AMERICAN-

JAPANESE
REGIME
PRESENTED BY:
VIA A. LASALA
 American Period
American period is one of the turning points which made
our Philippine literary tradition colorful and interesting. This
period saw the addition of a colorful language, the English
language, as an indispensable tool for literature and
communication. Indeed, this period witnessed a dramatic
flowering of the Philippine literature considering the sheer
volume of works produced the ringing of names etched in the
Philippine literary pantheon, as well as the introduction and
development of new literary genres as genuine additions to
the already rich Philippine literary tradition.
 How My Brother Leon
Brought Home A Wife

Written by: Genre:

Manuel Estabilla Arguilla Short Story

Setting:
Nagrebcan, Bauang La Union
Characters:
Leon/ Noel - Maria’s husband, older brother of
Baldo

Maria – Leon’s wife

Baldo – Leon’s younger brother, also the narrator

of this story.
Characters:
Mother and Father of Leon and Baldo

Aurelia – Leon and Baldo’s younger sister

Labang – the family’s carabao

 Baldo was able to meet his
Synopsis: brother’s wife Maria. As Baldo
saw his older brother's wife, he
described her as lovely, tall, and
beautiful.
Upon their journey to Leon's
home, Leon is wondering why
Baldo drove them to the waig
instead of the camino real, Baldo
answered that he drove the waig
because their father told him to
do so.
Synopsis:
The waig route will serve as
test to Maria if she can live in
the province which differs a lot
from the city where she lived in,
but then it seems like Maria likes
Leon’s province, she described this
as beautiful, fresh air, clean, and
free of dust.
Synopsis: During their journey, Maria,
was worried if Leon’s father and
family would like her.
When they arrived home,
father talked to Baldo asking
what happened during their
travel, the father asked Baldo if
Maria was afraid in their place,
Baldo answered that Maria was
not afraid and instead she enjoyed
the journey.
 "How My Brother Leon
Analysis: Brought Home a Wife" is the
story of a man introducing his
city-born wife to his more
provincial family.
Transpires in Barrio Nagrebcan
in La Union, the birthplace of
Manuel E. Arguilla himself you’ll
immediately realize how the
writer loves his hometown by the
vivid imagery and sensuality that
hefted on the plate.
Analysis:
From the shapes and the
sounds to even the scent of the
air, Arguilla spares no detail to
prove that beauty exists in
Nagrebcan. The place was very
provincial in which there is a
peaceful and simple living.
Analysis:
This in turn, which will serve as
a challenge to Maria, Leon’s wife
that will lead to the main idea
which is Maria being tested with
Leon’s family especially his father,
if she will be able to live a simple
life in province away from their
city.
 Moral Lessons:

• Social status is
• We should
not a hindrance
respect and
if you truly love
accept one’s life.
each other.
 Moral Lessons:

• Meeting your • One may have

special someone to sacrifice small
to your family is part of his/her
the right thing to life in order to
do. have a happy life.
 Footnote to Youth

Written by: Genre:

Manuel Estabilla Arguilla Short Story

Setting:
Rural Setting
Characters:
Dodong - is a farmer’s son who marries at
seventeen and becomes a father shortly
thereafter. By the end of the story he has many
children and is unable to prevent his eldest son
from repeating his mistakes.
Dodong’s father – is a quiet farmer who
unsuccessfully cautions his son against marrying
young.
Characters:
Teang - is Dodong’s sweetheart, then his wife and
the mother of his children. Though she loves
Dodong, she sometimes wishes she had not
married him.
Lucio - a former suitor of Teang who was nine
years older than Dodong.
Blas - Dodong's eldest son.
Tona - The girlfriend of Blas.
Synopsis:
The plot of the story is four-pronged. It has four
parts that sweep through two generations from the
day Dodong decides to get married to the day his
eldest son Blas approaches him to tell him that he
himself wants to get married.
Dodong was seventeen when he married Teang. They
immediately conceived Blas soon after. Blas is eighteen
when he asks his father permission to marry his
sweetheart Tona. That said, the story covers a time
span of 17 years.
Synopsis:
Part I: On a sunny afternoon after a hard day's
work in the fields, Dodong decides to tell his father
that he wants to marry his sweetheart Teang. He's
only seventeen years old.
After a sumptuous dinner, he spills out his plans to
his father. His proposition is met with hesitation and
discouragement. His father tells him that he's too
young to get married. But in the end, his father agrees
to his wishes and grants him the permission to marry
Teang.
Synopsis:
Part II - Nine months after their marriage, Teang
gives birth to her first son. Dodong experiences a
whirlwind of conflicting emotions during the birthing
process - confusion, fear, discomfort, embarrassment,
and guilt. But when he hears the little baby whimper
and cry, he swells with happiness.
Synopsis:
Part III - Blas is followed by six more children.
Dodong didn't want any more children but they came
anyway. This makes him angry at himself sometimes.
The parade of children is also taking its toll on
Teang. She often wishes that she's not married. She
sometimes wonder if her life would've been better had
she married Lucio, a former suitor she rejected for the
reason that he was nine years older than Dodong.
Synopsis:
Part IV - Blas is eighteen years old. One night, he
tells his father that he wants to marry his girlfriend
Tona. Like his father before him, Dodong doesn't want
Blas to marry as he's too young. He knows what's going
to happen if Blas marries too early. He gives him
permission to marry anyway. But he does so with
sadness in him.
 Themes:
• The ignorance of • The phases of life: Villa
youth: The story portrays highlights the cyclical
youth as a time of nature of life by
ignorance and inevitable emphasizing the
rash decisions, as well characters’ ages and
as romanticism and drawing attention to the
“dreamful sweetness.” symbolism of the moon.
 Themes:
• Fear and
• Don't marry young just
inaction: Dodong and his
because you are in love:
father both demonstrate
Youth will triumph, love
an inability to prevent
will triumph next will be
their own or others’
the life. Never chase
suffering, largely
love, for the right love
through fear and a sense
won’t run.
of helplessness.
 May Day Eve

Written by: Genre:

Nick Joaquin Short Story

Setting:
May Day midnight/ Old Mansion
Characters:
Anastasia – old woman, who is so obedient to
her mistress, accused for being a witch and
believes in superstitious beliefs.
Agueda – pretty, young woman who is so
curious, hardheaded, brave and very much willing
to know her future husband.
Badoy – a vain good looking man who will do
everything to get what he wants and revengeful.
Characters:
Dona Agueda – old lady who has gray hair, full
of sentiments, emotional and resentful.
Dona Agueda’s daughter – a vain curious girl,
who is persistent to know about the past of her
mother.
Don Badoy – a great lover, emotional and full of
sentiment old man, who repents for what he has
done to Agueda.
Characters:
Voltaire – believe in superstitious belief and
was like his grandma who at an early age
wants to know who will he marry.
Synopsis:
The story started with a flashback. Dona Agueda
was facing the mirror on Monday eve because her sister told
her to do so. Dona Agueda really believed in her sister.
That is when she faced the mirror, her future lover would
appear in the mirror.
As soon as Don Badoy appeared in the mirror,
they decide to marry each other because they believed in
Anastasia. When they got their married life began it goes
out miserable because of the fact that they do not really
love each other and nothing special happened to them.
Synopsis:
The plot of the story was that as Don Badoy Montiya
comes home to his old home at Intramuros, Manila late at
night he finds his grandson chanting an old spell in front of
a mirror, memories of his youth came back.
He recalled how he fell in love with Agueda, a young
woman who resisted his advances. Agueda learned that she
would be able to know her future husband by reciting an
incantation in front of a mirror. As she recited the words:
“Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be,”
Agueda saw Badoy.
Synopsis:
Badoy and Agueda got married. However, Don Badoy
learned from his grandson that he was described by Doña
Agueda (through their daughter) as a "devil".
In return, Don Badoy told his grandson that every time
he looks at the mirror, he only sees a "witch" (Agueda).
Don Badoy ponders on love that had dissipated.
Synopsis:
The truth was revealed, Badoy and Agueda had a “bitter
marriage”, which began in the past, during one evening in
the month of May in 1847.
The tragedy of the story is Badoy’s heart forgot how he
loved Agueda in the past. They were not able to mend their
broken marriage because their love was a “raging passion and
nothing more”.
 Moral Lessons:
• You don’t have to rush
everything especially • In marriage, we should
when it comes to love. always consider love -
You have to wait, you because love is the
have to be patient and foundation of all.
you have to pray for it.
 Moral Lessons:
• Love is not to be played
or to be based with • Find the 1 Corinthians
anything else - it’s about 13 : 4-6 kind of love.
how and what you feel, so Remember to give the
that it will turned out kind of love you want to
beautiful, true and honest receive.
and not miserable.
 The Republic or
Japanese Colonization
Japanese Period has been called one of the darkest days
in the history and literary tradition of the Philippines. The
wartime experiences and events of the troubled times left
indelible imprints to the lives of the Filipino nation. However,
there are still few and remaining bright spots in this
generally dark and gloomy days.
 The stride and growth of the Philippine literature in
English language and the development of Philippine literature
in general was interrupted during the Japanese period. The
Japanese censured all publications except Tribune and
Philippine Review.
During the Japanese period, Philippine Literature in
English was stopped and writers turned to writing in
Filipino. The Japanese authorities, with extreme hate to the
Americans, did their best to turn the Filipinos’ sympathy
away from them. They rewarded handsomely the Filipinos
who are faithful to them.
 In prose literature, the weekly Liwayway Magazine was
put into strict surveillance and was managed by a Japanese
named Ishiwara. The Japanese language, Nippongo was
introduced but not well-embraced by the Filipinos despite it
is being forcefully taught by the Japanese. With the
prohibition of writing literary pieces in English language,
Filipino literature was given a break. Many Filipino writers
wrote plays, poems, short stories, etc. in the Tagalog and
other vernacular language. Topics and themes were often
about life in the provinces to escape Japanese control and
censorship.
 Isang Dipang
Langit
(Muntinlupa Prison; April 22, 1952):

Written by: Genre:

Amado V. Hernandez Poem

Language:
Tagalog
Style/ Analysis:
Almost all of Hernandez's literary works, including this
poem, used the Filipino language (Tagalog) which became
his niche. Isang Dipang Langit is a beautiful eleven-stanza
poem composed of 4 lines (quatrains) that tells us about
the pains, sufferings, and hope of a prisoner.
The poem follows 12 meters or beats all throughout
the lines from start to finish. Moreover, it has rhymes at
every end of the lines which do not necessarily made use of
words having same letters on the last syllable but rather,
employed words likely similar in sound.
Style/ Analysis:
Since the poem was written by Hernandez when he
was imprisoned in Muntinlupa, the poetic vision talks about
the personas (evidently Hernandez himself) physical,
psychological, and emotional struggles inside his cell. The
speakers internal pain and fear of torture and death rolled
in one is clearly manifested by this line: ang buong
magdamag ay kulambong luksa ng kabaong waring lungga ng
bilanggo (the nights are a blanket of sorrow in the coffin-
like realm of the jail).
Style/ Analysis:
The poem is embedded also with various imageries as
evident in the lines: Ang maghapo'y tila isang tanikala na
kala-kaladkad ng paang madugo (Days pass like a chain
dragged along by bloody feet) and maramot na birang ng
pusong may sugat, watawat ng aking pagkapariwara (a
paltry handkerchief to dress a wounded heart, flag of my
misfortune).Notably, Hernandez, among other modern
writers, wrote this poem in the traditional way making
him more as a structuralist.
Style/ Analysis:
Hernandez's diction or choice of words in this poem
was artistically made choosing the raw and the best words
to come up a pictorial vein. The poems tone streams from
melancholic to fearsome and to oblivion. But the last
stanza would tell us that despite of the anguish and fears,
hope is still at hand!
The poem based on reality like Hernandez's novel Luha
ng Buwaya which he wrote when he was imprisoned in
Muntinlupa, the poem Isang Dipang Langit also was written
inside the jail as discussed in the preceding paragraphs.
Style/ Analysis:
The poem seemed to be the writers imaginative diary
that narrated all that happened around him. Mimetic
theory as defined considers literary works as an imitation,
a copy, or a representation of whatever it copies in nature
or to the world.
The mere fact that Hernandez wrote this poem while
he was inside the jail gives us the idea that he is probably
possessed by a madness and not in control of himself when
he writes (Adams, 1971).
Style/ Analysis:
On the readers or critics point of view, we locate
the meanings of the images portrayed in the poem in
the nature it imitates and copies. We have this
collective consciousness as human beings and this is the
reason why we think similarly with other people
regardless of location, race, affiliations, and other
factors.
Style/ Analysis:
Mimetic criticism can be approached by archetypes.
The archetypes present in Hernandez's poems are as
follow: rock, steel, and bullets (can be read on second
stanza) which apparently prevalent in conventional jails
and are symbolizing fierce and violations; the golden sun
(at the last stanza) means hope and aspiration; and sky
which means freedom, a wide space to fly like a bird,
and a solitary.
 Thank You!
Hav e a gr e a t day! God bless.