Second Quarter 14

Department of Education • Republic of the Philippines

Introductory Message
For the facilitator:
This module was collaboratively designed, developed and evaluated by the
Development and Quality Assurance Teams of SDO TAPAT to assist you in helping
the learners meet the standards set by the K to 12 Curriculum while overcoming
their personal, social, and economic constraints in schooling.
As a facilitator, you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this module.
You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing them to manage
their own learning. Furthermore, you are expected to encourage and assist the
learners as they do the tasks included in the module.
For the learner:
This module was designed to provide you with fun and meaningful opportunities for
guided and independent learning at your own pace and time. You will be enabled to
process the contents of the learning resource while being an active learner.
The following are some reminders in using this module:
1. Use the module with care.
2. Don’t forget to answer Let’s Try before moving on to the other activities
included in the module.
3. Read the instruction carefully before doing each task.
4. Observe honesty and integrity in doing the tasks and checking your answers.
5. Finish the task at hand before proceeding to the next.
6. Return this module to your teacher/facilitator once you are through with it.
If you encounter any difficulty in answering the tasks in this module, do not
hesitate to consult your teacher or facilitator. Always bear in mind that you are
not alone.
We hope that through this material, you will experience meaningful learning and
gain deep understanding of the relevant competencies. You can do it!
 Let’s Learn

This module was designed and written with you in mind. It is here to help you
master the context of a 21st century World Literature. The scope of this module
permits it to be used in many different learning situations. The language used
recognizes the diverse vocabulary level of students. The lessons are arranged to follow
the standard sequence of the course. But the order in which you read them can be
changed to correspond with the textbook you are now using.
After going through this module, you are expected to:
1. compare and contrast the various 21st century literary genres and their
elements, structures, and traditions across the globe;
2. explain the concept and qualities of literary journalism; and
3. relate the themes of the literary journalistic article with personal
experiences or observation and cultural underpinning.

Let’s Try

Directions: Identify what is being defined in each item. Write the letter of the answer in
your answer sheet.

A. Characters F. Climax K. Point of view

B. Setting G. Falling Action L. Tone
C. Plot H. Denouement M. Mood
D. Introduction I. Conflict N. Literary Journalism
E. Rising Action J. Theme O. Creative Nonfiction

1. _____ is a writing composed of the real, or of facts, that employs the same literary devices
as fiction such as setting, voice/tone, character development, etc.
2. _____ is the narrative sequence on how the author arranged his or her ideas. This is a
planned, logical series of event that has its own beginning, middle, and end.
3. _____ is the highest point of the interest and the turning point of the story.
4. _____ must be needed to the angle from which the story is narrated.
5. _____ is not merely a form of an argument between two characters, but rather it is a
form of opposition that faces the main character.
6. _____ is the time and place of which the story revolves.
7. Depending on the nature of the story, _____ are most often people or animals. Writers
use them to perform the actions and speak the dialogue of a story.
8. _____ is the attitude the writer displays towards his subject or theme.
9. _____ is about the effect the writer creates in the reader and how they evoke it through
their use of language.
10. _____ refers to the underlying insight, the moral or idea that the writer is expressing
through the story. It is often thought of as the ‘message’ of the story.
11. _____ is the outcome of the story. The events and conflicts are untangled and resolved.
12. _____ is the beginning of the story, in which the character and setting are described by
the author.
13. _____ is where the events and conflicts of the story begin to resolve of themselves. The
readers will have a hint of what will happen next and whether the conflict will be
resolved or not.
14. _____ is where the events of the story have become a little complicated, and the conflict
of the story is revealed.
15. _____ is a form of nonfiction that combines factual reporting with narrative techniques
and stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction.
You may answer the questions in an online platform by accessing this link
→ https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/7BRQU7X and type in the password module14. Get
the screen shot of your quiz, download the pdf showing your quiz results, or share the result
to your teacher via email.

Lesson A Collaboration of Literature

1 and Journalism
The main objective of this module is to develop the learners’ critical thinking
skills using literary reading materials and to develop understanding and appreciation
of the complexity of human nature and the diversity of societies.

Let’s Recall

A narrative, whether fictional or factual, tells a story. It contains literary elements

such as plot, characters, setting, conflict, and a theme which is usually made clear by
how the main conflict is resolved. On the other hand, a straight or hard news stories
are stories that tell only the most essential information in a short and fair manner. This
story typically follows the inverted pyramid style, which organizes information by
descending order of importance or places the most newsworthy information at the
beginning of the article.

Directions: Read the headline of the news story and guest the cause of the conflict
among the members of the family. Write your answer on a separate answer sheet.
 Let’s Explore
At a time when literature was still considered aesthetically superior to journalistic
writing, Nick Joaquin called for deconstructing the old traditional distinction between
the two genres. He wrote regular literary journalism pieces in the Philippine Free Press
under his pseudonym Quijano de Manila.
His work, “The House on Zapote Street” presented facts and truths about a family
culture, jealousy, crook principles, tyrannical behavior, and other facets of life in a
creative manner.
Let’s meet the author!
Nick Joaquin (1917-2004) is one of the Philippines’ greatest
writers. He is a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary journalist,
and biographer whose works portray the different heritage of the Filipino
people. He started writing before the war and his first story, “Three
Generations” has been hailed as a masterpiece. He has been a recipient
of almost all the prestigious awards in literature and the arts, including
the National Artist Award for Literature in1976. He was also conferred,
among other recognitions, the Republic Cultural Heritage Award for
Literature in 1961, the Journalist of the Year Award in the early 1960s, the Book of the
Year Award in 1979 for his Almanac for Manileños, the National Book award for several
of his works, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative
Communication Arts (the Asian counterpart of Nobel Prize) in 1996, and the Tanglaw ng
Lahi Award in 1997.

Nick Joaquin, is regarded by many as the most distinguished Filipino writer in

English. He wrote so variedly and well about so many aspects of the Filipino. He has also
enriched the English language with critics coining “Joaquinesque” to describe his baroque
Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of English based on Filipinisms.

Among his voluminous works are The Woman Who Had Two Navels, A Portrait of
the Artist as Filipino, Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young, The Ballad of the Five
Battles, Rizal in Saga, Almanac for Manileños, Cave and Shadows.

ACTIVITY 1: Reading Time!

“The House on Zapote Street”
(Quijano de Manila)

The story was written in a narrative and descriptive manner. It clearly narrated every
scene in the story and was able to describe the characters and the events. The story narrates
the nightmare that happened in that place, and the struggles the house witnessed.
Dr. Leonardo Quitangon, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered, cool-tempered Caviteno, was
still fancy-free at 35 when he returned to Manila, after six years abroad. Then, at the University
of Santo Tomas, where he went to teach, he met Lydia Cabading, a medical intern. He liked her
quiet ways and began to date her steadily. They went to the movies and to basketball games and
he took her home a number of times to his house in Sta. Mesa, to meet his family.
Lydia was then only 23 and looked like a sweet unspoiled girl, but there was a slight air
of mystery about her. Leonardo and his brothers noticed that she almost never spoke of her
home life or her childhood; she seemed to have no gay early memories to share with her lover,
as sweethearts usually crave to do. And whenever it looked as if she might have to stay out late,
she would say: “I’ll have to tell my father first”. And off she would go, wherever she was, to tell
her father, though it meant going all the way to Makati, Rizal, where she lived with her parents
in a new house on Zapote Street.
The Quitangons understood that she was an only child and that her parents were,
therefore, over-zealous in looking after her. Her father usually took her to school and fetched
her after classes, and had been known to threaten to arrest young men who stared at her on the
streets or pressed too close against her on jeepneys. This high-handedness seemed natural
enough, for Pablo Cabading, Lydia's father was a member of the Manila Police Department.
After Lydia finished her internship, Leonardo Quitangon became a regular visitor at the
house on Zapote Street; he was helping her prepare for the board exams. Her family seemed to
like him. The mother Anunciacion, struck him as a mousy woman unable to speak save at her
husband's bidding. There was a foster son, a little boy the Cabadings had adopted. As for Pablo
Cabading, he was a fine strapping man, an Ilocano, who gave the impression of being taller than
he was and looked every inch an agent of the law: full of brawn and guts and force, and
smoldering with vitality. He was a natty dresser, liked youthful colors and styles, decorated his
house with pictures of himself and, at 50, looked younger than his inarticulate wife, who was
actually two years younger than he.
When Leonardo started frequenting the house on Zapote Street, Cabading told him, “I’ll
be frank with you. None of Lydia's boyfriends ever lasted ten minutes in this house. I didn't like
them and I told them so and made them get out." Then he added laying a hand on the young
doctor's shoulder, “But I like you. You are a good man."
The rest of the household were two very young maids who spoke almost no Tagalog, and
two very fierce dogs, chained to the front door in the day time, unchained in the front yard at
night.
The house of Zapote Street is in the current architectural cliché: the hoity-toity
Philippine split-level sub urban style—a half-story perched above the living area, to which it is
bound by the slope of the roof and which it over looks from a balcony, so that a person standing
in the sala can see the doors of the bedrooms and bathroom just above his head. The house is
painted, as is also the current fashion, in various pastel shades, a different color to every three
or four planks. The inevitable piazza curves around two sides of the house, which has a strip of
lawn and a low wall all around it. The Cabadings did not keep a car, but the house provides for
an eventual garage and driveway. This, and the furniture, the shell lamps and the fancy bric-a-
brac that clutters the narrow house indicate that the Cabadings had not only risen high enough
to justify their split-level pretensions but were expecting to go higher.
Lydia took the board exams and passed them. The lovers asked her father's permission
to wed. Cabading laid down two conditions: that the wedding would be a lavish one and that
was to pay a downy of P5,000.00. The young doctor said that he could afford the big wedding
but the big dowry. Cabading shrugged his shoulders; no dowry, no marriage.
Leonarado spent some frantic weeks scraping up cash and managed to gather
P3,000.00. Cabading agreed to reduce his price to that amount, then laid down a final condition:
after the wedding, Lydia and Leonardo must make their home at the house on Zapote Street.
“I built this house for Lydia,” said Cabading,"and I want her to live here even when she's
married. Besides, her mother couldn't bear to be separated from Lydia, her only child."
There was nothing. Leonardo could do but consent.
Lydia and Leonardo were married on September 10 last year, at the Cathedral of Manila,
with Mrs. Delfin Montano, wife of the Cavite governor, and Senator Ferdinand Marcos as
sponsors. The reception was at the Selecta. The status gods of Suburbia were properly
propitiated. Then the newlyweds went to live on Zapote Street -- and Leonardo almost
immediately realized why Lydia had been so reticent and mysterious about her home life.
The cozy family group that charmed him in courtship days turned out to be rather too
cozy. The entire household revolved in submission around Pablo Cabading. The daughter,
mother, the foster-son, the maids and even the dogs trembled when he lifted his voice. Cabading
liked to brag that he was a ‘killer’; in 1946 he had shot dead two American soldiers he caught
robbing a neighbor's house in Quezon City.
Leonardo found himself within a family turned in on itself, self-enclosed and self-
sufficient — in a house that had no neighbors and no need for any. His brothers say that he
made more friends in the neighborhood within the couple of months he stayed there than the
Cabadings had made in a year. Pablo Cabading did not like what his to stray out of, and what
was not his to stray into, his house. And within that house he wanted to be the center of
everything, even of his daughter's honeymoon.
Whenever Leonardo and Lydia went to the movies or for a ride, Cabading insisted on
being taken along. If they seated him on the back seat while they sat together in front, he raged
and glowered. He wanted to sit in front with them.
When Leonardo came home from work, he must not tarry with Lydia in the bedroom
chatting; both of them must come down at once to the sala and talk with their father. Leonardo
explained that he was not much of a talking. “That's why I fell in love with Lydia, because she's
the quiet type too”. No matter, said Cabading. They didn't have to talk at all; he would do all the
talking himself, so long as they sat there in the sala before his eyes.
So, his compact family group sat around him at night, silent, while Cabading talked and
talked. But, finally, the talk had stop, the listeners had to rise and retire - and it was this moment
that Cabading seemed unable to bear. He couldn't bear to see Lydia and Leonardo rise and go
up together to their room. One night, unable to bear it any longer he shouted, as they rose to
retire:
“Lydia, you sleep with your mother tonight. She has a toothache.” After a dead look at
her husband, Lydia obeyed. Leonardo went to bed alone.
The incident would be repeated: there would always be other reasons, besides Mrs.
Cabading's toothaches.
What horrified Leonardo was not merely what being done to him but his increasing
acquiesces. Had his spirit been so quickly broken? Was he, too, like the rest of the household,
being drawn to revolve, silently and obediently, around the master of the house?
Once, late at night, he suddenly showed up at his parents’ house in Sta. Mesa and his
brothers were shocked at the great in him within so short a time. He looked terrified. What had
happened? His car had broken down and he had had it repaired and now he could not go home.
But why not?
“You don't know my father-in-law,” he groaned. “Everybody in that house must be in by
a certain hour. Otherwise, the gates are locked, the doors are locked, the windows are locked.
Nobody can get in anymore!”
A younger brother, Gene offered to accompany him home and explain to Cabading what
had happened. The two rode to Zapote and found the house dark and locked up.
Says Gene: “That memory makes my blood boil -- my eldest brother fearfully clanging
and clanging the gate, and nobody to let him in. I wouldn’t have waited a second, but he waited
five, ten, fifteen minutes, knocking at the gate, begging to be let in. I couldn't have it!”
In the end the two brothers rode back to Sta. Mesa, where Leonardo spent the night.
When he returned to the house on Zapote the next day, his father-in-law greeted him with a
sarcastic question, “Where were you? At a basketball game?”
Leonardo became anxious to take his wife away from that house. He talked it over with
her, then they went to tell her father. Said Cabading bluntly, “If she goes with you, I'll shoot her
head before your eyes.”
His brothers urged him to buy a gun, but Leonardo felt in his pocket and said, “I’ve got
my rosary.” Cried his brother Gene, “You can't fight a gun with a rosary!”
When Lydia took her oath as a physician, Cabading announced that only he and his
wife would accompany Lydia to the ceremony. It would not be fair, he said, to let Leonardo, who
had not borne the expenses of Lydia's education, to share that moment of glory too. Leonardo
said that, if he would like them at least to use his car. The offer was rejected. Cabading preferred
to hire a taxi.
After about two months at the house on Zapote Street, Leonardo moved out, alone. Her
parents would not let Lydia go and she herself was too afraid to leave. During the succeeding
weeks, efforts to contact her proved futile. The house on Zapote became even more closed to the
outside world. If Lydia emerged from it at all, she was always accompanied by her father, mother,
or foster-brother, or by all three.
When her husband heard that she had started working at a hospital he went there to
see her but instead met her father coming to fetch her. The very next day, Lydia was no longer
working at the hospital.
Leonardo knew that she was with child and he was determined to bear all her prenatal
expenses. He went to Zapote one day when her father was out and persuaded her to come out
to the yard but could not make her make the money he offered across the locked gate. “Just
mail it,” she cried and fled into the house. He sent her a check by registered mail; it was promptly
mailed back to him.
On Christmas Eve, Leonardo returned to the house on Zapote with a gift for his wife,
and stood knocking at the gate for so long the neighbors gathered at windows to watch him.
Finally, he was allowed to enter, present his gift to Lydia and talk with her for a moment. She
said that her father seemed agreeable to a meeting with Leonardo's father, to discuss the young
couple’s problem. So, the elder Quitangon and two of his younger sons went to Zapote one
evening. The lights were on in Cabading house, but nobody responded to their knocking. Then
all the lights were turned off. As they stood wondering what to do, a servant girl came and told
them that the master was out. (Lydia would later tell them that they had not been admitted
because her father had not yet decided what she was to say to them.)
The last act of this curious drama began Sunday last week when Leonardo was
astounded to receive an early-morning phone call from his wife. She said she could no longer
bear to be parted from him and bade him pick her up at a certain church, where she was with
her foster brother. Leonardo rushed to the church, picked up two, dropped the boy off at a street
near Zapote, then sped with Lydia to Maragondon, Cavite where the Quitangons have a house.
He stopped at a gasoline station to call up his brothers in Sta. Mesa, to tell them what he had
done and to warn them that Cabading would surely show up there. “Get Mother out of the
house,” he told his brothers.
At about ten in the morning, a taxi stopped before the Quitangon house in Sta. Mesa
and Mrs. Cabading got out and began screaming at the gate: “Where's my daughter? Where's
my daughter?” Gene and Nonilo Quitangon went out to the gate and invited her to come in. “No!
No! All I want is my daughter!” she screamed. Cabading, who was inside the waiting taxi, then
got out and demanded that the Quitangons produce Lydia. Vexed, Nonilo Quitangon cried:
“Abah, what have we do with where your daughter is? Anyway, she's with her husband.” At that,
Cabading ran to the taxi, snatched a submachine gun from a box, and trained it on Gene
Quitangon. (Nonilo had run into the house to get a gun.)
“Produce my daughter at once or I'll shoot you all down!” shouted Cabading.
Gene, the gun’s muzzle practically in his face, sought to pacify the older man: “Why can’t
we talk this over quietly, like decent people, inside the house? Look, we’re creating a scandal in
the neighborhood.”
Cabading lowered his gun. “I give you till midnight tonight to produce my daughter,” he
growled. “If you don't, you better ask the PC to guard this house!”
Then he and his wife drove off in the taxi, just a moment before the mobile police patrol
the neighbors had called arrived. The police advised Gene to file a complaint with the fiscal’s
office. Instead, Gene decided to go to the house on Zapote Street, hoping that ‘diplomacy’ would
work.
To his surprise, he was admitted at once by a smiling and very genial Cabading. “You
are a brave man,” he told Gene, “and a lucky one”, And he ordered a coke brought for the visitor.
Gene said that he was going to Cavite but could not promise to ‘produce’ Lydia by midnight, “It
was up to the couple to decide whether they would come back.”
It was about eight in the evening when Gene arrived in Maragondon. As his car drove
into the yard of this family’s old house, Lydia and Leonardo appeared at a window and frantically
asked what had happened. “Nothing,” said Gene, and their faces lit up. “We're having our
honeymoon at last,” Lydia told Gene as he entered the house. And the old air of dread, of mystery,
did seem to have lifted from her face. But it was there again when, after supper, he told them
what had happened in Sta. Mesa.
“I can't go back,” she moaned. “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!”
“He has cooled down now,” said Gene. “He seems to be a reasonable man after all.”
“Oh, you don't know him!” cried Lydia. “I’ve known him longer, and I’ve never, never
been happy!”
And the brothers at last had glimpses of the girlhood she had been so reticent about.
She told them of Cabading's baffling changes of temper, especially toward her; how smiles and
found words and caresses could abruptly turn into beatings when his mood darkened.
Leonardo said that his father-in-law was an artista, “Remember how he used to fan me
when I supped there while I was courting Lydia?”
(At about that time, in Sta. Mesa, Nonilo Quitangon, on guard at the gate of his family's
house, saw Cabading drive past three times in a taxi.)
 “I can't force you to go back,” said Gene. “You’ll have to decide that yourselves. But what,
actually, are you planning to do? You can't stay forever here in Maragondon. What would you
live on?”
The two said they would talk it over for a while in their room. Gene waited at the supper
table and when a longtime had passed and they had not come back he went to the room. Finding
the door ajar, he looked in. Lydia and Leonardo were on their knees on the floor, saying the
rosary, Gene returned to the supper table. After another long wait, the couple came out of the
room.
Said Lydia: “We have prayed together and we have decided to die together. We’ll go back
with you, in the morning.”
They we’re back in Manila early the next morning. Lydia and Leonardo went straight to
the house in Sta. Mesa, where all their relatives and friends warned them not to go back to the
house on Zapote Street, as they had decided to do. Confused anew, they went to the Manila
police headquarters to ask for advice, but the advice given seemed drastic to them: summon
Cabading and have it out with him in front of his superior officer. Leonardo's father then offered
to go to Zapote with Gene and Nonilo, to try to reason with Cabading.
They found him in good humor, full of smiles and hearty greetings. He reproached his
balae for not visiting him before. "I did come once," drily remarked the elder Quitangon, "but no
one would open the gate." Cabading had his wife called. She came into the room and sat down.
"Was I in the house that night our balae came?" her husband asked her. "No, you were out," she
replied. Having spoken her piece, she got up and left the room. (On their various visits to the
house on Zapote Street, the Quitangons noticed that Mrs. Cabading appeared only when
summoned and vanished as soon as she had done whatever was expected of her).
Cabading then announced that he no longer objected to Lydia's moving out of the house
to live with her husband in an apartment of their own. Overjoyed, the Quitangons urged
Cabading to go with them in Sta. Mesa, so that the newlyweds could be reconciled with Lydia's
parents. Cabading readily agreed.
When they arrived in Sta. Mesa, Lydia and Leonardo were sitting on a sofa in the sala.
“Why have you done this?” her father chided her gently. “If you wanted to move out, did
you have to run away?” To Leonardo, he said: “And you - are angry with me?” house by
themselves. Gene Quitangon felt so elated he proposed a celebration: "I'll throw ablow-out!
Everybody is invited! This is on me!" So they all went to Max's in Quezon City and had a very
merry fried-chicken party. "Why, this is a family reunion!" laughed Cabading. "This should be
on me!" But Gene would not let him pay the bill.
Early the next morning, Cabading called up the Sta. Mesa house to pay that his wife
had fallen ill. Would Lydia please visit her? Leonardo and Lydia went to Zapote, found nothing
the matter with her mother, and returned to Sta. Mesa. After lunch, Leonardo left for his classes.
Then Cabading called up again. Lydia's mother refused to eat and kept asking for her daughter.
Would Lydia please drop in again at the house on Zapote? Gene and Nonilo Quitangon said they
might as well accompany Lydia there and start moving out her things.
When they arrived at the Zapote house, the Quitangon brothers were amused by what
they saw. Mrs. Cabading, her eyes closed, lay on the parlor sofa, a large towel spread out beneath
her. “She has been lying there all day,” said Cabading, “tossing restlessly, asking for you, Lydia.”
Gene noted that the towel was neatly spread out and didn't look crumpled at all, and that Mrs.
Cabading was obviously just pretending to be asleep. He smiled at the childishness of the
stratagem, but Lydia was past being amused. She went straight to her room, were they heard
her pulling out drawers. While the Quitangons and Cabading were conversing, the supposedly
sick mother slipped out of the sofa and went upstairs to Lydia’s room.
Cabading told the Quitangons that he wanted Lydia and Leonardo to stay there; at the
house in Zapote. “I thought all that was settled last night,” Gene groaned.
“I built this house for Lydia," persisted Cabading, "and this house is hers. If she and her
husband want to be alone, I and my wife will move out of here, turn this house over to them.”
Gene wearily explained that Lydia and Leonardo preferred the apartment they had already
leased.
Suddenly the men heard the clatter of a drawer falling upstairs. Gene surmised that it
had fallen in a struggle between mother and daughter. “Excuse me,” said Cabading, rising. As
he went upstairs, he said to the Quitangons, over his shoulder, “Don't misunderstand me. I’m
not going to ‘coach’ Lydia”. He went into Lydia’s room and closed the door behind him.
 After a long while, Lydia and her father came out of the room together and came down
to the sala together. Lydia was clasping a large crucifix. There was no expression on her face
when she told the Quitangon boys to go home. “But I thought we were going to start moving
your things out this afternoon,” said Gene. She glanced at the crucifix and said it was one of the
first things she wanted taken to her new home. “Just tell Narding to fetch me,” she said.
Back in Sta. Mesa, Gene and Nonilo had the painful task of telling Leonardo, when he
phoned, that Lydia was back in the house on Zapote. “Why did you leave her there?” cried
Leonardo. “He’ll beat her up! I’m going to get her.” Gene told him not you go alone, to pass by
the Sta. Mesa house first and pick up Nonilo. Gene could not go along; he had to catch a bus
for Subic, where he works. When Leonardo arrived, Gene told him: “Don't force Lydia to go with
you. If she doesn’t want to, leave at once. Do not, for any reason, be persuaded to stay there
too.”
When his brother had left for Zapote, Gene realized that he was not sure he was going
to Subic. He left too worried. He knew he couldn’t rest easy until he had seen Lydia and Leonardo
settled in their new home. The minutes quickly ticked past as he debated with himself whether
he should stay or catch that bus. Then, at about a quarter to seven, the phone rang. It was
Nonilo, in anguish.
“Something terrible has happened in Lydia's room! I heard four shots,” he cried.
“Who are up there?”
“Lydia and Narding and the Cabadings.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Gene sent a younger brother to inform the family lawyer and to alert the Makati police.
Then he drove like mad to Zapote. It was almost dark when he got there. The house stood
perfectly still, not a light on inside. He watched it from a distance but could see no movement,
Then a taxi drove up and out jumped Nonilo. He had telephoned from a gasoline station. He
related what had happened.
He said that when he and Leonardo arrived at the Zapote house, Cabading motioned
Leonardo upstairs: "Lydia is in her room." Leonardo went up; Cabading gave Nonilo a cup of
coffee and chatted amiably with him. Nonilo saw Mrs. Cabading go up to Lydia's room with a
glass of milk. A while later, they heard a woman scream, followed by sobbing. “There seems to
be trouble up there,” said Cabading, and he went upstairs. Nonilo saw him enter Lydia's room,
leaving the door open. A few moments later, the door was closed. Then Nonilo heard three shots.
He stood petrified, but when he heard a fourth shot he dashed out of the house, ran to a gasoline
station, and called up Gene.
Nonilo pointed to the closed front gate; he was sure he had left it open when he ran out.
The brothers suspected that Cabading was lurking somewhere in the darkness, with his gun.
Before them loomed the dark house, now so sinister and evil in their eyes. The upper
story that jutted forward, forming the house's chief facade, bore a curious sign: Dra. Lydia C.
Cabading, Lady Physician. (Apparently, Lydia continued-or was made-to use her maiden name.)
Above the sign was the garland of colored lights that have been put up for Christmas and had
not yet been removed. It was an ice-cold night, the dark of the moon, but the two brothers
shivered not from the wind blowing down the lonely murky street but from pure horror of the
house that had so fatally thrust itself into their lives.
But the wind remembered when the sighs it heard here were only the sighing of the ripe
grain, when the cries it heard were only the crying of birds nesting in the reeds, for all these new
suburbs in Makati used to be grassland, rice land marshland, or pastoral solitudes where few
cared to go, until the big city spilled hither, replacing the uprooted reeds with split-levels,
pushing noisy little streets into the heart of the solitude, and collecting here from all over the
country the uprooted souls that now moan or giggle where once the carabao wallowed and the
frogs croaked day and night. In very new suburbs, one feels human sorrow to be a grass
intrusion on the labors of nature. Even barely two years ago, the talahib still rose man-high on
the plot of ground on Zapote Street where now stands the relic of an ambiguous love.
As the Quitangon brothers shivered in the darkness, a police van arrived and unloaded
quite a large contingent of policemen. The Quitangons warned them that Cabading had a
submachinegun. The policemen crawled toward the front gate and almost jumped when a young
girl came running across the yard, shaking with terror, and shrieking gibberish. She was one of
the maids. She and her companion and the foster son had fled from the house when they heard
the shooting and had been hiding in the yard. It was they who had closed the front gate.
 A policeman volunteered to enter the house through the back door; Gene said he would
try the front one. He peered in at a window and could detect no one in the sala. He slipped a
hand inside, opened the front door and entered, just as the policeman came in from the kitchen.
As they crept up the stairs, they heard a moaning in Lydia's room. They tried the door but it was
blocked from inside. "Push it, push it," wailed a woman's voice. The policeman pushed the door
hard and what was blocking it gave. He groped for the switch and turned light. As they entered,
he and Gene shuddered at what they saw.
The entire room was spattered with blood. On the floor, blocking the door, lay Mrs.
Cabading. She had been shot in the chest and stomach but was still alive. The policeman tried
to get a statement from her but all she could say was: "My hand, my hand- it hurts! "She was
lying across the legs of her daughter, who lay on top of her husband's body. Lydia was still
clutching an armful of clothes; Leonardo was holding a clothes hanger. He had been shot in the
breast; she, in the heart. They had died instantly, together.
Sprawled face up on his daughter's bed, his mouth agape and his eyes bulging open as
though still staring in horror and the bright blood splashed on his face lay Pablo Cabading.
“Oh, I cursed him!” cries Eugenio Quitangon with passion. “Oh, I cursed him as he lay
there dead, God forgive me! Yes, I cursed that dead man there on that bed, for I had wanted to
find him alive!”
From the position of the bodies and from Mrs. Cabading's statements later at the
hospital, it appears that Cabading shot Lydia while she was shielding her husband, and Mrs.
Cabading when she tried to shield Lydia. Then he turned the gun on himself, and it's an
indication of the man's uncommon strength and power that, after the first shot, through the
right side of the head, which must have been mortal enough, he seems to have been able, as his
hands dropped to his breast, to fire at himself a second time. The violent spasm of agony must
have sent the gun - a .45 caliber pistol-flying from his hand. It was found at the foot of the bed,
near Mrs. Cabading's feet.
The drama of the jealous father had ended at about half-past six in the evening, Tuesday
last week.
The next day, hurrying commuters slowed down and a whispering crowd gathered before
1074 Zapote Street, to watch the police and the reporters going through the pretty little house
that Pablo Cabading built for his Lydia.

Activity 2: Vocabulary Building

Directions: Use context clues to get the meaning of the following italicized words.
Choices are given in a box. Write the answer in a separate sheet.

rented stay pain

quiet happy darkly
boast loneliness confusing
threatening worried frankly

1. She seemed to have no gay early memories to share with her lover, as sweethearts usually
crave to do.
2. Then the newlyweds went to live on Zapote Street -- and Leonardo almost immediately
realized why Lydia had been so reticent and mysterious about her home life.
3. Cabading liked to brag that he was a ‘killer’; in 1946 he had shot dead two American soldiers
he caught robbing a neighbor's house in Quezon City.
4. When Leonardo came home from work, he must not tarry with Lydia in the bedroom
chatting; both of them must come down at once to the sala and talk with their father.
5. Leonardo became anxious to take his wife away from that house. He talked it over with her,
then they went to tell her father.
6. “If she goes with you, I'll shoot her head before your eyes,” said Cabading bluntly.
7. She told them of Cabading's baffling changes of temper, especially toward her; how smiles
and found words and caresses could abruptly turn into beatings when his mood darkened.
8. Gene wearily explained that Lydia and Leonardo preferred the apartment they had already
leased.
9. Then, at about a quarter to seven, the phone rang. It was Nonilo, in anguish. “Something
terrible has happened in Lydia's room! I heard four shots,” he cried.
10. Before them loomed the dark house, now so sinister and evil in their eyes.

Let’s Elaborate
Quijano de Manila’s work is written creatively with the elements of a short story.
He developed the plot with a proper sequence of events that highlighted the peak of the
action. He wrote the story in a narrative manner to express his portrayal of what really
happened in the house on Zapote Street.

Nick Joaquin was a journalist and a literary writer, and he was somehow
described as working more like sociologist than a journalist because his journalism
incorporated insights into events and characters, creating a masterpiece.

Activity 3 Literary Analysis

Directions: Answer the following questions. Write the answer on a separate sheet.
1. Infer from the story how the victims, the young couples who really loved each
other, lived a miserable life?
_________________________________________________________________________________
2. How did the author describe each character?
_________________________________________________________________________________
3. Is the story an example of a short story that is under creative writing? Justify
your answer.
_________________________________________________________________________________
4. What makes the story a literary journalism?
_________________________________________________________________________________

Literary Appreciation

It is a writing composed of the real, or of facts, that employs the same literary
Creative
devices as fiction such as setting, voice/tone, character development, etc. This
Nonfiction
makes it different (more “creative”) than standard nonfiction writing.

It is a form of nonfiction that combines factual reporting with narrative techniques

and stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction. This form of writing can
also be called narrative journalism or new journalism. It is regarded as one type of
creative nonfiction. A literary journalist, like Nick Joaquin, faces a complex
Literary challenge. He/ she must deliver facts and comment on current events in ways that
Journalism speak to much larger big picture truths about culture, politics, and other major
facets of life; moreover, he/she is more tied to authenticity than other writers.
Literary journalism exists for a reason: to start conversations.
Nordquist, Richard (https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-literary-journalism-
1691132)
 Take Note:
Elements of a Story
▪ Characters: They perform the actions and speak the dialogue of a story.
▪ Setting: It refers not only to the physical location, but also the time the action takes place.
▪ Plot: It relates to the events that happen in a story. (Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling
Action, Denouement)
▪ Conflict: It can be thought of as a challenge or problem that drives the action of the story.
▪ Theme: It refers to the underlying insight, the moral or idea that the writer.
▪ Point of View: It is the angle from which the story is narrated.

Let’s Dig In
Activity 4 Literary Appreciation
Directions: Respond critically to the activity. You may copy the format on short bond
paper that will serve as your answer sheet/s.

A. Characters: Choose and cut pictures of persons which you think describe the
personality of the main characters in the story. Then paste each on the given box, and
on the provided speech balloon describe each character using pronoun “I” which
indicates first person.

Image of Iamge of
Pablo Leonardo
Quitangon
Cabading

Image of Image of
Lydia Lydia’s
Cabading mother

Picture of
Gene
Quitangon

B. Setting: Choose and cut a picture of a house which you think looks like the house
in Zapote Street and describe it.
The house on Zapote
Street is…
C. Plot: Fill in each box to summarize the story. Write your response using one (1) or
two (2) sentences only.

D. Conflict: Identify which you think is the conflict of the story and justify your
response.

E. Theme: Identify which you think is the theme of the story and justify your response.

Let’s Remember

The story “The House on Zapote Street” reveals the struggles of the two lovers in real-life
who met their tragic end.

Directions: Arrange the jumbled WORDS to form a well-written sentence with logical and
sensible meaning about literature.

In other words…
“In experience and literature are human reflected reality.”
✓

Let’s Apply

You know that journalism is very much different from literature. In this lesson, you
have learned that you can use journalism to create a literature using the true characters,
settings and actions.
Directions: Complete the diagram below by enumerating the characteristics of journalism
and literature to recognize the differences of the two; and the characteristics of literary
journalism if you combine the two as creative nonfiction.

LITERATURE
LITERARY JOURNALISM
JOURNALISM

Let’s Evaluate
Directions: Identify what is being defined in each item. Write the letter of the answer in your
answer sheet.

1. _____ is a form of nonfiction that combines factual reporting with narrative techniques and
stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction.
A. Literary Journalism C. Fiction
B. Literature D. Journalism
2. _____ must be needed to the angle from which the story is narrated.
A. Characters B. Setting C. Plot D. Point of view
3. _____ is about the effect the writer creates in the reader and how they evoke it through their
use of language.
A. Tone B. Mood C. Theme D. Conflict
4. _____ is the time and place of which the story revolves.
A. Characters B. Setting C. Plot D. Point of view
5. _____ is not merely a form of an argument between two characters, but rather it is a form of
opposition that faces the main character.
A. Tone B. Mood C. Theme D. Conflict
6. _____ is the narrative sequence on how the author arranged his or her ideas. This is a planned,
logical series of event that has its own beginning, middle, and end.
A. Characters B. Setting C. Plot D. Point of view
7. _____ is where the events of the story have become a little complicated, and the conflict of the
story is revealed.
A. Rising action B. Falling action C. Introduction D. Denouement
8. _____ is the beginning of the story, in which the character and setting are described by the
author.
A. Rising action B. Falling action C. Introduction D. Denouement
9. _____ is where the events and conflicts of the story begin to resolve of themselves. The readers
will have a hint of what will happen next and whether the conflict will be resolved or not.
A. Rising action B. Falling action C. Introduction D. Denouement
10. _____ is the outcome of the story. The events and conflicts are untangled and resolved.
A. Rising action B. Falling action C. Introduction D. Denouement
11. _____ is a writing composed of the real, or of facts, that employs the same literary devices
as fiction such as setting, voice/tone, character development, etc.
A. Creative Nonfiction C. Literary Journalism
B. Literature D. Journalism
12. _____ are most often people or animals depending on the nature of the story. Writers use
them to perform the actions and speak the dialogue of a story.
A. Characters B. Setting C. Plot D. Point of view
13. _____ is the attitude the writer displays towards his subject or theme.
A. Mood B. Tone C. Theme D. Conflict
14. _____ is the highest point of the interest and the turning point of the story.
A. Mood B. Tone C. Conflict D. Climax
15. _____ refers to the underlying insight, the moral or idea that the writer is expressing
through the story. It is often thought of as the ‘message’ of the story.
A. Mood B. Tone C. Theme D. Conflict

You may answer the questions in an online platform by accessing this link
→ https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/ABRCEAK and type in the password module14. Get
the screen shot of your quiz, download the pdf showing your quiz results, or share the result
to your teacher via email.

References
Mata, E., et.al. (2016). 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World for SHS. Malabon City:
Mutya Publishing House, Inc.
Sanchez, et.al. (2016). 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World. Quezon City: Vibal
Publishing, House, Inc.
Uychoco, M. (2016). 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World. Manila: Rex Book Store.
Nordquist, R. (2020). What Is Literary Journalism? https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-literary-
journalism-1691132
UVM Writing Center. (n.d.) Writing in your major Tips from Tutors. Creative Writing. Retrieved from
https://www.uvm.edu/wid/writingcenter/tutortips/nonfiction.html

Development Team of the Module

Writer: MS. MAGDALENA O. SORILLANO
Editor: MS. LOVELYN M. INTAL
MS. ANGELIQUE P. TAGUBA
Reviewers:
Illustrator: MR. ROBERTSON N. BAYLON
Layout Artist: MR. LEO U. PANTI
Management Team: DR. MARGARITO B. MATERUM, SDS
DR. GEORGE P. TIZON, SGOD Chief
DR. ELLERY G. QUINTIA, CID Chief
MR. NOEL T. BALUBAL, EPS-English
MR. QUINN NORMAN Q. ARREZA, SHS Focal Person
DR. DAISY L. MATAAC, EPS – LRMS/ALS

For inquiries, please write or call:

Schools Division of Taguig City and Pateros Upper Bicutan Taguig City

Telefax: 8384251

Email Address: sdo.tapat@deped.gov.ph