Critical Analysis Paper

Final Output(Individual)
The Wedding Dance by Amador T. Daguio (Short Story)

The short story "The Wedding Dance" portrays cultural expectations

towards men and how such a perspective influences a person’s decisions in
life. It also shows the tragedy inherent in cultural traditions. There is a lot to
know and learn about culture. Knowing its definition alone is worthless.
Basically, culture affects every part of people’s lives. The ways they act, think,
and perceive things are grounded in certain cultures they grew up in.

Most provinces have their own ways of expressing pride in their

traditions, which can be seen in things like folk dances and music, as well as
arts and literature.Such tradition is evident in Amador Daguio’s short story.
The story itself stands up and shows how rich Filipino culture is. The tribe
where the main characters belong shows how happy, simple, yet rich their
way of living is. They are bound together by their customized laws and
traditions. Their tradition is being dominant, putting into question whether the
tradition itself has done much good to serve its people, or whether it has gone
too far to take away its people's consciousness and free will. In their tribe,
bearing a child was a very important element in creating a family and
establishing a better relationship between husband and wife, but it was
something which they would never achieve.

Daguio had written a great love story with a great sense of ethnicity. He
had witnessed the Ifugao culture firsthand, having grown up in the mountain
province.The story shows how personal love and interest are defeated by
culture. Lumnay’s actions and words make me feel pity for her, and her deep
attachment to their tradition makes them prisoners of it. I feel so much
sympathy for the character of Lumnay.

The story is mostly about Lumnay being oppressed and how she fights
back, and more about how she is abused by such a tradition and how she
allows it to continue. Daguio just offers a broken and false desire for female
liberation. So much has been said about how difficult it is for a male author to
write a good female characters. Daguio was unable to liberate Lumnay from
the gender of her tribe since he also belonged to and was a member of the
patriarch. Despite having witnessed such a tradition, he would never be able
to support Lumnay as a victim properly since he was not a woman, resulting
in a one-sided characterization of Lumnay. More significantly, as a member of
the discriminatory group, he would be unable to characterize any female role.

Men and women's perspectives of themselves in their gender roles are

influenced by cultural practices. For fact, men are supposed to be strong,
powerful, and competitive, but women are meant to be more gentle, tender,
and cooperative, such as Lumnay, who is obliged to carry out her tribal
obligations. Women are obliged to act in ways that society thinks acceptable.
Only female writers can do their best in discussing issues that affect their
gender group, because there is no better way to bring these topics to light
than by doing it themselves, because they are comparable and victimized.