"It's known as skitoma," Langdon added. "The brain does it sometimes with powerful
symbols."

"Another reason you might have missed the woman," Teabing said, "is that many of the
photographs in art books were taken before 1954, when the details were still hidden beneath layers
of grime and several restorative repaintings done by clumsy hands in the eighteenth century. Now,
at last, the fresco has been cleaned down to Da Vinci's original layer of paint." He motioned to
the photograph. "Et voilà!"

Sophie moved closer to the image. The woman to Jesus' right was young and pious-looking,
with a demure face, beautiful red hair, and hands folded quietly. This is the woman who
singlehandedly could crumble the Church?

"Who is she?" Sophie asked.

"That, my dear," Teabing replied, "is Mary Magdalene."

Sophie turned. "The prostitute?"

Teabing drew a short breath, as if the word had injured him personally. "Magdalene was
no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the
early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous
secret—her role as the Holy Grail."

"Her role?"

"As I mentioned," Teabing clarified, "the early Church needed to convince the world that
the mortal prophet Jesus was a divine being. Therefore, any gospels that described earthly aspects
of Jesus' life had to be omitted from the Bible. Unfortunately for the early editors, one particularly
troubling earthly theme kept recurring in the gospels. Mary Magdalene." He paused. "More
specifically, her marriage to Jesus Christ."

"I beg your pardon?" Sophie's eyes moved to Langdon and then back to Teabing.

"It's a matter of historical record," Teabing said, "and Da Vinci was certainly aware of
that fact. The Last Supper practically shouts at the viewer that Jesus and Magdalene were a pair."

Sophie glanced back to the fresco.

"Notice that Jesus and Magdalene are clothed as mirror images of one another." Teabing
pointed to the two individuals in the center of the fresco.

Sophie was mesmerized. Sure enough, their clothes were inverse colors. Jesus wore a red
robe and blue cloak; Mary Magdalene wore a blue robe and red cloak. Yin and yang.

44
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

"Venturing into the more bizarre," Teabing said, "note that Jesus and His bride appear to
be joined at the hip and are leaning away from one another as if to create this clearly delineated
negative space between them."

Even before Teabing traced the contour for her, Sophie saw it—the indisputable V shape
at the focal point of the painting. It was the same symbol Langdon had drawn earlier for the Grail,
the chalice, and the female womb.

"Finally," Teabing said, "if you view Jesus and Magdalene as compositional elements
rather than as people, you will see another obvious shape leap out at you." He paused. "A letter
of the alphabet."

Sophie saw it at once. To say the letter leapt out at her was an understatement. The letter
was suddenly all Sophie could see. Glaring in the center of the painting was the unquestionable
outline of an enormous, flawlessly formed letter M.

"A bit too perfect for coincidence, wouldn't you say?" Teabing asked.

Sophie was amazed. "Why is it there?"

Teabing shrugged. "Conspiracy theorists will tell you it stands for Matrimonio or Mary
Magdalene. To be honest, nobody is certain. The only certainty is that the hidden M is no mistake.
Countless Grail-related works contain the hidden letter M—whether as watermarks,
underpaintings, or compositional allusions. The most blatant M, of course, is emblazoned on the
altar at Our Lady of Paris in London, which was designed by a former Grand Master of the Priory
of Sion, Jean Cocteau."

Sophie weighed the information. "I'll admit, the hidden M's are intriguing, although I
assume nobody is claiming they are proof of Jesus' marriage to Magdalene."

"No, no," Teabing said, going to a nearby table of books. "As I said earlier, the marriage
of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record." He began pawing through his book
collection. "Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard
biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor."

"Why?" Sophie asked.

"Because Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said, taking over while Teabing searched for his
book, "and the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried.
According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was
to find a suitable wife for his son. If Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible's gospels
would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood."

Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound
edition was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved
it open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. Sophie could see it contained photographs of what
appeared to be magnified passages of ancient documents—tattered papyrus with handwritten text.
She did not recognize the ancient language, but the facing pages bore typed translations.
45
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

"These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned
earlier," Teabing said. "The earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the
gospels in the Bible." Flipping toward the middle of the book, Teabing pointed to a passage. "The
Gospel of Philip is always a good place to start." Sophie read the passage:

And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than
all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples
were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, "Why do you love
her more than all of us?"

The words surprised Sophie, and yet they hardly seemed conclusive. "It says nothing of
marriage."

"Au contraire." Teabing smiled, pointing to the first line. "As any Aramaic scholar will tell
you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse."

Langdon concurred with a nod.

Sophie read the first line again. And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene.

Teabing flipped through the book and pointed out several other passages that, to Sophie's
surprise, clearly suggested Magdalene and Jesus had a romantic relationship. As she read the
passages, Sophie recalled an angry priest who had banged on her grandfather's door when she was
a schoolgirl.

"Is this the home of Jacques Saunière?" the priest had demanded, glaring down at young
Sophie when she pulled open the door. "I want to talk to him about this editorial he wrote." The
priest held up a newspaper.

Sophie summoned her grandfather, and the two men disappeared into his study and closed
the door. My grandfather wrote something in the paper? Sophie immediately ran to the kitchen
and flipped through that morning's paper. She found her grandfather's name on an article on the
second page. She read it. Sophie didn't understand all of what was said, but it sounded like the
French government, under pressure from priests, had agreed to ban an American movie called The
Last Temptation of Christ, which was about Jesus having sex with a lady called Mary Magdalene.
Her grandfather's article said the Church was arrogant and wrong to ban it.

No wonder the priest is mad, Sophie thought.

"It's pornography! Sacrilege!" the priest yelled, emerging from the study and storming to
the front door. "How can you possibly endorse that! This American Martin Scorsese is a
blasphemer, and the Church will permit him no pulpit in France!" The priest slammed the door
on his way out.

When her grandfather came into the kitchen, he saw Sophie with the paper and frowned.
"You're quick."

Sophie said, "You think Jesus Christ had a girlfriend?"

46
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

"No, dear, I said the Church should not be allowed to tell us what notions we can and can't
entertain."

"Did Jesus have a girlfriend?"

Her grandfather was silent for several moments. "Would it be so bad if He did?"

Sophie considered it and then shrugged. "I wouldn't mind."

FACTS AND DETAILS

1. What was the excerpt all about?
2. Who were the characters and what were they discussing?
3. What is the conflict of the excerpt?
4. What is the burden of proof of Teabing?
5. What is the rebuttal argument of Sophie?

DIGGING DEEPER
1. Do you agree with Teabing? Why?
2. What makes the excerpt controversial?
3. Did the excerpt has an open or close ending? Why?
4. Why is it difficult to accept the argument of Teabing?
5. What does the last conversation between Sophie and her grandfather imply?

BE THE SOLUTION
Directions: Write an imaginary letter to the critics of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
Explain the fine line between fiction and non-fiction.

Process Questions
1. Why do people want wealth?
2. How much wealth can be regarded as “enough and not wanting”?

MORE THAN WE MEAN

Directions: The following words are taken from the story The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Give their denotative (specific, dictionary) meaning and the connotative (suggested idea or
concept) meaning of the word. Remember that connotative meaning must be a positive or negative
emotion. Then, construct a sentence using the word. Complete the table below by referring to the
example.

Difficult Connotative
Denotative Meaning Sample Sentence
Words Meaning
Sample: Dishonor Loss of self-respect When the men looked
Disgrace at his face, they feel
disgraced.
47
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

West
Ostracism
Folly
Clattering
Braggarts

WEALTH IS HEALTH
Directions: Read and analyse each item correctly. Write if the following sentences have
characteristics of a Marxism theory or not. Explain why the item has Marxist characteristics or
why it has not.
Sentence Marxist Why?
In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark
caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water.
When supper was over and the dishes dipped and wiped, the dark had
come, and then the men squatted down to talk.
Thus they changed their social life changed as in the whole universe only
man can change.
It is unlawful to eat good rich food near one who is hungry, unless he is
asked to share.
The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was
one dream.

Process Question
1. What do you do when you encounter something for the first time?

TREAD THE PATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

JOHN STEINBECK is an American author known for his

exploration of human fate and injustice. He was born on 27
February 1902 at Salinas, California, United States. He is regarded
as a giant of American letters and a multitude of his works are
considered classics of Western literature.

He won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel committee
remarked well on his “realistic and imaginative writings,
combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social
perception.” His writings include Of Mice and Men (1937), East of
Eden (1952) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the latter winning
the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.

48
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

An Excerpt

The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country
highway, and they took the migrant way to the West. In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the
westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water. And
because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and
worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled
together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in
the new country. Thus it might be that one family camped near a spring, and another camped for
the spring and for company, and a third because two families had pioneered the place and found it
good. And when the sun went down, perhaps twenty families and twenty cars were there.

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the
children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the
West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty
families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck
through the night and filled a hundred people with the birth- joy in the morning. A family which
the night before had been lost and fearful might search its goods to find a present for a new baby.
In the evening, sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be units of the camps,
units of the evenings and the nights. A guitar unwrapped from a blanket and tuned and the songs,
which were all of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words, and women hummed
the tunes. Every night a world created, complete with furniture friends made and enemies
established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men,
with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, established; and every morning the
world torn down like a circus.

At first the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the
technique of building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then laws were made,
then codes came into being. And as the worlds moved westward they were more complete and
better furnished, for their builders were more experienced in building them.

The families learned what rights must be observed the right of privacy in the tent; the right
to keep the past black hidden in the heart; the right to talk and to listen; the right to refuse help or
to accept, to offer help or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to be courted; the
right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights.

And the families learned, although no one told them, what rights are monstrous and must
be destroyed: the right to intrude upon privacy, the right to be noisy while the camp slept, the right
of seduction or rape, the right of adultery and theft and murder. These rights were crushed, because
the little worlds could not exist for even a night with such rights alive.

And as the worlds moved westward, rules became laws, although no one told the families.
It is unlawful to foul near the camp; it is unlawful in any way to foul the drinking water; it is
unlawful to eat good rich food near one who is hungry, unless he is asked to share.

49
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

And with the laws, the punishments and there were only two a quick and murderous fight
or ostracism; and ostracism was the worst. For if one broke the laws his name and face went with
him, and he had no place in any world, no matter where created.

In the worlds, social conduct became fixed and rigid, so that a man must say "Good
morning" when asked for it, so that a man might have a willing girl if he stayed with her, if he
fathered her children and protected them. But a man might not have one girl one night and another
the next, for this would endanger the worlds.

The families moved westward, and the technique of building the worlds improved so that
the people could be safe in their worlds; and the form was so fixed that a family acting in the rules
knew it was safe in the rules.

There grew up government in the worlds, with leaders, with elders. A man who was wise
found that his wisdom was needed in every camp; a man who was a fool could not change his folly
with his world. And a kind of insurance developed in these nights. A man with food fed a hungry
man, and thus insured himself against hunger. And when a baby died a pile of silver coins grew at
the door flap, for a baby must be well buried, since it has had nothing else of life. An old man may
be left in a potter's field, but not a baby.

A certain physical pattern is needed for the building of a world water, a river bank, a stream,
a spring, or even a faucet unguarded. And there is needed enough flat land to pitch the tents, a little
brush or wood to build the fires. If there is a garbage dump not too far off, all the better; for there
can be found equipment stove tops, a curved fender to shelter the fire, and cans to cook in and to
eat from.

And the worlds were built in the evening. The people, moving in from the highways, made
them with their tents and their hearts and their brains.

In the morning the tents came down, the canvas was folded, the tent poles tied along the
running board, the beds put in place on the cars, the pots in their places. And as the families moved
westward, the technique of building up a home in the evening and tearing it down with the morning
light became fixed; so that the folded tent was packed in one place, the cooking pots counted in
their box. And as the cars moved westward, each member of the family grew into his proper place,
grew into his duties; so that each member, old and young, had his place in the car; so that in the
weary, hot evenings, when the cars pulled into the camping places, each member had his duty and
went to it without instruction: children to gather wood, to carry water; men to pitch the tents and
bring down the beds; women to cook the supper and to watch while the family fed. And this was
done without command. The families, which had been units of which the boundaries were a house
at night, a farm by day, changed their boundaries. In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars
moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found.

Thus they changed their social life changed as in the whole universe only man can change.
They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought, the planning, the long
staring silence that had gone out to the fields, went now to the roads, to the distance, to the West.
That man whose mind had been bound with acres lived with narrow concrete miles. And his
thought and his worry were not any more with rainfall, with wind and dust, with the thrust of the
50
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

crops. Eyes watched the tires, ears listened to the clattering motors, and minds struggled with oil,
with gasoline, with the thinning rubber between air and road. Then a broken gear was tragedy.
Then water in the evening was the yearning, and food over the fire. Then health to go on was the
need and strength to go on, and spirit to go on. The wills thrust westward ahead of them, and fears
that had once apprehended drought or flood now lingered with anything that might stop the
westward crawling. The camps became fixed each a short day's journey from
the last.

And on the road the panic overcame some of the families, so that they drove night and day,
stopped to sleep in the cars, and drove on to the West, flying from the road, flying from movement.
And these lusted so greatly to be settled that they set their faces into the West and drove toward it,
forcing the clashing engines over the roads.

But most of the families changed and grew quickly into the new life. And when the sun
went down

Time to look out for a place to stop.

And there's some tents ahead.

The car pulled off the road and stopped, and because others were there first, certain
courtesies were necessary. And the man, the leader of the family, leaned from the car.

Can we pull up here an' sleep?

Why, sure, be proud to have you. What State you from?

Come all the way from Arkansas.

They's Arkansas people down that fourth tent.

That so?

And the great question, How's the water?

Well, she don't taste so good, but they's plenty.

Well, thank ya.

No thanks to me.

But the courtesies had to be. The car lumbered over the ground to the end tent, and stopped.
Then down from the car the weary people climbed, and stretched stiff bodies. Then the new tent
sprang up; the children went for water and the older boys cut brush or wood. The fires started and
supper was put on to boil or to fry. Early comers moved over, and States were exchanged, and
friends and sometimes relatives discovered.

51
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Oklahoma, huh? What county?

Cherokee.

Why, I got folks there. Know the Aliens? They's Aliens all over Cherokee. Know the
Willises?

Why, sure.

And a new unit was formed. The ccame, but before the dark was down the new family was
of the camp. A word had been passed with every family. They were known people good people.

I knowed the Aliens all my life. Simon Allen, oF Simon, had trouble with his first wife.
She was part Cherokee. Purty as as a black colt.

Sure, an' young Simon, he married a Rudolph, didn' he? That's what I thought. They went
to live in Enid an' done well real well.

Only Allen that ever done well. Got a garage.

When the water was carried and the wood cut, the children walked shyly, cautiously among
the tents. And they made elaborate acquaintanceship gestures. A boy stopped near another boy and
studied a stone, picked it up, examined it closely, spat on it, and rubbed it clean and inspected it
until he forced the other to demand, What you go there-

And casually, Nothin'. Jus' a rock.

Well, what you lookin' at it like that for?

Thought I seen gold in it.

How'd you know? Gold ain't gold, it's black in a rock.

Sure, everybody knows that.

I bet it's fool's gold, an' you figgered it was gold.

That ain't so, 'cause Pa, he's foun' lots a gold an' he to me how to look.

How'd you like to pick up a big ol' piece a gold?

Sa-a-ay! Fd git the bigges' old son-a-bitchin' piece a candy you ever se^ ,

I ain't let to swear, but I do, anyways.

Me too. Le's go to the spring.

52
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

And young girls found each other and boasted shyly of their popularity and their prospects.
The women worked over the fire, hurrying to get food to the stomachs of the family pork if there
was money in plenty, pork and potatoes and onions. Dutch-oven biscuits or cornbread, and plenty
of gravy to go over it. Side-meat or chops and a can of boiled tea, black and bitter. Fried dough in
drippings if money was slim, dough fried crisp and brown and the drippings
poured on it.

Those farmers, which were very rich or very foolish with their money ate canned beans
and canned peaches and packaged bread and bakery cake; but they ate secretly, in their tents, for
it would not have been good to eat such fine things openly. Even so, children eating their fried
dough smelled the warming beans and were unhappy about it.

When supper was over and the dishes dipped and wiped, the dark had come, and then the
men squatted down to talk.

THINK ABOUT THE TEXT

1. Who were the characters in the story?
2. What is the problem of the characters?
3. Where were the people headed to?
4. What made the people leave their homes?
5. Describe the lives of the people in a paragraph.

BENEATH THE SURFACE

1. In what way were the common people’s lives different from those privileged?
2. What makes the West attractive to migrants?
3. What is considered the West in the Philippines? Why?
4. Do you know a person who has travelled to West? What happened to him/her?
5. In your locality, what is considered the West? What effects did it had to the people?

THEME BUILDING
Directions: The Joads are representation of the difficult economic times due to the Great
Depression. Many economies around the United States and the world reached all-time lows. Write
an imaginary letter to the Joads in the novel The Grapes of Wrath. Tell them about the economic
situation today in the 21st century and how people live in these economic times.
Process Questions
1. How does a love unrequited feel?
2. How does time heal wounds?

OPER-TECH SYSTEM
Directions: The following words are lifted from the novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez. Look for the technical and operational definition of the given words. Write your
answer in the appropriate column.
53
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Word Technical Definition Operational Definition

Fidelity
Submissive
Vulnerability
Spinster
Quadroon
Impetus

YESTERDAY SO FAR AWAY

Directions: In literature, the main character whose name is not mentioned is called a persona. For
this activity, listen to the song Yesterday by The Beatles. Answer the questions that follow.
1. When was yesterday meant in the song?
2. What happened on that yesterday?
3. What did the persona feel about yesterday?
4. Why did the persona say that love was an easy game before?
5. What made the persona hold onto yesterday?

Process Question
1. Why is death inevitable?
2. Why there are people who want to die?

TREAD THE PATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ is a Colombian writer and 1982

Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. He was born on 6 March 1927 in
Aracataca, Colombia. Foremost among the significant writers in
Spanish during the 20th century, he was also awarded the 1972 Neustadt
International sePrize for Literature.
He wrote the classic novels One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and the short story The Handsomest
Drowned Man in the World. Marquez is regarded as among the
proponents of magic realism – a style of fiction that draws a realistic
view of the world while also employing magical elements.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
An Excerpt

Florentino Ariza, on the other hand, had not stopped thinking of her for a single moment
since Fermina Daza had rejected him out of hand after a long and troubled love affair fifty-one
years, nine months, and four days ago. He did not have to keep a running tally, drawing a line for
each day on the walls of a cell, because not a day had passed that something did not happen to

54
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

remind him of her. At the time of their separation he lived with his mother, Tránsito Ariza, in one
half of a rented house on the Street of Windows, where she had kept a notions shop ever since she
was a young woman, and where she also unraveled shirts and old rags to sell as bandages for the
men wounded in the war. He was her only child, born of an occasional alliance with the well-
known shipowner Don Pius V Loayza, one of the three brothers who had founded the River
Company of the Caribbean and thereby given new impetus to steam navigation along the
Magdalena River.

All that Florentino Ariza could learn about Lorenzo Daza was that he had come from San
Juan de la Ciénaga with his only daughter and his unmarried sister soon after the cholera epidemic,
and those who saw him disembark had no doubt that he had come to stay since he brought
everything necessary for a well- furnished house. His wife had died when the girl was very young.
His sister, named Escolástic a, was forty years old, and she was fulfilling a vow to wear the habit
of St. Francis when she went out on the street and the penitent’s rope around her waist when she
was at home. The girl was thirteen years old and had the same name as her dead mother: Fermina.

It was supposed that Lorenzo Daza was a man of means, because he lived well with no
known employment and had paid hard cash for the Park of the Evangels house, whose restoration
must have cost him at least twice the purchase price of two hundred gold pesos. His daughter was
studying at the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, where for two centuries young
ladies of society had learned the art and technique of being diligent and submissive wives. During
the colonial period and the early years of the Republic, the school had accepted only those students
with great family names. But the old families, ruined by Independence, had to submit to the
realities of a new time, and the Academy opened its doors to all applicants who could pay the
tuition, regardless of the color of their blood, on the essential condition that they were legitimate
daughters of Catholic marriages. In any event, it was an expensive school, and the fact that Fermina
Daza studied there was sufficient indication of her family’s economic situation, if not of its social
position. This news encouraged Florentino Ariza, since it indicated to him that the beautiful
adolescent with the almond-shaped eyes was within reach of his dreams. But her father’s strict
regime soon provided an irremediable difficulty. Unlike the other students, who walked to school
in groups or accompanied by an older servant, Fermina Daza always walked with her spinster aunt,
and her behavior indicated that she was permitted no distraction.

It was in this innocent way that Florentino Ariza began his secret life as a solitary hunter.
From seven o’clock in the morning, he sat on the most hidden bench in the little park, pretending
to read a book of verse in the shade of the almond trees, until he saw the impossible maiden walk
by in her blue-striped uniform, stockings that reached to her knees, masculine laced oxfords, and
a single thick braid with a bow at the end, which hung down her back to her waist. She walked
with natural haughtiness, her head high, her eyes unmoving, her step rapid, her nose pointing
straight ahead, her bag of books held against her chest with crossed arms, her doe’s gait making
her seem immune to gravity. At her side, struggling to keep up with her, the aunt with the brown
habit and rope of St. Francis did not allow him the slightest opportunity to approach. Florentino
Ariza saw them pass back and forth four times a day and once on Sundays when they came out of
High Mass, and just seeing the girl was enough for him. Little by little he idealized her, endowing
her with improbable virtues and imaginary sentiments, and after two weeks he thought of nothing
else but her. So he decided to send Fermina Daza a simple note written on both sides of the paper
in his exquisite notary’s hand. But he kept it in his pocket for several days, thinking about how to
55
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

hand it to her, and while he thought he wrote several more pages before going to bed, so that the
original letter was turning into a dictionary of compliments, inspired by books he had learned by
heart because he read them so often during his vigils in the park.

Searching for a way to give her the letter, he tried to make the acquaintance of some of the
other students at Presentation Academy, but they were too distant from his world. Besides, after
much thought, it did not seem prudent to let anyone else know of his intentions. Still, he managed
to find out that Fermina Daza had been invited to a Saturday dance a few days after their arrival in
the city, and her father had not allowed her to go with a conclusive: “Everything in due course.”
By the time the letter contained more than sixty pages written on both sides, Florentino Ariza could
no longer endure the weight of his secret, and he unburdened himself to his mother, the only person
with whom he allowed himself any confidences. Tránsito Ariza was moved to tears by her son’s
innocence in matters of love, and she tried to guide him with her own knowledge. She began by
convincing him not to deliver the lyrical sheaf of papers, since it would only frighten the girl of
his dreams, who she supposed was as green as he in matters of the heart. The first step, she said,
was to make her aware of his interest so that his declaration would not take her so much by surprise
and she would have time to think.

“But above all,” she said, “the first person you have to win over is not the girl but her
aunt.”

Both pieces of advice were wise, no doubt, but they came too late. In reality, on the day
when Fermina Daza let her mind wander for an instant from the reading lesson she was giving her
aunt and raised her eyes to see who was walking along the passageway, Florentino Ariza had
impressed her because of his air of vulnerability. That night, during supper, her father had
mentioned the telegram, which was how she found out why Florentino Ariza had come to the
house and what he did for a living. This information invention of the telegraph had something
magical about it. So that she recognized Florentino Ariza the first time she saw him reading under
the trees in the little park, although it in no way disquieted her until her aunt told her he had been
there for several weeks. Then, when they also saw him on Sundays as they came out of Mass, her
aunt was convinced that all these meetings could not be casual. She said: “He is not going to all
this trouble for me.” For despite her austere conduct and penitential habit, Aunt Escolástica had
an instinct for life and a vocation for complicity, which were her greatest virtues, and the mere
idea that a man was interested in her niece awakened an irresistible emotion in her. Fermina Daza,
however, was still safe from even simple curiosity about love, and the only feeling that Florentino
Ariza inspired in her was a certain pity, because it seemed to her that he was sick. But her aunt
told her that one had to live a long time to know a man’s true nature, and she was convinced that
the one who sat in the park to watch them walk by could only be sick with love.

Aunt Escolástica was a refuge of understanding and affection for the only child of a
loveless marriage. She had raised her since the death of her mother, and in her relations with
Lorenzo Daza she behaved more like an accomplice than an aunt. So that the appearance of
Florentino Ariza was for them another of the many intimate diversions they invented to pass the
time. Four times a day, when they walked through the little Park of the Evangels, both hurried to
look with a rapid glance at the thin, timid, unimpressive sentinel who was almost always dressed
in black despite the heat and who pretended to read under the trees. “There he is,” said the one

56
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

who saw him first, suppressing her laughter, before he raised his eyes and saw the two rigid, aloof
women of his life as they crossed the park without looking at him.

“Poor thing,” her aunt had said. “He does not dare approach you because I am with you,
but one day he will if his intentions are serious, and then he will give you a letter.”

Foreseeing all kinds of adversities, she taught her to communicate in sign language, an
indispensable strategy in forbidden love. These unexpected, almost childish antics caused an
unfamiliar curiosity in Fermina Daza, but for several months it did not occur to her that it could
go any further. She never knew when the diversion became a preoccupation and her blood frothed
with the need to see him, and one night she awoke in terror because she saw him looking at her
from the darkness at the foot of her bed. Then she longed with all her soul for her aunt’s predictions
to come true, and in her prayers she begged God to give him the courage to hand her the letter just
so she could know what it said.

Then, one afternoon toward the end of January, the aunt put her work on the chair and left
her niece alone in the doorway under the shower of yellow leaves falling from the almond trees.
Encouraged by the impetuous thought that this was an arranged opportunity, Florentino Ariza
crossed the street and stopped in front of Fermina Daza, so close to her that he could detect the
catches in her breathing and the floral scent that he would identify with her for the rest of his life.
He spoke with his head high and with a determination that would be his again only half a century
later, and for the same reason.

“All I ask is that you accept a letter from me,” he said.

It was not the voice that Fermina Daza had expected from him: it was sharp and clear, with
a control that had nothing to do with his languid manner. Without lifting her eyes from her
embroidery, she replied: “I cannot accept it without my father’s permission.” Florentino Ariza
shuddered at the warmth of that voice, whose hushed tones he was not to forget for the rest of his
life. But he held himself steady and replied without hesitation: “Get it.” Then he sweetened the
command with a plea: “It is a matter of life and death.” Fermina Daza did not look at him, she did
not interrupt her embroidering, but her decision opened the door a crack, wide enough for the entire
world to pass through.

“Come back every afternoon,” she said to him, “and wait until I change my seat.”

Florentino Ariza did not understand what she meant until the following Monday when,
from the bench in the little park, he saw the same scene with one variation: when Aunt Escolástica
went into the house, Fermina Daza stood up and then sat in the other chair. Florentino Ariza, with
a white camellia in his lapel, crossed the street and stood in front of her. He said: “This is the
greatest moment of my life.” Fermina Daza did not raise her eyes to him, but she looked all around
her and saw the deserted streets in the heat of the dry season and a swirl of dead leaves pulled
along by the wind.

“Give it to me,” she said. Florentino Ariza had intended to give her the seventy sheets he
could recite from memory after reading them so often, but then he decided on a sober and explicit
half page in which he promised only what was essential: his perfect fidelity and his everlasting
57
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

love. He took the letter out of his inside jacket pocket and held it before the eyes of the troubled
embroiderer, who had still not dared to look at him. She saw the blue envelope trembling in a hand
petrified with terror, and she raised the embroidery frame so he could put the letter on it, for she
could not admit that she had noticed the trembling of his fingers. Then it happened: a bird shook
himself among the leaves of the almond trees, and his droppings fell right on the embroidery.
Fermina Daza moved the frame out of the way, hid it behind the chair so that he would not notice
what had happened, and looked at him for the first time, her face aflame. Florentino Ariza was
impassive as he held the letter in his hand and said: “It’s good luck.” She thanked him with her
first smile and almost snatched the letter away from him, folded it, and hid it in her bodice. Then
he offered her the camellia he wore in his lapel. She refused: “It is a flower of promises.” Then,
conscious that their time was almost over, she again took refuge in her composure.

“Now go,” she said, “and don’t come back until I tell you to.”

After Florentino Ariza saw her for the first time, his mother knew before he told her
because he lost his voice and his appetite and spent the entire night tossing and turning in his bed.
But when he began to wait for the answer to his first letter, his anguish was complicated by diarrhea
and green vomit, he became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells, and his mother
was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devastation
of cholera. Florentino Ariza’s godfather, an old homeopathic practitioner who had been Tránsito
Ariza’s confidant ever since her days as a secret mistress, was also alarmed at first by the patient’s
condition, because he had the weak pulse, the hoarse breathing, and the pale perspiration of a dying
man. But his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only
concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of
the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same
as those of cholera. He prescribed infusions of linden blossoms to calm the nerves and suggested
a change of air so he could find consolation in distance, but Florentino Ariza longed for just the
opposite: to enjoy his martyrdom.

Tránsito Ariza was a freed quadroon whose instinct for happiness had been frustrated by
poverty, and she took pleasure in her son’s suffering as if it were her own. She made him drink the
infusions when he became delirious, and she smothered him in wool blankets to keep away the
chills, but at the same time she encouraged him to enjoy his prostration.

“Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can,” she said to him,
“because these things don’t last your whole life.”

-Ʊ-

He followed her without letting himself be seen, watching the ordinary gestures, the grace,
the premature maturity of the being he loved most in the world and whom he was seeing for the
first time in her natural state. He was amazed by the fluidity with which she made her way through
the crowd. While Gala Placidia bumped into people and became entangled in her baskets and had
to run to keep up with her, she navigated the disorder of the street in her own time and space, not
colliding with anyone, like a bat in the darkness. She had often been to the market with her Aunt
Escolástica, but they made only minor purchases, since her father himself took charge of

58
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

provisioning the household, not only with furniture and food but even with women’s clothing. So
this first excursion was for her a fascinating adventure idealized in her girlhood dreams.

Florentino Ariza spied on her in astonishment, he pursued her breathlessly, he tripped

several times over the baskets of the maid who responded to his excuses with a smile, and she
passed so close to him that he could smell her scent, and if she did not see him then it was not
because she could not but because of the haughty manner in which she walked. To him she seemed
so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no
one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s
heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with
the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a
single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach
her for fear of destroying the spell. Nevertheless, when she entered the riotous noise of the Arcade
of the Scribes, he realized that he might lose the moment he had craved for so many years.

She was awakened from the spell by a good-natured black woman with a colored cloth
around her head who was round and handsome and offered her a triangle of pineapple speared on
the tip of a butcher’s knife. She took it, she put it whole into her mouth, she tasted it, and was
chewing it as her eyes wandered over the crowd, when a sudden shock rooted her on the spot.
Behind her, so close to her ear that only she could hear it in the tumult, she heard his voice:

“This is not the place for a crowned goddess.”

She turned her head and saw, a hand’s breadth from her eyes, those other glacial eyes, that
livid face, those lips petrified with fear, just as she had seen them in the crowd at Midnight Mass
the first time he was so close to her, but now, instead of the commotion of love, she felt the abyss
of disenchantment. In an instant the magnitude of her own mistake was revealed to her, and she
asked herself, appalled, how she could have nurtured such a chimera in her heart for so long and
with so much ferocity. She just managed to think: My God, poor man! Florentino Ariza smiled,
tried to say something, tried to follow her, but she erased him from her life with a wave of her
hand.
“No, please,” she said to him. “Forget it.”

That afternoon, while her father was taking his siesta, she sent Gala Placidia with a two-
line letter: “Today, when I saw you, I realized that what is between us is nothing more than an
illusion.” The maid also returned his telegrams, his verses, his dry camellias, and asked him to
send back her letters and gifts, Aunt Escolástica’s missal, the veins of leaves from her herbariums,
the square centimeter of the habit of St. Peter Clavier, the saints’ medals, the braid of her fifteenth
year tied with the silk ribbon of her school uniform. In the days that followed, on the verge of
madness, he wrote her countless desperate letters and besieged the maid to take them to her, but
she obeyed her unequivocal instructions not to accept anything but the returned gifts. She insisted
with so much zeal that Florentino Ariza sent them all back except the braid, which he would return
only to Fermina Daza in person so they could talk, if just for a moment. But she refused. Fearing
a decision fatal to her son, Tránsito Ariza swallowed her pride and asked Fermina Daza to grant
her the favor of five minutes of her time, and Fermina Daza received her for a moment in the
doorway of her house, not asking her to sit down, not asking her to come in, and without the
59
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

slightest trace of weakening. Two days later, after an argument with his mother, Florentino Ariza
took down from the wall of his room the stained-glass case where he displayed the braid as if it
were a holy relic, and Tránsito Ariza herself returned it in the velvet box embroidered with gold
thread. Florentino Ariza never had another opportunity to see or talk to Fermina Daza alone in the
many chance encounters of their very long lives until fifty-one years and nine months and four
days later, when he repeated his vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love on her first night as a
widow.

A LOVE SICKER THAN CHOLERA

1. Who did Florentino Ariza love?
2. What prevented Florentino and Fermina’s love?
3. Who helped Florentino and Fermina to communicate with each other?
4. Give one way how Florentino and Fermina communicated.
5. Did Florentino and Fermina end up with each other? Why?
ONE MORE CHANCE
1. What is the best way not to have regrets?
2. How can people end up with each other?
3. Is love really sweeter the second time around? Why?
4. Have you had a Florentino/Fermina in your live? Do you think you will cross paths
again? Why?
5. Why is it better to fight for love than to regret it in one’s deathbed?

THEME BUILDING
Reflective Essay is a written output that presents the author’s beliefs, ideas, and attitude into a
single cohesive text.

Directions: Write a reflective essay about spending time. Revolve around the given quote below:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

DEMYSTIFY
Directions: Study the definitions presented below. Then, rearrange the letters to identify the
correct word. Write the word in the box after the jumbled letters.
1. evil of morally wrong; unpleasant kweidc
2. presenting a point of view in an
excessively forceful way; loud, harsh sttreidn
3. Offensive term for an African-American ginger
4. Not friendly, cool and distant foalo
5. display of protest or complaint sfus

60
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

ANTICIPATION GUIDE
Directions: Accomplish the table below.
1. Before Reading – Read the statements in the table and check the column that corresponds
to your response.
2. After Reading – Review your answers and write it in the last column whether you were
right or wrong. Write your explanation why you agreed or disagreed.

Were you
Disagree Agree Statement Why?
right?
There is a need for religion to be
omnipotent.
The foundation of truth is observable
in real life.
The main character is undecided with
life.

Process Question
1. When are sex and gender catalysts for social change?

TREAD THE PATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

TONI MORRISON is an American novelist, essayist, book editor,

and professor known for highlighting feminism in her works. She was
born on 18 February 1931 at Lorain, Ohio, United States. She was
conferred with awards such as the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature,
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Humanities Medal, and
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Morrison’s works include the novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of
Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987). Character empowerment
among female and colored people are extensively explored in her
works while championing human rights.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
An Excerpt

Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies,
and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and
stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of
it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the
curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the
meanings of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands,
their feet, and listen for truth in timbre.
61
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

So when Mr. Henry arrived on a Saturday night, we smelled him. He smelled wonderful.
Like trees and lemon vanishing cream, and Nu Nile Hair Oil and flecks of Sen-Sen.

He smiled a lot, showing small even teeth with a friendly gap in the middle. Frieda and I
were not introduced to him—merely pointed out. Like, here is the bathroom; the clothes closet is
here; and these are my kids, Frieda and Claudia; watch out for this window; it don’t open all the
way.

We looked sideways at him, saying nothing and expecting him to say nothing. Just to nod,
as he had done at the clothes closet, acknowledging our existence. To our surprise, he spoke to us.

“Hello there. You must be Greta Garbo, and you must be Ginger Rogers.”

We giggled. Even my father was startled into a smile.

“Want a penny?” He held out a shiny coin to us.

Frieda lowered her head, too pleased to answer. I reached for it. He snapped his thumb and
forefinger, and the penny disappeared. Our shock was laced with delight. We searched all over
him, poking our fingers into his socks, looking up the inside back of his coat. If happiness is
anticipation with certainty, we were happy. And while we waited for the coin to reappear, we knew
we were amusing Mama and Daddy. Daddy was smiling, and Mama’s eyes went soft as they
followed our hands wandering over Mr. Henry’s body. We loved him. Even after what came later,
there was no bitterness in our memory of him.

She slept in the bed with us. Frieda on the outside because she is brave—it never occurs to
her that if in her sleep her hand hangs over the edge of the bed “something” will crawl out from
under it and bite her fingers off. I sleep near the wall because that thought has occurred to me.
Pecola, therefore, had to sleep in the middle.

Mama had told us two days earlier that a “case” was coming—a girl who had no place to
go. The county had placed her in our house for a few days until they could decide what to do, or,
more precisely, until the family was reunited. We were to be nice to her and not fight. Mama didn’t
know “what got into people,” but that old Dog Breedlove had burned up his house, gone upside
his wife’s head, and everybody, as a result, was outdoors. Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror
of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess
was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too
much coal, he could end up outdoors.

People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers
put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy
was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord
was one thing—unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could
not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to
put one’s own kin outdoors—that was criminal.

62
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you
go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but
final. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and
complementing our metaphysical condition. Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved
about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep
singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence, however, was something
we had learned to deal with—probably because it was abstract. But the concreteness of being
outdoors was another matter—like the difference between the concept of death and being, in fact,
dead. Dead doesn’t change, and outdoors is here to stay.

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for
ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all
their energies, all their love, on their nests. Like frenzied, desperate birds, they over-decorated
everything; fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won homes; canned, jellied, and preserved all
summer to fill the cupboards and shelves; they painted, picked, and poked at every corner of their
houses. And these houses loomed like hothouse sunflowers among the rows of weeds that were
the rented houses. Renting blacks cast furtive glances at these owned yards and porches, and made
firmer commitments to buy themselves “some nice little old place.” In the meantime, they saved,
and scratched, and piled away what they could in the rented hovels, looking forward to the day of
property. Cholly Breedlove, then, a renting black, having put his family outdoors, had catapulted
himself beyond the reaches of human consideration. He had joined the animals; was, indeed, an
old dog, a snake, a ratty nigger. Mrs. Breedlove was staying with the woman she worked for; the
boy, Sammy, was with some other family; and Pecola was to stay with us. Cholly was in jail.

She came with nothing. No little paper bag with the other dress, or a nightgown, or two
pair of whitish cotton bloomers. She just appeared with a white woman and sat down.

We had fun in those few days Pecola was with us. Frieda and I stopped fighting each other
and concentrated on our guest, trying hard to keep her from feeling outdoors.

When we discovered that she clearly did not want to dominate us, we liked her. She laughed
when I clowned for her, and smiled and accepted gracefully the food gifts my sister gave her.

“Would you like some graham crackers?”

“I don’t care.”

Frieda brought her four graham crackers on a saucer and some milk in a blue-and-white
Shirley Temple cup. She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of
Shirley Temple’s dimpled face. Frieda and she had a loving conversation about how cute Shirley
Temple was. I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley. Not because she was
cute, but because she danced with Bojangles, who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who
ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me. Instead he was enjoying, sharing, giving
a lovely dance thing with one of those little white girls whose socks never slid down under their
heels. So I said, “I like Jane Withers.” They gave me a puzzled look, decided I was
incomprehensible, and continued their reminiscing about old squint-eyed Shirley.

63
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Younger than both Frieda and Pecola, I had not yet arrived at the turning point in the
development of my psyche which would allow me to love her. What I felt at that time was unsullied
hatred. But before that I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley
Temples of the world. It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the
loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that
the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish. I was bemused with the thing itself,
and the way it looked. What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no
interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in humans my own age and
size, and could not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother. Motherhood was
old age, and other remote possibilities. I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do with
the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it. Picture books were full
of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but they were out of the
question. I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the
pancake face, and orangeworms hair.

The other dolls, which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite
the opposite. When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh—the tapered
fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched. If, in sleep, I turned, the bone-cold head collided with
my own. It was a most uncomfortable, patently aggressive sleeping companion. To hold it was no
more rewarding. The starched gauze or lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace. I had only
one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the
beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops,
magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired,
pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.

“Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.”
I fingered the face, wondering at the single-stroke eyebrows; picked at the pearly teeth stuck like
two piano keys between red bowline lips. Traced the turned-up nose, poked the glassy blue
eyeballs, twisted the yellow hair. I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that
all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist
the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive
cry “Mama,” but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our
icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat
still, “Ahhhhhh,” take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed
rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the
secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness. Grown people frowned and fussed: “You-don’t-
know-how-to-take-care-of-nothing. I-never-had-a-baby-doll-inmy- whole-life-and-used-to-cry-
my-eyes-out-for-them. Now-you-got-one-a-beautiful-one-and-you-tear-it-upwhat’s-the-matter-
with-you?”

How strong was their outrage. Tears threatened to erase the aloofness of their authority.
The emotion of years of unfulfilled longing preened in their voices. I did not know why I destroyed
those dolls. But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult
with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would
have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather
to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, “Dear Claudia, what
experience would you like on Christmas?” I could have spoken up, “I want to sit on the low stool
64
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me
alone.” The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s
kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of
my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.

Instead I tasted and smelled the acridness of tin plates and cups designed for tea parties that
bored me. Instead I looked with loathing on new dresses that required a hateful bath in a galvanized
zinc tub before wearing. Slipping around on the zinc, no time to play or soak, for the water chilled
too fast, no time to enjoy one’s nakedness, only time to make curtains of soapy water careen down
between the legs. Then the scratchy towels and the dreadful and humiliating absence of dirt. The
irritable, unimaginative cleanliness. Gone the ink marks from legs and face, all my creations and
accumulations of the day gone, and replaced by goose pimples.

I destroyed white baby dolls.

But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the
transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have
axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of the
magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, “Awwwww,” but not for
me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive
gentleness of their touch as they handled them.

If I pinched them, their eyes—unlike the crazed glint of the baby doll’s eyes—would fold
in pain, and their cry would not be the sound of an icebox door, but a fascinating cry of pain. When
I learned how repulsive this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was
disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge. The best hiding place was love. Thus the
conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It was a small step to
Shirley Temple. I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness,
knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.

DISSECTING THE TEXT

1. What is the conundrum of Levin?
2. How are millions of men deprived of blessings?
3. In what way does God make himself known?
4. What drives Levin into thinking about divinity?
5. “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” How is this applicable to Levin’s thinking?

THEME BUILDING
1. What does the excerpt tell about humanity?
2. In what ways to people stuck in a cross road?
3. Are Levin’s actions justifiable? Why?
4. Have you been confused on what to make? How did you overcome this?
5. What good does weighing ideas have?

65
 EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

VOCABULARY SPINNER
Directions: Using the words below, complete the Vocabulary Spinner.

1. Indifferent
2. Rancid
3. Squelching
Give the Use in a 4. Clinical
5. Assent
Definition Sentence. 6. Sepia
.
7. Brunette
Give a Give an 8. Pipped
9. Tiered
Synonym Antonym. 10. Clanged

ANTICIPATION GUIDE
Directions: Accomplish the table below.
1. Before Reading – Read the statements in the table and check the column that corresponds
to your response.
2. After Reading – Review your answers and write it in the last column whether you were
right or wrong. Write your explanation why you agreed or disagreed.
Were you
Disagree Agree Statement Why?
right?
Racism is a complex issue.
The best way to lie is over the telephone.
The landlady was festive in accepting the caller.
Racism takes many forms and shapes.

TREAD THE PATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

WOLE SOYINKA is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in

the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature,
the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. His
achievements include the Benson Medal from Royal Society of Literature,
Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, and Anisfield-Wolf Book
Award Lifetime Achievement.

Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic

structure of his works. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style
as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language
of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.
66
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned,
“I hate a wasted journey—I am African.”
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

“HOW DARK?” . . . I had not misheard . . . “ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?” Button B. Button A. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis—

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.

“You mean—like plain or milk chocolate?”
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wavelength adjusted,
I chose. “West African sepia”—and as an afterthought,
“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding,
“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”

“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused—
Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black—One moment madam!”—sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears—“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?”

DISSECTING THE TEXT

1. Who were the characters in the poem?
2. Who is speaking in the poem?
3. What were the characters talking about?
4. What is the primary conflict in the poem?
67
EL 116 Contemporary, Popular, and Emergent Literature

5. What is the point of comparison made by the speaker?

THEME BUILDING
1. What was the reaction of the landlady when the speaker introduced himself?
2. What are the opposing forces in the poem?
3. In what ways to people stuck in a cross road?
4. Was the deal successful? Why?
5. Explain why the best way to lie is over the telephone.
s

ASSESSMENT
Directions: Read the short story The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. Use Formalism in
the analysis of the story. The following specifications will be used:
Typeface: ARIAL Font Color: Black
Font Size: 12 Line Spacing: Single, Justify
Margin: 1” all sides No. of Pages: 5-7 pages

68