Quarter 3 Weeks 1-2

Analyze the theme and

techniques used in a
particular text
 This is it!

Lesson 1 Conventions of
Traditional
Literature is what fill in the act of fiction. Fiction is about fashioning, devising,
inventing, shaping and formulating words. The reality of literature is formed from one’s
imagination. Literature can make us imagine the possibilities of seemingly impossible
things, people, places or events.
One of the words created to guide us into the world of words is genre. A French
word, genre means classification of the variety and diversity of text or writing we
encounter every day. There are many texts (varied, but they also differ from one
another (diversity). Such differences enable one to make a classification based on
certain criteria or standards that makes then assume similarity. Without such
classification, we might get confused and lose our way in a world surrounded by words.
If we browse in bookstores, we find many categories of reading materials for sale like,
an Art and Photography. Biographies and Memoirs, Business and Investing, Children’s
Books, Fiction and Literature, Sports and a lot more. Genre is like a map that helps us
navigate a world of words by helping us to find what we want to read and letting us
know what to expect from what we are reading.
There are also two genres or kinds of words, the literal and figurative. A literal
word means exactly as it says. It is factual and does not involve fashioning or
fabricating. Definition of word in the dictionary are generally literal. The dictionary
defines the apple as a round red or green edible fruit. In figurative words, apple can lose
its fruity character. The saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, refers not to the
fruit itself or of sending the doctors away, but to the belief that it promotes good health.
Figurative is like a word painted to make us see something that literal language would
not make us see. In this context, you can see the interplay between the literal and the
metaphorical (Perl and Schwartz 2006).

Conventions of Poetry
The British American poet W.H. Auden once said that one cannot be a poet if
one’s reason is “I like hanging around words and listening to what they say.” And he
believed that person could indeed be a poet. Poetry is notable for using a few words to
convey a lot.

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 Haiku is a form of short poetry that originated in Japan in 19 th century. It follows
the 5-7-5 pattern. The first line contains 5 syllables, the second line with 7 syllables and
the third line with 5 syllables. It is known for revealing the vastness of nature in an
intimate and microscopic manner. Here’s the example poem by a famous poet of 15th
century from Japan. Basho Matsuo “The Old Pond”, a snapshot of a particular moment
in one small portion of the environment:
5- An old silent pond…
7- A frog jumps into the pond,
5- Splash! Silence again.
In writing haiku, you can use details that can be seen or grasped by the five
senses.
Some Characteristics of Poetry:
 Lines- the shape of the poem
 Figure of sounds- words that makes us listen. Listening to the words of a poem
is like listening to music.
 Sound Check- the feel of words in the tongue. The text of the poem has
a texture, how sounds convey message, attitude and mood.
 Sound Devices in Poetry- techniques that affect the sound, but not the
meaning of a poem.

Sound Devices Description Purpose

Onomatopoeia Words that imitate the Provides immediate
sounds they describe name for a sound
Alliteration The repetition of the Adds rhythm and
sound of the first musicality
consonant in the same
line of a poem.
Assonance The repetition of the Highlights meaning or
sound of vowel in the set the mood of the
stressed syllables of poem and adds rhythm
words. and musicality. Subtle
and not so obvious
compared to alliteration
Consonance The successive Adds rhythm and
repetition of the sound of musicality and creates
a consonant within a special mood
phrase or sentence
Dissonance Intentional use of words Creates an angry,
that create harsh or discordant or conflicted
clashing sound. It does atmosphere
not create a pattern like
assonance.

 Rhythm- the heartbeat of the arrangement of words; the general

principles when writing sounds;

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  Rhyming sounds alike or spell alike.

 Repetition creates a musical pattern to a stanza

 Euphony makes the sound flow harmoniously and pleasant.

 Cacophony makes the sound flow harshly and discordantly.

 Imagery-refers to the image produced in the mind by language; it

pertains to words that make us see, hear, touch, move or feel an internal
sensation.

 Figure of Speech-a poetic device that expresses something that means

something else by comparing it with another word or phrase. It
provides emotive character and voice to a work.

Creating Reality though Fiction

In fiction, you bring the readers to a new place, meet new people, or witness events
simply by reading (Mazzeo 2012). Here are some examples of starting points for writing
fiction based on facts:

Conventions of Fiction

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CHARACTER is usually an imagined person who inhabits a story. In creative nonfiction,
the characters are actual people including the writer himself. However, the devices
utilized by the nonfiction writer in creating, developing and revealing characters are the
same ones familiar to the fictionist (Israel 2017).
Approaches used in characterization
1. Direct description- the characters are directly described by the author based on
how his/her appearance.
Example:
“ There are photographs of him. The largest is of an officer in the 1914-1918 war. A new
uniform-buttoned, badged, strapped, tapped-confines a handsome, dark young man.
2. Action and reaction- the character’s personality is revealed through their actions, and
how they react to the events in the text.
Example: (Action)
“ …He approached my seat, and I drew a deep breath of resolution. “ Conductor,” I
began with a considerable edge to my voice… Instantly the doleful eyes of my seatmate
turned tiredlyfrom his newspaper to fix me with a resentful stare…”
Example: (reaction)
“ I myself can occasionally summon the courage to complain, but I cannot, as I have
intimidated, complain softly. My own instinct is so strong to let the thing ride, to forget
about it…”
“ Why Don’t We Complain,” William F. Buckley Jr.
3. Other characters’ opinion-other characters in the text describe a certain character to
reveal the latter’s personality and/or behavior.
Example:
“My Aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something
happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from
then on! She sai you could see and hear and feel Jesus in you soul.
“ Salvation,” Langston Hughes
4. Dialogue- the character’s personality and behavior is revealed through his/her
convention with the other characters in the text.
Example:
“ He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students
were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower
cells, until he come to me. I would just be standing there. “ I can’t see anything, “ I
would say…”
“ University Days,” James Thurber
5. Monologue- the character reveals him/her own personality and behavior

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Example:
“…I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood…”
“ I Have A Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. Focusing on a character’s distinct behavior- the character will be known by

the readers because of a unique characteristic that he/she possesses
Example:
“…The interpreter asked how he lived in the swamp. He said he ate snakes, turtles,
armadillos and alligators. The captors could tell how he lived when they opened up his
bag…”
“The Wild Man of the Green Swamp,” Maxinne Hang Kingston

Drama/Theatre Play
It is believed “ drama is literature equipped with arms, legs, tears, laughs,
whispers, shouts and gestures that are alive and immediate” ( Meyer, 2016). Its origins
trace back to the Greek with the word dran meaning “ to do” or “ to perform.” The script
which serves as the text of the play may only come to existence when it is being
performed before an audience. The majority of drama writers ( playwrights) see the
written word as the start of a bigger creation and hope that their scripts will be shown
worth of the production ( Meyer, 2006).
Some Common Types of Drama
1. Comedy stems from komēōdē which means merrymakings. It is believed that
Greek comedy originates from the village festivities and the worship of
Dionysus. The existence of a chorus takes place because of the practice of
pleasure seekers camouflaged as birds, frogs and all sorts of animals.
Aristophanes’ boisterous old comedy, the transitional middle comedy, and the
new comedy of Menander are the period of comedy plays. Today, it is being
blended with poetry, profound moral, and psychological perspective (Law,
2011).

2. Farce is ground in ancient drama, yet critics looked down on it as vulgar. It

involves travesty and circus where skilled dramatists and performers crate
instant laughter through their mechanical acts. Modern farce dwells on “well-
made” drama whose complexity in plot, detailed presentation, structural
accuracy, and deployment of coincidences have all been pushed into comic
extremes (Strange, 2002).

3. Satire from the Latin term means “ medley” with origins in cooking. It employs
different comic exaggeration to mock human behavior in the chance of being
transformed or corrected. Irony, parody, and caricature are the common

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 avenues of satire. The first satirical plays were that of Aristophanes, and the
pre-dramatic lampoons of the Greeks laughing out the local figures (Carlson,
2002).

4. Tragedy portrays a sad ending wherein Aristotle was the first to provide its
definition in his Poetics and that it should be “ by pity and terror” (Law, 2011).

5. Historical Drama is as old as theatre featuring historical characters and

events. The first surviving historical play is that of the Persians in 473 BCE
where Aeschylus battled the Greco-Persian war which he fought earlier for
eight years ( Palmer).

6. Musical Theatre combines dialogues, songs, and dance numbers and

accredited to Broadway for blending vaudeville, revue, melodrama, as well as
operetta in its presentation (++-Law, 2011).

7. Absurd Play demonstrates existentialism that rejects the realistic characters,

settings, situations, and thereby presents meaninglessness and isolation of
human live (Carlson, 2002).

What’s More
Let’s discover more!

Activity 1.1 Analyzing a Poem

Directions: Read the poem below then compare the poem’s literal sense to a real
aspect of life using a venn diagram.

Vocabulary
Enrichment Scaffold:
(n) a support Plank: (n)
slat, floorboard Bolted: (v)
attached
Mason: ( n) builder and worker

Scaffolding
by Seamus Heany
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s
done,
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to
be Old bridges breaking you and me

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 Directions: Using the Venn diagram, compare the poem’s literal sense of constructing a building

Activity 1.2: Analyzing a Short Story

Direction: The short story below is known for its local color elements that depict the
superstitious beliefs of the people in the barrio. Read the short story and found out how
this Filipino belief creates fear on the narrator causing him to judge Minggay without
knowing her. Then answer the guide questions that follow.

The Witch
by Edilberto K.
Tiempo

When I was twelve years old, I used to go to Libas, about nine kilometers from
the town, to visit my favorite uncle, Tio Sabelo, the head teacher of the barrio school
there. I like going to Libas because of the many things to eat at my uncle’s house:
cane sugar syrup, candied meat of young coconut, corn and rice cakes, ripe jackfruit,
guavas from trees growing wild on a hill not far from Tio Sabelo’s house. It was
through these visits that I heard many strange stories about Minggay Awok. Awok is
the word for witch in southern Leyte. Minggay was known as a witch even beyond
Libas, in five outlying sitios, and considering that not uncommonly a man’s nearest
neighbor was two or three hills away, her notoriety was wide. Minggay lived in a small,
low hut as the back of the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. It
squatted like a soaked hen on a steep incline and below it, six or seven meters away,
two trails forked, one going to Libas and the other to Mahangin, a mountain sitio. The
hut leaned dangerously to the side where the creek water ate away large chunks of
earth during the rainy season. It had two small openings, a small door through which
Minggay probably had to stoop to pass, and a window about two feet square facing

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jute sacking which fluttered eerily even in the daytime.

What she had in the hut nobody seemed to know definitely. One daring fellow
who boasted of having gone inside it when Minggay was out in her clearing on a hill
nearby said he had seen dirty stoppered bottles hanging from the bamboo slats of the
cogon thatch. Some of the bottles contained scorpions, centipedes, beetles, bumble
bees, and other insects; others were filled with ash-colored powder and dark liquids.
These bottles contained the paraphernalia of her witchcraft. Two or three small bottles
she always had with her hanging on her waistband with a bunch of iron keys, whether
she went to her clearing or to the creek to catch shrimps or gather fresh-water shells, or
even when she slept.
It was said that those who had done her wrong never escaped her vengeance, in
the form of festering carbuncles, chronic fevers that caused withering of the skin, or a
certain disease of the nose that eventually ate the nose out. Using an incantation known
only to her, Minggay would take out one insect from a bottle, soak it in colored liquid or
roll it in powder, and with a curse let it go to the body of her victim; the insect might be
removed and the disease cured only rarely through intricate rituals of an expensive
tambalan.
Thus Minggay was feared in Libas and the surrounding barrios. There had been
attempts to murder her, but in some mysterious way she always came out unscathed. A
man set fire to her hut one night, thinking to burn her with it. The hut quickly burned
down, but Minggay was unharmed. On another occasion a man openly declared that he
had killed her, showing the blood-stained bolo with which he had stabbed her; a week
later she was seen hobbling to her clearing. This man believed Minggay was the cause
of the rash that his only child had been carrying for over a year. One day, so the story
went, meeting his wife, Minggay asked to hold her child. She didn’t want to offend
Minggay. As the witch gave the child back she said, “He has a very smooth skin.” A few
days later the boy had skin eruptions all over his body that
never left him.
Minggay’s only companions were a lean, barren sow and a few chickens, all of
them charcoal black. The sow and the chickens were allowed to wander in the fields,
and even if the sow dug up sweet potatoes and the chickens pecked rice or corn grain
drying in the sun, they were not driven away by the neighbors because they were afraid
to arouse Minggay’s wrath.
Besides the sow and the chickens, Minggay was known to have a wakwak and a
sigbin. Those who claimed to have seen the sigbin described it as a queer animal
resembling a kangaroo: the forelegs were shorter than the hind ones: its fanlike ears
made a flapping sound when it walked. The wakwak was a nocturnal bird, as big and
black as a crow. It gave out raucous cries when a person in the neighborhood had just
died. The bird was supposed to be Minggay’s messenger, and the sigbin caried her to
the grave; then the witch dug up the corpse and feasted on it. The times when I passed
by the hut and saw her lean sow and her black chickens, I wondered if they transformed
themselves into fantastic creatures at night. Even in the daytime I dreaded the
possibility of meeting her; she might accost me on the trail near her hut, say something
about my face or any part of it, and then I might live the rest of my life with a harelip, a
sunken nose, or crossed eyes. But I never saw Minggay in her house or near the
premises. There were times when I thought she was only a legend, a name to frighten
children from doing mischief. But then I almost always saw her sow digging banana

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roots or wallowing near

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the trail and the black chickens scratching for worms or pecking grains in her yard, and
the witch became very real indeed.
Once I was told to go to Libas with a bottle of medicine for Tio Sabelo’s sick wife.
I started from the town at half past five and by the time I saw the balete tree across the
creek from Minggay’s hut, I could hardly see the trail before me. The balete was called
Minggay’s tree, for she was known to sit on one of the numerous twisting vines that
formed its grotesque trunk to wait for a belated passer-by. The balete was a towering
monstrous shadow; a firefly that flitted among the vines was an evil eye plucked out
searching for its socket. I wanted to run back, but the medicine had to get to Tio
Sabelo’s wife that night. I wanted to push through the thick underbrush to the dry part of
the creek to avoid the balete, but I was afraid of snakes. I had discarded the idea of a
coconut frond torch because the light would catch the attention of the witch, and when
she saw it was only a little boy... Steeling myself I tried to whistle as I passed in the
shadow of the balete, its overhanging vines like hairy arms ready to hoist and strangle
me among the branches.
Emerging into the stony bed of the creek, I saw Minggay’s hut. The screen in the
window waved in the faint light of the room and I thought I saw the witch peering behind
it. As I started going up the trail by the hut, each moving clump and shadow was a
crouching old woman. I had heard stories of Minggay’s attempts to waylay travelers in
the dark and suck their blood. Closing my eyes twenty yards from the hut of the witch, I
ran up the hill. A few meters past the hut I stumbled on a low stump. I got up at once
and ran again. When I reached Tio Sabelo’s house I was very tired and badly
shaken.
Somehow after the terror of the balete and the hut of the witch had lessened,
although I always had the goose flesh whenever I passed by them after dusk. One
moonlight night going home to town I heard a splashing of the water below Minggay’s
house. I thought the sound was made by the witch, for she was seen to bathe on
moonlit nights in the creek, her loose hair falling on her face. It was not Minggay I saw.
It was a huge animal. I was about to run thinking it was the sigbin of the witch, but when
I looked at it again, I saw that it was a carabao wallowing in the
creek.
One morning I thought of bringing home shrimps to my mother, and so I went to a
creek a hundred yards from Tio Sabelo’s house. I had with me my cousin’s pana, made
of a long steel rod pointed at one end and cleft at the other and shot through the hollow
of a bamboo joint the size of a finger by means of a rubber band attached to one end of
the joint. After wading for two hours in the creek which meandered around bamboo
groves and banban and ipil clumps with only three small shrimps strung on a coconut
midrib dangling from my belt, I came upon an old woman taking a bath in the shade of a
catmon tree. A brown tapis was wound around her to three fingers width above her thin
chest. The bank of her left was a foot-wide ledge of unbroken boulder on which she had
set a wooden basin half full of wet but still unwashed
clothes.
In front of her was a submerged stone pile topped by a platter size rock; on it
were a heap of shredded coconut meat, a small discolored tin basin, a few lemon rinds,
and bits of pounded gogo bark. The woman was soaking her sparse gray hair with the
gogo suds. She must have seen me coming because she did not look
surprised.

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 Seeing the three small shrimps hanging at my side she said, “You have a poor
catch.”

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 She looked kind. She was probably as old as my grandmother; smaller, for this
old woman was two or three inches below five feet. Her eyes looked surprisingly young,
but her mouth, just a thin line above the little chin, seemed to have tasted many bitter
years.

“Why don’t you bait them out of their hiding? Take some of this.” She gave me a
handful of shredded coconut meat whose milk she had squeezed out and with the
gogo suds used on her hair.
She exuded a sweet wood fragrance of gogo bark and the rind of lemons.
“Beyond the first bend,” she said pointing, “the water is still. Scatter the shreds there.
That’s where I get my shrimps. You will see some traps. If you find shrimps in them
they are yours.”
I mumbled my thanks and waded to the bend she had indicated. That part of the
creek was like a small lake. One bank was lined by huge boulders showing long, deep
fissures where the roots of gnarled dapdap trees had penetrated. The other bank was
sandy, with bamboo and catmon trees leaning over, their roots sticking out in the water.
There was good shade and the air had a twilight chilliness. The water was shallow
except on the rocky side, which was deep and
murky.
I scattered the coconut shreds around, and not long after they had settled down
shrimps crawled from boles under the bamboo and catmon roots and from crevices of
the boulders. It did not take me an hour to catch a midribful, some hairy with age, some
heavy with eggs, moulters, dark magus, leaf-green shrimps,
speckled.
I saw three traps of woven bamboo strips, round-bellied and about two feet long,
two hidden behind a catmon root. I did not disturb them because I had enough shrimps
for myself.
“No, no, iti. Your mother will need them. You don’t have enough. Besides I have
freshwater crabs at home.” She looked up at me with her strange young eyes and
asked, “Do you still have a mother?”
I told her I had, and a grandmother, too.
“You are not from Libas, I think. This is the first time I have seen you.”
I said I was from the town and my uncle was the head teacher of the Libas barrio
school.
“You remind me of my son when he was your age. He had bright eyes like you,
and his voice was soft like yours. I think you are a good boy.”
“Where is your son now?”
“I have not heard from him since he left. He went away when he was seventeen.
He left in anger, because I didn’t want him to marry so young. I don’t know where he
went, where he is.”
She spread the length of a kimona on the water for a last rinsing. The flesh
hanging from her skinny arms was loose and flabby.

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 “If he’s still living,” she went on, “he’d be as old as your father maybe. Many
times I feel in my bones he is alive, and will come back
before I die.”
“Your husband is still living?”

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 “He died a long time ago, when my boy was eleven.”

She twisted the kimona like a rope to wring out the water.

“I’m glad he died early. He was very cruel.”

I looked at her, at the thin mouth, wondering about her husband’s cruelty,
disturbed by the manner she spoke about it.
“Do you have other children?”
“I wish I had. Then I wouldn’t be living alone.”
A woman her age, I thought, should be a grandmother and live among many
children.
“Where do you live?”
She did not speak, but her strange young eyes were probing and looked
grotesque in the old woman’s face. “Not far from here--the house on the high bank,
across the balete.”
She must have seen the fright that suddenly leaped into my face, for I thought
she smiled at me queerly.
“I’m going now,” I said.
I felt her following me with her eyes; indeed they seemed to bore a hot hole
between my shoulder blades. I did not look back. Don’t run, I told myself. But at the first
bend of the creek, when I knew she couldn’t see me, I ran. After a while I stopped,
feeling a little foolish. Such a helpless-looking little old woman couldn’t be Minggay,
couldn’t be the witch. I remembered her kind voice and the woodfragrance. She could
be my own grandmother.
As I walked the string of shrimps kept brushing against the side of my leg. I
detached it from my belt and looked at the shrimps. Except for the three small ones, all
of them belonged to the old woman. Her coconut shreds had coaxed them as by magic
out of their hiding. The protruding eyes of the biggest, which was still alive, seemed to
glare at me---and then they became the eyes of the witch. Angrily, I hurled the shrimps
back into the creek.

Comprehension Response

1. What superstitious belief that is common in the barrio is revealed in the

short story?
2. Based from the narrator’s encounter with Minggay, do you think the woman is a
witch as what people gossiped about her?
3. What could be the reasons why people in the barrio call Minggay a witch?

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Activity 1.3: Analyzing a Play
Directions: Read the excerpt of a classic Filipino play then answer the guide questions
below.

New Yorker in Tondo

by Marcelino Agana, Jr.

(Kikay poses herself on the arm of the sofa where Nena is sitting and sipping orange
juice. The two boys, also sipping juice and munching sandwiches, occupying the two
chairs)
NENA : Tell us about New York.
KIKAY : (Fervently) – Ah, New York, New York!
TONY : How long did you stay there?
KIKAY : (In a trance) – 10 months, 4 days, 7 hours and 21 minutes!
TOTOY : (Aside to the others) – and she’s still there … in her dreams!
KIKAY : (With emotion choking her voice) – Yes, I feel as if I were still there, as though I
had never left it, as though I had lived there all my life. But I look around me (She
bitterly looks around her at the three gaping visitors) and I realize that no, no I’m not
there. I’m not in New York… I’m here, here!
KIKAY : (She rises abruptly and goes to window where she stands looking out) I’m
home, they tell me. Home! But which is home for me? This cannot be home because
my heart aches with home sickness. I feel myself to be an exile…yes, a spiritual exile.
My spirit aches for its true home across the sea. Ah, New York! My own dear New York!
(She is silent a moment, looking across the horizon, her arms cross over her breast. Her
visitors glanced uneasily at each other.)
NENA : (To others) – I don’t think we ought to be here at all, boys.
TONY : Yes, we shouldn’t disturb her.
NENA : (With a languishing gesture) – And leave her alone with her memories.
TONY : (Glancing at the entranced Kikay) – Is that the girl we used to go swimming with
in the mud paddies?
TOTOY : (Crossing his arms over his chest) – Ah, New York! My own dear New York!
KIKAY : (Whirling around, enraptured) – Listen…oh listen! Now, in New York, it’s
springtime…it’s spring in New York! The daisies are just appearing in Central Park and
out in Staten Island the grass is green again. (With a little fond laugh) Oh, we have a
funny custom in New York…an old, old and very dear custom. When spring comes
around each year, we New Yorkers, we make a sort of pilgrimage to an old tree growing
down by the Battery. Oh, it’s an old tree. It’s been growing there ever since New York
was New York. And we New Yorkers, we call it “Our Tree”. Every spring we go down to
say hello to it and to watch its first green leaves coming out. In a way, that tree is our
symbol for New York…undying immortal, forever growing and forever green! (She
laughs and 11 | P a g e makes an apologetic gesture) But please, please forgive me!
Here I am going

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sentimental and just mooning away over things you have no idea about. No, you can’t
understand this emotion I feel for our dear old tree over there in New York.
NENA : Oh, but I do, I understand perfectly! I feel that way too about “our” tree.
KIKAY : (Blankly) – About what tree?
NENA : Our mango tree, Kikay. Have you forgotten about it? Why you and I used to go
climbing up there every day and gorging ourselves on green mangoes. How our
stomachs ached afterwards! And then these bad boys would come and start shaking
the branches until we fell down!
TOTOY : Aling Atang once caught me climbing that tree and she grabbed my pants and
off they came!
NENA : And Kikay and me, we were rolling on the ground, simply hysterical with
laughter. And Totoy, you kept shouting,”Give me back my pants! Give me back my
pants!” (They were all shaking with laughter except Kikay who is staring blankly at this.)
KIKAY : But wait a minute, wait a minute…what is this tree you’re talking about?
NENA : Our mango tree, Kikay. The mango tree out there in your back yard.
KIKAY : (Flatly) – Oh that tree…
TONY : What’s the matter, Kikay? Don’t you feel the same emotion for that tree as you
do for the one in New York?
KIKAY : (Tartly) – Of course not! They…they’re completely different! I don’t feel any
emotion for this silly old mango tree. It doesn’t awaken any memories for me at all!
NENA : (Rising) – Well it does…for me. And such happy, happy memories! I really must
run out to the backyard and say hello to it. (Imitating Kikay’s tone and manner) You
know, Kikay, over here in Tondo, we have a funny custom…an old, old and very dear
custom. We make a sort of pilgrimage to a silly old mango tree growing in a backyard.
And for us here in Tondo, that tree is “our” tree. In a way, it is a symbol…
KIKAY : (Interrupting) – don’t be silly, Nena.
TONY : Look who’s talking.
KIKAY : (In amused despair) – Oh, you people can’t understand at all!
TONY : Of course not. We’ve never been to New York.
(sirmikko.files.wordpress.com)

Comprehension Response
1. What common Filipino trait is exemplified by Kikay in the play?
2. What is wrong with Kikay’s behavior towards the American culture?
3. Are you proud of being a Filipino and your culture? Why? Why not?

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 What I Have Learned
Let’s fill out to get the key points!
Directions: Write True if the statement is correct and False if the statement contains an
error. Then replace the underlined word or statement with the correct idea
or answer to make the statement correct. Write your answer on the space
provided.
_1. The reality of literature is shaped from one’s imagination.
_ 2. Genre is classification of the variety and diversity of text or writing
we confront every day.
_ 3. Imagery is poetic device that expresses something that means
something else by comparing it with another word or phrase.
_ 4. Consonance is the successive repetition of the sound of a
consonant within a phrase or sentence.
_ 5. Listening to the words of a poem is like listening to music.
_ 6. Dialogue is an element in drama.
_ 7. To support a main idea, writers often use facts and details to help
prove their point.
_ 8. Drama is a genre while theatre is the performance from a play.
_9. CNF is the art of telling the truth as opposed to fiction.
_ 10. When the author gives you factual information, the author’s
purpose is to inform.

What I Can Do
Let me show it to you!

Directions: Write a poem that follows the pattern of a haiku poem (5-7-5). You may
use the suggested topics below for your poem.

River Wave

Flower Wind

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 Assessment
Let’s put you to a test!

Directions: Read the Creative Nonfiction text entitled Oedipus in Repose by

Dawn Marfill. Observe how a CNF text is different and similar as opposed to a
short story. After reading, answer the guide questions below.

Oedipus in Repose
Dawn Marfil

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development,

my parents are freaks of nature. It’s either that, or I am the freak. Although Freud’s theory
centers on the child and not the parents, I still blame my parents’ inability to function like
normal parents for my skewed development. Perhaps if they had been normal, I would have
fulfilled Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex which usually manifest itself during the
child’s phallic stage at five years old. According to Freud, I would have fallen in love with
the parent of the opposite sex, my father, and dreamt of murdering the parent of the same
sex, my mother. But at six years old, I wasn’t in love with my father and plotting the demise
of my mother. I was in love with Purefoods hotdogs, which was about as phallic as it could
get, and I wanted to kill both my parents.
Papa was a good model for all the men I would meet in my life. He taught me that no
matter how young or old a man was, he would always have the emotional maturity of a six-
year-old boy – most especially when it came to toys. We had a Family Computer, the
Neanderthal version of the Playstation, whose game cartridges you had to smack lightly with
your palm then blow into to get it work properly. My mother had issued an edict that during
the schoolyear, vile distractions like the Family Computer must be kept away from my
grubby hands and therefore placed in the topmost part of her clothes cabinet. My father,
responsible for guiding my educational growth at home, was supposed to implement this rule
with an iron hand while my mother was at work. And he did it so splendidly.
While I slaved away on my homework in our sala in front of a television that was
resolutely shut down, Papa, without fail, would always take down the Family Computer from
its hiding place, rouse the TV from sleep, and play B-Wings or 1942 right in front of me and
the multiplication table I was trying so desperately to tattoo in my brain. It was like dangling
a banana right in front of a hungry monkey. But he was very strict, my father. He never let
me take a turn, not even as Player B, not even when I finished my homework. After all, my
mother had declared the Family Computer off limits for the rest of the schoolyear. She really
should have emphasized that it was off limits for everyone—including Papa—as there were
not one, but two, children under the roof.
I never had playmates when I was young because I was never allowed to go out of
our apartment. We lived in a tiny rented apartment in an area of Sampaloc, Manila, where the
streets were so narrow that a car passing by would have crushed someone even if he stepped
aside. I experienced none of the usual teasing and taunting that kids playing in the streets
were prone to doing other kids, and as a consequence I wasn’t as “tough” as they were. My
strange and sheltered childhood left me defenceless against my father who found it funny
when he teased me about being fat, thanks to all those hotdogs my kitchen-impaired mother
kept on feeding me. Ironically, my mother is a nutritionist/dietitian.
Every time my parents introduced me to a friend theirs, they would always pinch my
cheeks or whatever excess body fat they could grab and say. “Ay, bakit parang napabayaan
sa kusina?” I thought they were commenting on the fact that I was left alone in the
apartment most of the time because my mother worked two jobs and my father either read
books in silence

1
or was out of the house all the time, and I had agreed with these people silently. Of course I
was a neglected child because my mother never sewed my Home Economics projects for me
and my father never helped me with my Math homework. Why those people chose to say I
got neglected in the kitchen was beyond me, but I supposed it was just another way of saying
that they were not properly giving me parental attention. It was only when I got older and my
comprehension for Filipino expressions became sharper that I understand what those nasty
people meant—I was fat because my eating habits were uncontrollable.
I began to suspect a conspiracy. My mother and father were so in love that they were
willing to keep each other happy even at their child’s expense. My mother knew that my
father was happily calling a variety of loving nicknames like, “Ms. Piggy, “Oink Oink.”
“Piglet,” and “Biik.” So she willingly compromised my health by giving me fastfood
cuisine-hotdogs, Jollibee Chickenjoy, spaghetti with hotdogs, burgers and other food
varieties rich with Vitamins A to MSG, so my father could keep on doing what made him
happiest--lease me about being fat.
The worst thing he ever did was when he kept saying “Oink!” every time I put a
spoonful of food while the three of us were eating dinner one night. I remember bursting into
tears, getting up from the table without excusing myself and banishing myself into a corner
facing the wall where I proceed to bawl, hiccup and choke on my half-chewed food. And
because our apartment resembled a Polly Pocket toy, that corner was basically two steps
away from the dinner table. My mother, never having heard of Good Cop/ Bad Cop, went on
laughing and doing nothing to soothe my fragile nine-year-old ego. She was never one to
participate in the crass name- calling that my father was so fond of. No, she was classier than
that. Her silence, which I mistook for a hidden love for and acceptance of me, was actually
the calm before the storm.
My mother bided her time and pounced on me when I was in high school. I had to
edit a video presentation one weekend and I asked her to take me to an editing center in
Dapitan. Saturday was my mother’s beauty parlor day and she refused to have it disturbed by
something as insignificant as my schoolwork. She said she would take me there but only if I
promised to let her stylist dye my hair golden brown because my black hair was too
“matapang.” She hadn’t called me an eye sore yet so I let her play with my hair. It was just
hair anyway.
I should have known she wouldn’t stop there. Long before Dra. Vicky Belo and Dr.
Calayan, my mother knew of a Dra. Lagman and her little shop of horrors near UST. She
often went there for facials and she dragged me there once, not to have my face cleaned but
to be electrocuted. She ranted about how her mother was to be blamed because I had
somehow managed to inherit my grandmother’s warty skin. Those offending little bits of
flesh over my cheeks had to be burned by electricity at all costs, even my tears. Somehow,
the anaesthesia they gave wasn’t enough for me because I felt every little bolt of lightning
scouring my skin. So I sat on that chair and let some woman electrocute my face while I tried
desperately not to cry from the pain. It was nothing as noble as needing to bear the pain
stoically. I was just paranoid that my teardrops, liquid in form and possible conductor of
electricity, would somehow direct electricity from the cauterizing wand to my eyeballs. Thus
began my mother’s legacy and beauty and pain.
By the time I graduated from high school, my mother has discovered Dr. Calayan
who gave my mother here straight, high bridged new nose. Mama told me, while touching
my nose one night, that I was lucky because inherited the bridge of my nose form of my
father.
“Pero ito,” she tapped the end of my nose with her well-manicured fingertip,
“malaki yung ilalim, parang kamatis! Sa akin galing iyan eh,” Then she began talking about
possible surgery to remove the tomato part of my nose once I got older. That was my cue to
stay away from my mother. I may have gone through chemicals and electricity for her but I
2
had to draw the line at going under the knife.

2
 Sigmund Freud said that the only way to resolve the Oedipus Complex was to
identify with the parent of the same sex and renounce the attraction for the parent of the
opposite sex. But as I looked at my mother’s swollen and bandaged nose, the inner corners
of her eyes darkened to a deep red as if she had been poked at repeatedly after her
rhinoplasty, I couldn’t help but avoid identification with my parent of the same sex.
Shouldn’t she be teaching me the value of accepting myself as I am?
I did renounce my hotdogs though—because I had new mission in life. I wanted to
be a beauty queen to teach my mother that can be beautiful. Even without changing her
face. Someone had to be the parent in this relationship.

Comprehension Response

1. What personal information or details did the writer reveal about herself?

2. What personal information or details did the writer reveal about her parents?

3. How did the writer portray herself and her family in the text?

4. What is the author’s view about being a happy beauty queen?

5. What is the tone of the essay? Cite some passages from the essay to prove
your point.

Additional Activities
Express yourself!

Directions: Write a reflective learning from the lessons presented in this module inside
the box. You may express your great learning in a more creative way. Have
fun and enjoy!

The most Literary topics

My past literary
striking insight I which I want to
learning that is
learned from the explore in the
reinforced in
lessons is... future are…
this module is…

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 This is it!

Lesson 1 Conventions of
Traditional
Literature is what fill in the act of fiction. Fiction is about fashioning, devising,
inventing, shaping and formulating words. The reality of literature is formed from one’s
imagination. Literature can make us imagine the possibilities of seemingly impossible
things, people, places or events.
One of the words created to guide us into the world of words is genre. A French
word, genre means classification of the variety and diversity of text or writing we
encounter every day. There are many texts (varied, but they also differ from one
another (diversity). Such differences enable one to make a classification based on
certain criteria or standards that makes then assume similarity. Without such
classification, we might get confused and lose our way in a world surrounded by words.
If we browse in bookstores, we find many categories of reading materials for sale like,
an Art and Photography. Biographies and Memoirs, Business and Investing, Children’s
Books, Fiction and Literature, Sports and a lot more. Genre is like a map that helps us
navigate a world of words by helping us to find what we want to read and letting us
know what to expect from what we are reading.
There are also two genres or kinds of words, the literal and figurative. A literal
word means exactly as it says. It is factual and does not involve fashioning or
fabricating. Definition of word in the dictionary are generally literal. The dictionary
defines the apple as a round red or green edible fruit. In figurative words, apple can lose
its fruity character. The saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, refers not to the
fruit itself or of sending the doctors away, but to the belief that it promotes good health.
Figurative is like a word painted to make us see something that literal language would
not make us see. In this context, you can see the interplay between the literal and the
metaphorical (Perl and Schwartz 2006).

Conventions of Poetry
The British American poet W.H. Auden once said that one cannot be a poet if
one’s reason is “I like hanging around words and listening to what they say.” And he
believed that person could indeed be a poet. Poetry is notable for using a few words to
convey a lot.

5
 Haiku is a form of short poetry that originated in Japan in 19 th century. It follows
the 5-7-5 pattern. The first line contains 5 syllables, the second line with 7 syllables and
the third line with 5 syllables. It is known for revealing the vastness of nature in an
intimate and microscopic manner. Here’s the example poem by a famous poet of 15th
century from Japan. Basho Matsuo “The Old Pond”, a snapshot of a particular moment
in one small portion of the environment:
5- An old silent pond…
7- A frog jumps into the pond,
5- Splash! Silence again.
In writing haiku, you can use details that can be seen or grasped by the five
senses.
Some Characteristics of Poetry:
 Lines- the shape of the poem
 Figure of sounds- words that makes us listen. Listening to the words of a poem
is like listening to music.
 Sound Check- the feel of words in the tongue. The text of the poem has
a texture, how sounds convey message, attitude and mood.
 Sound Devices in Poetry- techniques that affect the sound, but not the
meaning of a poem.

Sound Devices Description Purpose

Onomatopoeia Words that imitate the Provides immediate
sounds they describe name for a sound
Alliteration The repetition of the Adds rhythm and
sound of the first musicality
consonant in the same
line of a poem.
Assonance The repetition of the Highlights meaning or
sound of vowel in the set the mood of the
stressed syllables of poem and adds rhythm
words. and musicality. Subtle
and not so obvious
compared to alliteration
Consonance The successive Adds rhythm and
repetition of the sound of musicality and creates
a consonant within a special mood
phrase or sentence
Dissonance Intentional use of words Creates an angry,
that create harsh or discordant or conflicted
clashing sound. It does atmosphere
not create a pattern like
assonance.

 Rhythm- the heartbeat of the arrangement of words; the general

principles when writing sounds;

6
  Rhyming sounds alike or spell alike.

 Repetition creates a musical pattern to a stanza

 Euphony makes the sound flow harmoniously and pleasant.

 Cacophony makes the sound flow harshly and discordantly.

 Imagery-refers to the image produced in the mind by language; it

pertains to words that make us see, hear, touch, move or feel an internal
sensation.

 Figure of Speech-a poetic device that expresses something that means

something else by comparing it with another word or phrase. It
provides emotive character and voice to a work.

Creating Reality though Fiction

In fiction, you bring the readers to a new place, meet new people, or witness events
simply by reading (Mazzeo 2012). Here are some examples of starting points for writing
fiction based on facts:

Conventions of Fiction

7
CHARACTER is usually an imagined person who inhabits a story. In creative nonfiction,
the characters are actual people including the writer himself. However, the devices
utilized by the nonfiction writer in creating, developing and revealing characters are the
same ones familiar to the fictionist (Israel 2017).
Approaches used in characterization
1. Direct description- the characters are directly described by the author based on
how his/her appearance.
Example:
“ There are photographs of him. The largest is of an officer in the 1914-1918 war. A new
uniform-buttoned, badged, strapped, tapped-confines a handsome, dark young man.
2. Action and reaction- the character’s personality is revealed through their actions, and
how they react to the events in the text.
Example: (Action)
“ …He approached my seat, and I drew a deep breath of resolution. “ Conductor,” I
began with a considerable edge to my voice… Instantly the doleful eyes of my seatmate
turned tiredlyfrom his newspaper to fix me with a resentful stare…”
Example: (reaction)
“ I myself can occasionally summon the courage to complain, but I cannot, as I have
intimidated, complain softly. My own instinct is so strong to let the thing ride, to forget
about it…”
“ Why Don’t We Complain,” William F. Buckley Jr.
3. Other characters’ opinion-other characters in the text describe a certain character to
reveal the latter’s personality and/or behavior.
Example:
“My Aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something
happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from
then on! She sai you could see and hear and feel Jesus in you soul.
“ Salvation,” Langston Hughes
4. Dialogue- the character’s personality and behavior is revealed through his/her
convention with the other characters in the text.
Example:
“ He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students
were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower
cells, until he come to me. I would just be standing there. “ I can’t see anything, “ I
would say…”
“ University Days,” James Thurber
5. Monologue- the character reveals him/her own personality and behavior

8
Example:
“…I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood…”
“ I Have A Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. Focusing on a character’s distinct behavior- the character will be known by

the readers because of a unique characteristic that he/she possesses
Example:
“…The interpreter asked how he lived in the swamp. He said he ate snakes, turtles,
armadillos and alligators. The captors could tell how he lived when they opened up his
bag…”
“The Wild Man of the Green Swamp,” Maxinne Hang Kingston

Drama/Theatre Play
It is believed “ drama is literature equipped with arms, legs, tears, laughs,
whispers, shouts and gestures that are alive and immediate” ( Meyer, 2016). Its origins
trace back to the Greek with the word dran meaning “ to do” or “ to perform.” The script
which serves as the text of the play may only come to existence when it is being
performed before an audience. The majority of drama writers ( playwrights) see the
written word as the start of a bigger creation and hope that their scripts will be shown
worth of the production ( Meyer, 2006).
Some Common Types of Drama
1. Comedy stems from komēōdē which means merrymakings. It is believed that
Greek comedy originates from the village festivities and the worship of
Dionysus. The existence of a chorus takes place because of the practice of
pleasure seekers camouflaged as birds, frogs and all sorts of animals.
Aristophanes’ boisterous old comedy, the transitional middle comedy, and the
new comedy of Menander are the period of comedy plays. Today, it is being
blended with poetry, profound moral, and psychological perspective (Law,
2011).

2. Farce is ground in ancient drama, yet critics looked down on it as vulgar. It

involves travesty and circus where skilled dramatists and performers crate
instant laughter through their mechanical acts. Modern farce dwells on “well-
made” drama whose complexity in plot, detailed presentation, structural
accuracy, and deployment of coincidences have all been pushed into comic
extremes (Strange, 2002).

3. Satire from the Latin term means “ medley” with origins in cooking. It employs
different comic exaggeration to mock human behavior in the chance of being
transformed or corrected. Irony, parody, and caricature are the common

9
 avenues of satire. The first satirical plays were that of Aristophanes, and the
pre-dramatic lampoons of the Greeks laughing out the local figures (Carlson,
2002).

4. Tragedy portrays a sad ending wherein Aristotle was the first to provide its
definition in his Poetics and that it should be “ by pity and terror” (Law, 2011).

5. Historical Drama is as old as theatre featuring historical characters and

events. The first surviving historical play is that of the Persians in 473 BCE
where Aeschylus battled the Greco-Persian war which he fought earlier for
eight years ( Palmer).

6. Musical Theatre combines dialogues, songs, and dance numbers and

accredited to Broadway for blending vaudeville, revue, melodrama, as well as
operetta in its presentation (++-Law, 2011).

7. Absurd Play demonstrates existentialism that rejects the realistic characters,

settings, situations, and thereby presents meaninglessness and isolation of
human live (Carlson, 2002).

What’s More
Let’s discover more!

Activity 1.1 Analyzing a Poem

Directions: Read the poem below then compare the poem’s literal sense to a real
aspect of life using a venn diagram.

Vocabulary
Enrichment Scaffold:
(n) a support Plank: (n)
slat, floorboard Bolted: (v)
attached
Mason: ( n) builder and worker

Scaffolding
by Seamus Heany
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s
done,
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to
be Old bridges breaking you and me

1
 Directions: Using the Venn diagram, compare the poem’s literal sense of constructing a building

Activity 1.2: Analyzing a Short Story

Direction: The short story below is known for its local color elements that depict the
superstitious beliefs of the people in the barrio. Read the short story and found out how
this Filipino belief creates fear on the narrator causing him to judge Minggay without
knowing her. Then answer the guide questions that follow.

The Witch
by Edilberto K.
Tiempo

When I was twelve years old, I used to go to Libas, about nine kilometers from
the town, to visit my favorite uncle, Tio Sabelo, the head teacher of the barrio school
there. I like going to Libas because of the many things to eat at my uncle’s house:
cane sugar syrup, candied meat of young coconut, corn and rice cakes, ripe jackfruit,
guavas from trees growing wild on a hill not far from Tio Sabelo’s house. It was
through these visits that I heard many strange stories about Minggay Awok. Awok is
the word for witch in southern Leyte. Minggay was known as a witch even beyond
Libas, in five outlying sitios, and considering that not uncommonly a man’s nearest
neighbor was two or three hills away, her notoriety was wide. Minggay lived in a small,
low hut as the back of the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. It
squatted like a soaked hen on a steep incline and below it, six or seven meters away,
two trails forked, one going to Libas and the other to Mahangin, a mountain sitio. The
hut leaned dangerously to the side where the creek water ate away large chunks of
earth during the rainy season. It had two small openings, a small door through which
Minggay probably had to stoop to pass, and a window about two feet square facing

1
jute sacking which fluttered eerily even in the daytime.

What she had in the hut nobody seemed to know definitely. One daring fellow
who boasted of having gone inside it when Minggay was out in her clearing on a hill
nearby said he had seen dirty stoppered bottles hanging from the bamboo slats of the
cogon thatch. Some of the bottles contained scorpions, centipedes, beetles, bumble
bees, and other insects; others were filled with ash-colored powder and dark liquids.
These bottles contained the paraphernalia of her witchcraft. Two or three small bottles
she always had with her hanging on her waistband with a bunch of iron keys, whether
she went to her clearing or to the creek to catch shrimps or gather fresh-water shells, or
even when she slept.
It was said that those who had done her wrong never escaped her vengeance, in
the form of festering carbuncles, chronic fevers that caused withering of the skin, or a
certain disease of the nose that eventually ate the nose out. Using an incantation known
only to her, Minggay would take out one insect from a bottle, soak it in colored liquid or
roll it in powder, and with a curse let it go to the body of her victim; the insect might be
removed and the disease cured only rarely through intricate rituals of an expensive
tambalan.
Thus Minggay was feared in Libas and the surrounding barrios. There had been
attempts to murder her, but in some mysterious way she always came out unscathed. A
man set fire to her hut one night, thinking to burn her with it. The hut quickly burned
down, but Minggay was unharmed. On another occasion a man openly declared that he
had killed her, showing the blood-stained bolo with which he had stabbed her; a week
later she was seen hobbling to her clearing. This man believed Minggay was the cause
of the rash that his only child had been carrying for over a year. One day, so the story
went, meeting his wife, Minggay asked to hold her child. She didn’t want to offend
Minggay. As the witch gave the child back she said, “He has a very smooth skin.” A few
days later the boy had skin eruptions all over his body that
never left him.
Minggay’s only companions were a lean, barren sow and a few chickens, all of
them charcoal black. The sow and the chickens were allowed to wander in the fields,
and even if the sow dug up sweet potatoes and the chickens pecked rice or corn grain
drying in the sun, they were not driven away by the neighbors because they were afraid
to arouse Minggay’s wrath.
Besides the sow and the chickens, Minggay was known to have a wakwak and a
sigbin. Those who claimed to have seen the sigbin described it as a queer animal
resembling a kangaroo: the forelegs were shorter than the hind ones: its fanlike ears
made a flapping sound when it walked. The wakwak was a nocturnal bird, as big and
black as a crow. It gave out raucous cries when a person in the neighborhood had just
died. The bird was supposed to be Minggay’s messenger, and the sigbin caried her to
the grave; then the witch dug up the corpse and feasted on it. The times when I passed
by the hut and saw her lean sow and her black chickens, I wondered if they transformed
themselves into fantastic creatures at night. Even in the daytime I dreaded the
possibility of meeting her; she might accost me on the trail near her hut, say something
about my face or any part of it, and then I might live the rest of my life with a harelip, a
sunken nose, or crossed eyes. But I never saw Minggay in her house or near the
premises. There were times when I thought she was only a legend, a name to frighten
children from doing mischief. But then I almost always saw her sow digging banana

1
roots or wallowing near

1
the trail and the black chickens scratching for worms or pecking grains in her yard, and
the witch became very real indeed.
Once I was told to go to Libas with a bottle of medicine for Tio Sabelo’s sick wife.
I started from the town at half past five and by the time I saw the balete tree across the
creek from Minggay’s hut, I could hardly see the trail before me. The balete was called
Minggay’s tree, for she was known to sit on one of the numerous twisting vines that
formed its grotesque trunk to wait for a belated passer-by. The balete was a towering
monstrous shadow; a firefly that flitted among the vines was an evil eye plucked out
searching for its socket. I wanted to run back, but the medicine had to get to Tio
Sabelo’s wife that night. I wanted to push through the thick underbrush to the dry part of
the creek to avoid the balete, but I was afraid of snakes. I had discarded the idea of a
coconut frond torch because the light would catch the attention of the witch, and when
she saw it was only a little boy... Steeling myself I tried to whistle as I passed in the
shadow of the balete, its overhanging vines like hairy arms ready to hoist and strangle
me among the branches.
Emerging into the stony bed of the creek, I saw Minggay’s hut. The screen in the
window waved in the faint light of the room and I thought I saw the witch peering behind
it. As I started going up the trail by the hut, each moving clump and shadow was a
crouching old woman. I had heard stories of Minggay’s attempts to waylay travelers in
the dark and suck their blood. Closing my eyes twenty yards from the hut of the witch, I
ran up the hill. A few meters past the hut I stumbled on a low stump. I got up at once
and ran again. When I reached Tio Sabelo’s house I was very tired and badly
shaken.
Somehow after the terror of the balete and the hut of the witch had lessened,
although I always had the goose flesh whenever I passed by them after dusk. One
moonlight night going home to town I heard a splashing of the water below Minggay’s
house. I thought the sound was made by the witch, for she was seen to bathe on
moonlit nights in the creek, her loose hair falling on her face. It was not Minggay I saw.
It was a huge animal. I was about to run thinking it was the sigbin of the witch, but when
I looked at it again, I saw that it was a carabao wallowing in the
creek.
One morning I thought of bringing home shrimps to my mother, and so I went to a
creek a hundred yards from Tio Sabelo’s house. I had with me my cousin’s pana, made
of a long steel rod pointed at one end and cleft at the other and shot through the hollow
of a bamboo joint the size of a finger by means of a rubber band attached to one end of
the joint. After wading for two hours in the creek which meandered around bamboo
groves and banban and ipil clumps with only three small shrimps strung on a coconut
midrib dangling from my belt, I came upon an old woman taking a bath in the shade of a
catmon tree. A brown tapis was wound around her to three fingers width above her thin
chest. The bank of her left was a foot-wide ledge of unbroken boulder on which she had
set a wooden basin half full of wet but still unwashed
clothes.
In front of her was a submerged stone pile topped by a platter size rock; on it
were a heap of shredded coconut meat, a small discolored tin basin, a few lemon rinds,
and bits of pounded gogo bark. The woman was soaking her sparse gray hair with the
gogo suds. She must have seen me coming because she did not look
surprised.

1
 Seeing the three small shrimps hanging at my side she said, “You have a poor
catch.”

1
 She looked kind. She was probably as old as my grandmother; smaller, for this
old woman was two or three inches below five feet. Her eyes looked surprisingly young,
but her mouth, just a thin line above the little chin, seemed to have tasted many bitter
years.

“Why don’t you bait them out of their hiding? Take some of this.” She gave me a
handful of shredded coconut meat whose milk she had squeezed out and with the
gogo suds used on her hair.
She exuded a sweet wood fragrance of gogo bark and the rind of lemons.
“Beyond the first bend,” she said pointing, “the water is still. Scatter the shreds there.
That’s where I get my shrimps. You will see some traps. If you find shrimps in them
they are yours.”
I mumbled my thanks and waded to the bend she had indicated. That part of the
creek was like a small lake. One bank was lined by huge boulders showing long, deep
fissures where the roots of gnarled dapdap trees had penetrated. The other bank was
sandy, with bamboo and catmon trees leaning over, their roots sticking out in the water.
There was good shade and the air had a twilight chilliness. The water was shallow
except on the rocky side, which was deep and
murky.
I scattered the coconut shreds around, and not long after they had settled down
shrimps crawled from boles under the bamboo and catmon roots and from crevices of
the boulders. It did not take me an hour to catch a midribful, some hairy with age, some
heavy with eggs, moulters, dark magus, leaf-green shrimps,
speckled.
I saw three traps of woven bamboo strips, round-bellied and about two feet long,
two hidden behind a catmon root. I did not disturb them because I had enough shrimps
for myself.
“No, no, iti. Your mother will need them. You don’t have enough. Besides I have
freshwater crabs at home.” She looked up at me with her strange young eyes and
asked, “Do you still have a mother?”
I told her I had, and a grandmother, too.
“You are not from Libas, I think. This is the first time I have seen you.”
I said I was from the town and my uncle was the head teacher of the Libas barrio
school.
“You remind me of my son when he was your age. He had bright eyes like you,
and his voice was soft like yours. I think you are a good boy.”
“Where is your son now?”
“I have not heard from him since he left. He went away when he was seventeen.
He left in anger, because I didn’t want him to marry so young. I don’t know where he
went, where he is.”
She spread the length of a kimona on the water for a last rinsing. The flesh
hanging from her skinny arms was loose and flabby.

1
 “If he’s still living,” she went on, “he’d be as old as your father maybe. Many
times I feel in my bones he is alive, and will come back
before I die.”
“Your husband is still living?”

1
 “He died a long time ago, when my boy was eleven.”

She twisted the kimona like a rope to wring out the water.

“I’m glad he died early. He was very cruel.”

I looked at her, at the thin mouth, wondering about her husband’s cruelty,
disturbed by the manner she spoke about it.
“Do you have other children?”
“I wish I had. Then I wouldn’t be living alone.”
A woman her age, I thought, should be a grandmother and live among many
children.
“Where do you live?”
She did not speak, but her strange young eyes were probing and looked
grotesque in the old woman’s face. “Not far from here--the house on the high bank,
across the balete.”
She must have seen the fright that suddenly leaped into my face, for I thought
she smiled at me queerly.
“I’m going now,” I said.
I felt her following me with her eyes; indeed they seemed to bore a hot hole
between my shoulder blades. I did not look back. Don’t run, I told myself. But at the first
bend of the creek, when I knew she couldn’t see me, I ran. After a while I stopped,
feeling a little foolish. Such a helpless-looking little old woman couldn’t be Minggay,
couldn’t be the witch. I remembered her kind voice and the woodfragrance. She could
be my own grandmother.
As I walked the string of shrimps kept brushing against the side of my leg. I
detached it from my belt and looked at the shrimps. Except for the three small ones, all
of them belonged to the old woman. Her coconut shreds had coaxed them as by magic
out of their hiding. The protruding eyes of the biggest, which was still alive, seemed to
glare at me---and then they became the eyes of the witch. Angrily, I hurled the shrimps
back into the creek.

Comprehension Response

1. What superstitious belief that is common in the barrio is revealed in the

short story?
2. Based from the narrator’s encounter with Minggay, do you think the woman is a
witch as what people gossiped about her?
3. What could be the reasons why people in the barrio call Minggay a witch?

1
Activity 1.3: Analyzing a Play
Directions: Read the excerpt of a classic Filipino play then answer the guide questions
below.

New Yorker in Tondo

by Marcelino Agana, Jr.

(Kikay poses herself on the arm of the sofa where Nena is sitting and sipping orange
juice. The two boys, also sipping juice and munching sandwiches, occupying the two
chairs)
NENA : Tell us about New York.
KIKAY : (Fervently) – Ah, New York, New York!
TONY : How long did you stay there?
KIKAY : (In a trance) – 10 months, 4 days, 7 hours and 21 minutes!
TOTOY : (Aside to the others) – and she’s still there … in her dreams!
KIKAY : (With emotion choking her voice) – Yes, I feel as if I were still there, as though I
had never left it, as though I had lived there all my life. But I look around me (She
bitterly looks around her at the three gaping visitors) and I realize that no, no I’m not
there. I’m not in New York… I’m here, here!
KIKAY : (She rises abruptly and goes to window where she stands looking out) I’m
home, they tell me. Home! But which is home for me? This cannot be home because
my heart aches with home sickness. I feel myself to be an exile…yes, a spiritual exile.
My spirit aches for its true home across the sea. Ah, New York! My own dear New York!
(She is silent a moment, looking across the horizon, her arms cross over her breast. Her
visitors glanced uneasily at each other.)
NENA : (To others) – I don’t think we ought to be here at all, boys.
TONY : Yes, we shouldn’t disturb her.
NENA : (With a languishing gesture) – And leave her alone with her memories.
TONY : (Glancing at the entranced Kikay) – Is that the girl we used to go swimming with
in the mud paddies?
TOTOY : (Crossing his arms over his chest) – Ah, New York! My own dear New York!
KIKAY : (Whirling around, enraptured) – Listen…oh listen! Now, in New York, it’s
springtime…it’s spring in New York! The daisies are just appearing in Central Park and
out in Staten Island the grass is green again. (With a little fond laugh) Oh, we have a
funny custom in New York…an old, old and very dear custom. When spring comes
around each year, we New Yorkers, we make a sort of pilgrimage to an old tree growing
down by the Battery. Oh, it’s an old tree. It’s been growing there ever since New York
was New York. And we New Yorkers, we call it “Our Tree”. Every spring we go down to
say hello to it and to watch its first green leaves coming out. In a way, that tree is our
symbol for New York…undying immortal, forever growing and forever green! (She
laughs and 11 | P a g e makes an apologetic gesture) But please, please forgive me!
Here I am going

1
sentimental and just mooning away over things you have no idea about. No, you can’t
understand this emotion I feel for our dear old tree over there in New York.
NENA : Oh, but I do, I understand perfectly! I feel that way too about “our” tree.
KIKAY : (Blankly) – About what tree?
NENA : Our mango tree, Kikay. Have you forgotten about it? Why you and I used to go
climbing up there every day and gorging ourselves on green mangoes. How our
stomachs ached afterwards! And then these bad boys would come and start shaking
the branches until we fell down!
TOTOY : Aling Atang once caught me climbing that tree and she grabbed my pants and
off they came!
NENA : And Kikay and me, we were rolling on the ground, simply hysterical with
laughter. And Totoy, you kept shouting,”Give me back my pants! Give me back my
pants!” (They were all shaking with laughter except Kikay who is staring blankly at this.)
KIKAY : But wait a minute, wait a minute…what is this tree you’re talking about?
NENA : Our mango tree, Kikay. The mango tree out there in your back yard.
KIKAY : (Flatly) – Oh that tree…
TONY : What’s the matter, Kikay? Don’t you feel the same emotion for that tree as you
do for the one in New York?
KIKAY : (Tartly) – Of course not! They…they’re completely different! I don’t feel any
emotion for this silly old mango tree. It doesn’t awaken any memories for me at all!
NENA : (Rising) – Well it does…for me. And such happy, happy memories! I really must
run out to the backyard and say hello to it. (Imitating Kikay’s tone and manner) You
know, Kikay, over here in Tondo, we have a funny custom…an old, old and very dear
custom. We make a sort of pilgrimage to a silly old mango tree growing in a backyard.
And for us here in Tondo, that tree is “our” tree. In a way, it is a symbol…
KIKAY : (Interrupting) – don’t be silly, Nena.
TONY : Look who’s talking.
KIKAY : (In amused despair) – Oh, you people can’t understand at all!
TONY : Of course not. We’ve never been to New York.
(sirmikko.files.wordpress.com)

Comprehension Response
1. What common Filipino trait is exemplified by Kikay in the play?
2. What is wrong with Kikay’s behavior towards the American culture?
3. Are you proud of being a Filipino and your culture? Why? Why not?

1
 What I Have Learned
Let’s fill out to get the key points!
Directions: Write True if the statement is correct and False if the statement contains an
error. Then replace the underlined word or statement with the correct idea
or answer to make the statement correct. Write your answer on the space
provided.
_1. The reality of literature is shaped from one’s imagination.
_ 2. Genre is classification of the variety and diversity of text or writing
we confront every day.
_ 3. Imagery is poetic device that expresses something that means
something else by comparing it with another word or phrase.
_ 4. Consonance is the successive repetition of the sound of a
consonant within a phrase or sentence.
_ 5. Listening to the words of a poem is like listening to music.
_ 6. Dialogue is an element in drama.
_ 7. To support a main idea, writers often use facts and details to help
prove their point.
_ 8. Drama is a genre while theatre is the performance from a play.
_9. CNF is the art of telling the truth as opposed to fiction.
_ 10. When the author gives you factual information, the author’s
purpose is to inform.

What I Can Do
Let me show it to you!

Directions: Write a poem that follows the pattern of a haiku poem (5-7-5). You may
use the suggested topics below for your poem.

River Wave

Flower Wind

1
 Assessment
Let’s put you to a test!

Directions: Read the Creative Nonfiction text entitled Oedipus in Repose by

Dawn Marfill. Observe how a CNF text is different and similar as opposed to a
short story. After reading, answer the guide questions below.

Oedipus in Repose
Dawn Marfil

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development,

my parents are freaks of nature. It’s either that, or I am the freak. Although Freud’s theory
centers on the child and not the parents, I still blame my parents’ inability to function like
normal parents for my skewed development. Perhaps if they had been normal, I would have
fulfilled Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex which usually manifest itself during the
child’s phallic stage at five years old. According to Freud, I would have fallen in love with
the parent of the opposite sex, my father, and dreamt of murdering the parent of the same
sex, my mother. But at six years old, I wasn’t in love with my father and plotting the demise
of my mother. I was in love with Purefoods hotdogs, which was about as phallic as it could
get, and I wanted to kill both my parents.
Papa was a good model for all the men I would meet in my life. He taught me that no
matter how young or old a man was, he would always have the emotional maturity of a six-
year-old boy – most especially when it came to toys. We had a Family Computer, the
Neanderthal version of the Playstation, whose game cartridges you had to smack lightly with
your palm then blow into to get it work properly. My mother had issued an edict that during
the schoolyear, vile distractions like the Family Computer must be kept away from my
grubby hands and therefore placed in the topmost part of her clothes cabinet. My father,
responsible for guiding my educational growth at home, was supposed to implement this rule
with an iron hand while my mother was at work. And he did it so splendidly.
While I slaved away on my homework in our sala in front of a television that was
resolutely shut down, Papa, without fail, would always take down the Family Computer from
its hiding place, rouse the TV from sleep, and play B-Wings or 1942 right in front of me and
the multiplication table I was trying so desperately to tattoo in my brain. It was like dangling
a banana right in front of a hungry monkey. But he was very strict, my father. He never let
me take a turn, not even as Player B, not even when I finished my homework. After all, my
mother had declared the Family Computer off limits for the rest of the schoolyear. She really
should have emphasized that it was off limits for everyone—including Papa—as there were
not one, but two, children under the roof.
I never had playmates when I was young because I was never allowed to go out of
our apartment. We lived in a tiny rented apartment in an area of Sampaloc, Manila, where the
streets were so narrow that a car passing by would have crushed someone even if he stepped
aside. I experienced none of the usual teasing and taunting that kids playing in the streets
were prone to doing other kids, and as a consequence I wasn’t as “tough” as they were. My
strange and sheltered childhood left me defenceless against my father who found it funny
when he teased me about being fat, thanks to all those hotdogs my kitchen-impaired mother
kept on feeding me. Ironically, my mother is a nutritionist/dietitian.
Every time my parents introduced me to a friend theirs, they would always pinch my
cheeks or whatever excess body fat they could grab and say. “Ay, bakit parang napabayaan
sa kusina?” I thought they were commenting on the fact that I was left alone in the
apartment most of the time because my mother worked two jobs and my father either read
books in silence

1
or was out of the house all the time, and I had agreed with these people silently. Of course I
was a neglected child because my mother never sewed my Home Economics projects for me
and my father never helped me with my Math homework. Why those people chose to say I
got neglected in the kitchen was beyond me, but I supposed it was just another way of saying
that they were not properly giving me parental attention. It was only when I got older and my
comprehension for Filipino expressions became sharper that I understand what those nasty
people meant—I was fat because my eating habits were uncontrollable.
I began to suspect a conspiracy. My mother and father were so in love that they were
willing to keep each other happy even at their child’s expense. My mother knew that my
father was happily calling a variety of loving nicknames like, “Ms. Piggy, “Oink Oink.”
“Piglet,” and “Biik.” So she willingly compromised my health by giving me fastfood
cuisine-hotdogs, Jollibee Chickenjoy, spaghetti with hotdogs, burgers and other food
varieties rich with Vitamins A to MSG, so my father could keep on doing what made him
happiest--lease me about being fat.
The worst thing he ever did was when he kept saying “Oink!” every time I put a
spoonful of food while the three of us were eating dinner one night. I remember bursting into
tears, getting up from the table without excusing myself and banishing myself into a corner
facing the wall where I proceed to bawl, hiccup and choke on my half-chewed food. And
because our apartment resembled a Polly Pocket toy, that corner was basically two steps
away from the dinner table. My mother, never having heard of Good Cop/ Bad Cop, went on
laughing and doing nothing to soothe my fragile nine-year-old ego. She was never one to
participate in the crass name- calling that my father was so fond of. No, she was classier than
that. Her silence, which I mistook for a hidden love for and acceptance of me, was actually
the calm before the storm.
My mother bided her time and pounced on me when I was in high school. I had to
edit a video presentation one weekend and I asked her to take me to an editing center in
Dapitan. Saturday was my mother’s beauty parlor day and she refused to have it disturbed by
something as insignificant as my schoolwork. She said she would take me there but only if I
promised to let her stylist dye my hair golden brown because my black hair was too
“matapang.” She hadn’t called me an eye sore yet so I let her play with my hair. It was just
hair anyway.
I should have known she wouldn’t stop there. Long before Dra. Vicky Belo and Dr.
Calayan, my mother knew of a Dra. Lagman and her little shop of horrors near UST. She
often went there for facials and she dragged me there once, not to have my face cleaned but
to be electrocuted. She ranted about how her mother was to be blamed because I had
somehow managed to inherit my grandmother’s warty skin. Those offending little bits of
flesh over my cheeks had to be burned by electricity at all costs, even my tears. Somehow,
the anaesthesia they gave wasn’t enough for me because I felt every little bolt of lightning
scouring my skin. So I sat on that chair and let some woman electrocute my face while I tried
desperately not to cry from the pain. It was nothing as noble as needing to bear the pain
stoically. I was just paranoid that my teardrops, liquid in form and possible conductor of
electricity, would somehow direct electricity from the cauterizing wand to my eyeballs. Thus
began my mother’s legacy and beauty and pain.
By the time I graduated from high school, my mother has discovered Dr. Calayan
who gave my mother here straight, high bridged new nose. Mama told me, while touching
my nose one night, that I was lucky because inherited the bridge of my nose form of my
father.
“Pero ito,” she tapped the end of my nose with her well-manicured fingertip,
“malaki yung ilalim, parang kamatis! Sa akin galing iyan eh,” Then she began talking about
possible surgery to remove the tomato part of my nose once I got older. That was my cue to
stay away from my mother. I may have gone through chemicals and electricity for her but I
2
had to draw the line at going under the knife.

2
 Sigmund Freud said that the only way to resolve the Oedipus Complex was to
identify with the parent of the same sex and renounce the attraction for the parent of the
opposite sex. But as I looked at my mother’s swollen and bandaged nose, the inner corners
of her eyes darkened to a deep red as if she had been poked at repeatedly after her
rhinoplasty, I couldn’t help but avoid identification with my parent of the same sex.
Shouldn’t she be teaching me the value of accepting myself as I am?
I did renounce my hotdogs though—because I had new mission in life. I wanted to
be a beauty queen to teach my mother that can be beautiful. Even without changing her
face. Someone had to be the parent in this relationship.

Comprehension Response

1. What personal information or details did the writer reveal about herself?

2. What personal information or details did the writer reveal about her parents?

3. How did the writer portray herself and her family in the text?

4. What is the author’s view about being a happy beauty queen?

5. What is the tone of the essay? Cite some passages from the essay to prove
your point.

Additional Activities
Express yourself!

Directions: Write a reflective learning from the lessons presented in this module inside
the box. You may express your great learning in a more creative way. Have
fun and enjoy!

My pastfrom
The most striking insight I learned literary
the learning Literary
that
lessons is... topics which
is reinforced in this Imodule
want tois…
ex