Survey of Philippine Literature ENG-12-LP-2-American-Period-2022

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2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 14
UNIT 2: AMERICAN PERIOD LITERATURE
2.0 Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Appreciate the beauty and power of language through different literary genre and its tremendous
civilizing influence;
2. Identify factors and influences (historical, cultural, and sociopolitical trend) that produced and
shape the literature from these periods; and
3. Discuss literary selections with the purpose of relating significant human experience as well as
extracting aesthetic values to enhance students’ moral and ethical sense which will make them a
better person and a functional member of the human community;
ACTIVITY 1:
Our country have been colonized by the Americans for several

decades. From their influence, pick a symbol, a belief, a concept or
idea that most Filipino considered “off” (negative or bad). Write
an essay pointing out its beauty or positive effect.
(Note: this will count towards your exercises—10 points)
2.1 Introduction
The Americans brought about new chang-

es in Philippine literature. New literary forms
such as free verse in poetry, the modern short
story and the critical essay were introduced.
American influence was deeply entrenched with
the firm establishment of English as the medium
of instruction in all schools and with literary
modernism that highlighted the writer's indi-
viduality and cultivated consciousness of craft,
sometimes at the expense of social conscious-
ness. (Ortega 2005)
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3 Frames in American Period Literature
2.1.1 Features of American Literature
During the first year of the American period, the languages used in writing were Spanish
and Tagalog and the dialects of the different regions, but Spanish and Tagalog predominated. In
1910, a new group started to write in English. Hence, Spanish, Tagalog, the Vernaculars, and fi-
nally English, were the mediums used in literature during these times. While the three groups
were one in their ideas and spirit, they differed in their methods of reporting. The writers in
Spanish will not write about nationalism like honoring Rizal and other Filipino heroes. The
writers in Tagalog continues in their lamentations on the conditions of the country and their at-
tempts to arouse love for one’s native tongue. The writers in English imitated the themes and
methods of the Americans.
The poet, and later, National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa used free verse and es-
poused the dictum, "Art for art's sake" to the chagrin of other writers more concerned with the
utilitarian aspect of literature. Another maverick in poetry who used free verse and talked about
illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her
time. Despite the threat of censorship by the new dispensation, more writers turned up
"seditious works" and popular writing in the native languages bloomed through the weekly out-
lets like Liwayway and Bisaya.
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The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated modern-
ism in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses in the 1960s such
as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.
While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language, Filipinos
seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the Philippines Free Press,
the College Folio and Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez Benitez's "Dead Stars" published in 1925
was the first successful short story in English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and
Manuel E. Arguilla showed exceptional skills with the short story.
Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the provinces.
Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Peña and Patricio Mariano were writing mini-
mal narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction called dali or pasingaw (sketch).
The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences in the
adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa who also penned Ang Palad ni
Pepe after Charles Dicken's David Copperfield even as the realist tradition was kept alive in the
novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar, among others.
It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the novel in
the vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines like Liwayway, Bisa-
ya, Hiligaynon and Bannawag.
The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920's to the present. Some leading
essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura Santillan Castrence, etc.
who wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the delectation by Filipinos.
Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were Ignacio
Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez's criticism that
grabbed attention when he won the Commonwealth Literary Award for the essay in 1940 with
his "Literature and Society." This essay posited that art must have substance and that Villa's ad-
herence to "Art for Art's Sake" is decadent.
The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine literature in Eng-
lish at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical aesthetics, made writers pay
close attention to craft and "indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude" towards vernacular
writings -- a tension that would recur in the contemporary period.
Need Help?
Check this site to further your knowledge about
literature in the American period:
http://musicmediaandculture.blogspot.com/2012/11/
philippine-culture-literature-and-music.html
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2.1.2 Selected Literary Selection
2.1.2.1 Footnote to Youth (Jose Garcia Villa)
Before Reading
ACTIVITY 2: Literary Journey

(Note: This will count towards your participation—15 points)
Answer the following question:
1. What are some of the major problems faced by youth today?
2. What do you think are the effect/s of such problems?
3. Comment: “The youth is the hope of our future”
Jose Garcia Villa (August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997) was a Filipino poet, lit-
erary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded the National Art-
ist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fel-
lowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken. He is known to have introduced
the "reversed consonance rime scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the exten-
sive use of punctuation marks—especially commas, which made him known as
the Comma Poet. He used the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle,
Lion"), based on the characters he derived from himself.
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his fa-
ther about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and led
it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, he wanted his father to know what he
had to say was of serious importance as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally
decided to tell it, but a thought came to him that his father might refuse to consider it. His father
was a silent hardworking farmer, who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his
mother, Dodong’s grandmother. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could
help his mother in the housework. “I will tell him. I will tell it to him.”
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy
smell. Many slender soft worm emerged from the further rows and then burrowed again deeper
into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled clammilu
over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not
bother to look where into the air, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he
was not young anymore.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast
turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the an-
imal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it and the carabao be-
gan to eat. Dodong looked at it without interest.
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Dodong started homeward thinking how he would break his news to his father. He want-
ed to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, then down on his up-
per lip was dark-these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man – he was a
man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it, although he was by nature low in stature.
Thinking himself man – grown, Dodong felt he could do anything. He walked faster prodded
by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily.
He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown, he
thought wild young dreams of himself and Teang, his girl.
She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable
she was to him. She made him want to touch her, to hold her. She made him dream even during
the day. Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscle of his arms. Dirty. This fieldwork
was healthy invigorating, but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way
he had come, then marched obliquely to a creek.
“Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early. He stripped
himself and laid his clothes, a gray under shirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. Then he
went into the water, wet his body over and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing,
then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling was already light-
ed and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. He and his parents sat down on the
floor around the table to eat. They had fried freshwater fish, and rice, but did not partake of the
fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held the,, they felt more fluid than solid. Do-
dong broke off a piece of caked sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another
piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parent.
Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through, and went with slow care-
ful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out. But he was tired and now, feld
lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the house-
work. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him, again. Do-
dong knew, Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was
afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward, Do-
dong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth, he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he
would not be any bolder than his father. Dodong said while his mother was out that he was go-
ing to marry Teang. There it was out, what we had to say, and over which he head said it with-
out any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relived and looked at his father
expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feebled light into the window, graying the still
black temples of his father. His father look old now.
“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth, The silenece be-
came intense and cruel, and Dodong was uncomfortable and then became very angry because
his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”
His father kept gazing at him in flexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
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I asked her last night to marry me and she said… “Yes. I want your permission… I…
want… it…” There was an impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at his coldness, this
indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the
little sound it made broke dully the night stillness.
“Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early. Dodong made
a quick impassioned essay in his mind about selfishness, but later, he got confused.
“You are very young, Dodong.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“That’s very young to get married at.”
“I… I want to marry… Teang’s a good girl…
“Tell your mother,” his father said.
“You tell her, Tatay.”
“Dodong, you tell your Inay.”
“You tell her.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“You will let me marry Teang?”
“Son, if that is your wish… of course…”
There was a strange helpless light in his father’s eyes. Dodong did not read it. Too ab-
sorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he has asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father,
for a while, he even felt sorry for him about the pain I his tooth. Then he confined his mind
dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dreams…
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely so that his camiseta was
damp. He was still like a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to
leave the house, but he had left. He wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was
afraid, he felt afraid of the house. It had seemingly caged him, to compress his thoughts with
severe tyranny. He was also afraid of Teang who was giving birth in the house; she face screams
that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that. He began to wonder madly if the
process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe,
with strangeness. He was young, he realized now contradicting himself of nine months ago. He
was very young… He felt queer, troubled, uncomfortable. Dodong felt tired of standing. He sat
down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his calloused toes. Then he
thought, supposed he had ten children…
The journey of thought came to a halt when he heard his mother’s voice from the house.
Somehow, he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if
he had taken something not properly his.
“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”
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Suddenly, he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow, he was ashamed to

his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he has taken something not
properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust off his kundiman shorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”
He turned to look again and this time, he saw his father beside his mother.
“It is a boy.” His father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. His parent’s eyes seemed to pierce through
him so he felt limp. He wanted to hide or even run away from them.
“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” his mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up. He’d rather stayed in the sun.
“Dodong… Dodong.”
I’ll… come up.
Dodong traced the tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo
steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parent’s eyes. He
walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like
crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to
the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
“Son,” his father said.
And his mother: “Dodong...”
How kind their voices were. They flowed into him, making him strong.
“Teang?” Dodong said.
“She’s sleeping. But you go in…”
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his wife, asleep on the
paper with her soft black hair around her face. He did not want her to look that pale. Dodong
wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips. But again, that
feeling of embarrassment came over him, and before his parent, he did not want to be demon-
strative. The hilot was wrapping the child Dodong heard him cry. The thin voice touched his
heart. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.
Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive years, a
new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children. But they came. It seemed that
the coming of children could not helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes. Teang did
not complain, but the bearing of children tolled on her. She was shapeless and thin even if she
was young. There was interminable work that kept her tied up. Cooking, laundering. The house.
The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had no married. She did not tell Dodong this,
not wishing him to dislike her. Yet, she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong whom
she loved. There had been another suitor, Lucio older than Dodong by nine years and that was
why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong who was only seventeen. Lucio had married an-
other. Lucio, she wondered, would she have born him children? Maybe not, either. That was a
better lot. But she loved Dodong… in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask
questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be wise about many things.
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Life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams.

Why must be so? Why one was forsaken… after love?
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of the youth’ dreams.
Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken… after love.
Dodong could not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be
so to make youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet.
Dodong returned to the house, humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know little wis-
dom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen, he came home one night, very flustered and happy. Dodong
heard Blas’ steps for he could not sleep well at night. He watched Blass undress in the dark and
lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called his name and
asked why he did not sleep. “You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.
Life did not fulfill all of youth’s dreams.
Why it must be so?
Why one was forsaken after love?
“Itay..” Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
“I’m going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.
“Itay, you think it’s over.”
Dodong lay silent.
“I loved Tona and… I want her.”
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard where
everything was still and quiet.
The moonlight was cold and white.
“You want to marry Tona, Dodong said, although he did not want Blas to marry yet.
Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard…
“Yes.”
“Must you marry?”
Blas’ voice was steeled with resentment.
“I will marry Tona.”
“You have objection, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.
“Son… none…” But for Dodong, he do anything.
Youth must triumph… now. Afterward… It will be life.
As long ago, Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight.
He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.
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After Reading
ACTIVITY 3: Literary Reflection

(Note: This will part of your quiz—20 points)
1. What character is revealed of Dodong when he got tickled by the worm, jerked his foot,
flinging the worm into air yet never bothered to look at where it fell?
2. How did Teang find married life?
3. When Dodong asked permission to get married, his father felt sorry for him. So did Dodong
when Blas asked for permission to get married. They knew that life is hard after marriage,
why then do you think that they did not prevent their sons from experiencing those hard-
ships that they’ve gone through?
4. Explain the line: “Youth must triumph now. Love must triumph now. Afterwards, it will be life.”
2.1.2.2 The Wedding Dance (Amador Daguio)
Amador Daguio was born on January 8, 1912 in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. His
family moved to Lubuagan, Mountain Province, where his father was an officer
in the Philippine Constabulary. He graduated with honors in 1924 at the Lu-
buagan Elementary School as valedictorian. Daguio was already writing poems
in elementary school, according to his own account. He wrote a farewell verse
on a chalkboard at least once for a departing teacher when he was in grade 6.
For his high school studies, he moved to Pasig to attend Rizal High School
while residing with his uncle at Fort William McKinley. Daguio was too poor
to afford his college tuition and did not enroll in the first semester of 1928. He
also failed to qualify for a scholarship. He worked as a houseboy, waiter, and
caddy at Fort McKinley to earn his tuition and later enrolled at the University
of the Philippines on the second semester. He experienced financial difficulties
in his studies until an uncle from Honolulu, Hawaii funded his tuition on his
third year of study.
Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the headhigh
threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the
narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After
some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
“I’m sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it.”
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of
falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been
hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She
gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
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But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to
the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the
covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put
pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
“Why don’t you go out,” he said, “and join the dancing women?” He felt a pang inside
him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not
stir.
“You should join the dancers,” he said, “as if–as if nothing had happened.” He looked at
the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with
strange moving shadows and lights upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was
not because of anger or hate.
“Go out–go out and dance. If you really don’t hate me for this separation, go out and
dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you.
Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me.”
“I don’t want any man,” she said sharply. “I don’t want any other man.”
He felt relieved that at least she talked: “You know very well that I won’t want any other wom-
an either. You know that, don’t you? Lumnay, you know it, don’t you?”
She did not answer him.
“You know it Lumnay, don’t you?” he repeated.
“Yes, I know,” she said weakly.
“It is not my fault,” he said, feeling relieved. “You cannot blame me; I have been a good
husband to you.”
“Neither can you blame me,” she said. She seemed about to cry.
“No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say
against you.” He set some of the burning wood in place. “It’s only that a man must have a child.
Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another
chance before it is too late for both of us.”
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound
the blanket more snugly around herself.
“You know that I have done my best,” she said. “I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have
sacrificed many chickens in my prayers.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the
terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabun-
yan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?” “Kabunyan does not see
fit for us to have a child,” he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the
flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split
bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bam-
boo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in
her care through the walls.
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Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed
and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao
took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the
mountain creek early that evening.
“I came home,” he said. “Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am
not forcing you to come, if you don’t want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that
Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as
strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean.
You are one of the best wives in the whole village.”
“That has not done me any good, has it?” She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost
seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between
his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he
hold her face. The next day she would not be his anymore. She would go back to her parents. He
let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly
at the split bamboo floor.
“This house is yours,” he said. “I built it for you.

Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will
build another house for Madulimay.”
“I have no need for a house,” she said slowly. “I’ll
go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need
help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the
rice.” the beans, in the pounding of the rice.”
“I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our mar-
riage,” he said. “You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us.”
“I have no use for any field,” she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
“Go back to the dance,” she said finally. “It is not right for you to be here. They will won-
der where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance.”
“I would feel better if you could come, and dance—for the last time. The gangsas are play-
ing.”
“You know that I cannot.”
“Lumnay,” he said tenderly. “Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You
know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back.
You know that.”
“I know it,” he said. “I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay.”
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
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She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the begin-
ning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the
other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which
they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver;
the waters tolled and growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff
cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had
looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on—a slip would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final
climb to the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features—hard and strong, and kind.
He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village
people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze
and compact in their hold upon his skull—how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his
body that carved out of the mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if
a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles–he was
strong and for that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. “Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband,” she
cried. “I did everything to have a child,” she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. “Look at
me,” she cried. “Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast
in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am use-
less. I must die.”
“It will not be right to die,” he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked na-
ked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right
shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
“I don’t care about the fields,” she said. “I don’t care about the house. I don’t care for any-
thing but you. I’ll have no other man.”
“Then you’ll always be fruitless.”
“I’ll go back to my father, I’ll die.”
“Then you hate me,” he said. “If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to
have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe.”
She was silent.
“If I do not try a second time,” he explained, “it means I’ll die. Nobody will get the fields I
have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me.”
“If you fail–if you fail this second time–” she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder.
“No–no, I don’t want you to fail.”
“If I fail,” he said, “I’ll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will
vanish from the life of our tribe.”
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
“I’ll keep my beads,” she said. “Awiyao, let me keep my beads,” she half-whispered.
“You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come
from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are
worth twenty fields.”
13
“I’ll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me,” she said. “I love
you. I love you and have nothing to give.”
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. “Awiyao!
Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!”
“I am not in hurry.”
“The elders will scold you. You had better go.”
“Not until you tell me that it is all right with you.”
“It is all right with me.”
He clasped her hands. “I do this for the sake of the tribe,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
He went to the door.
“Awiyao!”
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It
pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a
child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of
the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that
made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did
the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after
him? And if he was fruitless–but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave
her like this.
“Awiyao,” she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. “The beads!” He turned
back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly
possession—his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from
the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on
the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the
firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
“Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!” She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in
his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the
night. Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The
moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village. She could hear the
throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that
all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet
was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could
she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy
the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she
danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who count-
ed, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was
that perhaps she could give her husband a child.
“It is not right. It is not right!” she cried. “How does she know? How can anybody know?
It is not right,” she said.
14
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the
village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him
away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a
man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would re-
lent. Was not their love as strong as the river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming
glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly
now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers
clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women
decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their
men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up,
and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did
anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in
countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze
reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the
wedding feast. Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She
thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four
moons before. She followed the trail above the village. When she came to the mountain stream
she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail
went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she
climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire
at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the
gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not
mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She
felt the pull of their gratitude for her sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many
gangsas.
Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago– a strong, muscular
boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one
day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink
and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After
that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father’s house in
token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the
leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants
now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests—what did it matter? She
would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew
got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning
comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go
on.
Lumnay’s fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
15
After Reading
ACIVITY 4: Literary Reflection

(Note: This will count towards your quiz—15 points)
1. What are the expectations for men and women in Awiyao and Lumnay’s culture?
2. How does your culture influence your decisions? Does it affect your plans for your future?
3. Identify 3 symbolic elements from the story. Explain what each one stands for.
2.2.2.1 Assessment
JOURNAL ENTRY (20 points)

Share your insights on the following:
1. If you truly love a person, you must let him/her go and
be happy.
2. Love conquers all.
2.1.2.3 Dead Stars (Paz Marquez-Benitez)
Born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezon, Marquez - Benítez authored the first
Filipino modern English-language short story, Dead Stars, published in the
Philippine Herald in 1925. Born into the prominent Marquez family of Que-
zon province, she was among the first generation of Filipinos trained in the
American education system which used English as the medium of instruc-
tion. She graduated high school in Tayabas High School (now, Quezon Na-
tional High School) and college from the University of the Philippines with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. She was a member of the first freshman
class of the University of the Philippines, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts
degree in 1912.
Before Reading

(Note: This will count towards your exercises— 10 points)
Answer the following:
1. What is an epiphany? Have you already experienced such? When and how?
2. What is the difference between love and infatuation?
3. How important is “closure” in a relationship?
16
I
Through the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly envelop-
ing him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the
years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused in-
to formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea
where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be
next month."
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why he is not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thir-
ty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while
his rose scissors busily snipped away.
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned,
pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in
love he was?"
"In love? With whom?"
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said
with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he was enthusiastic--
flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that--"
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less
than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the
body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was
abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being
cheated by life? Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a
mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification
of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances,
or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love,
as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the
feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when something beautiful
was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you
will miss it," someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So, he had avidly seized on the shadow of
love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the
meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many.
Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the
hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sac-
rificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--
mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think they
are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been allowed to prolong itself
argues certain placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don
17
Julian loved to philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant,
very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural
enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost
indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative language.
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diag-
nosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence. Tall and slender, he moved
with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a
satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed
Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with way-
ward humour, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then
went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate which he left
swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the far-
ther side by Madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open
porches he could glimpse through the heat-shriveled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago, that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rent-
ed and occupied by Judge Del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to
him; he did not even know her name; but now--
One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since
he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favour with the Judge. This particular
evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and
then is beneficial," the old man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the
thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a
smile that derided his own worldly wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the
Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino
way formal introductions had been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se
conocen?"--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her
thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but
his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he
thought. Still, the young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed,
and felt that he should explain.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you, but I
remembered a similar experience I had once before."
"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the
young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Mana-
lang.' You know, I never forgave him!"
He laughed with her.
18
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued, "is to pre-
tend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help."
"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess.
The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so
he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neigh-
borhood alternately tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and
wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of
the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was small and
plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty
woman with the complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not
so obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth
rich brown with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of
abounding vitality.
On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to
the house on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed
and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo
and Julia Salas would go out to the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rock-
ing chair and the hours--warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it
was evident that she liked his company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undis-
turbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly
about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo sudden-
ly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza to come out of the
church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go "neighboring."
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful,
added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She
was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power to regulate feeling as well
as conduct. If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he
could not possibly love another woman.
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia
Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something that would not
be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy and so
poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the shadows around, enfolding.
"Up here I find--something--"
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted in-
tensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"
"No; youth--its spirit--"
"Are you so old?"
19
"And heart's desire."

Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too broad, too
trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."
"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the
darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere, bringing
elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.
"Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--"
"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."
"You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery."
"I could study you all my life and still not find it."
"So long?"
"I should like to."
Those six weeks were now so swift--seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in
the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because neither the past nor the
future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with
such a willful shutting out of fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.
Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend Sunday after-
noon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach. Carmen also came
with her four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing
the preparation of the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how
Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to accompa-
ny her on this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of
men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving
young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"--while the children, con-
voyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide.
They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of
the out-curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her
footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he re-
moved forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.
"Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach."
There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and whipped
the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was something of eager
freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably
pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an vitality of
mind and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to
charm.
20
"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last time--we
can visit."
"The last? Why?"
"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."
He noted an evasive quality in the answer.
"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"
"If you are, you never look it."
"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."
"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."
"But--"
"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.
"I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause.
She waited.
"A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."
"Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely
"Who? I?"
"Oh, no!"
"You said I am calm and placid."
"That is what I think."
"I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase.
"I should like to see your home town."
"There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on
them, and sometimes squashes."
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal more
distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him.
"Nothing? There is you."
"Oh, me? But I am here."
"I will not go, of course, until you are there."
"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!"
"Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment." She laughed.
"We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."
"Could I find that?
"If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.
"I'll inquire about--"
"What?"
21
"The house of the prettiest girl in the town."

"There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite
sincere."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.
"I thought you, at least, would not say such things."
"Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that
quite--"
"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"
"Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is more than
that when--"
"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.
"Exactly."
"It must be ugly."
"Always?"
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer of
crimsoned gold.
"No, of course you are right."
"Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned back.
"I am going home."
The end of an impossible dream!
"When?" after a long silence.
"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend
Holy Week at home."
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last time."
"Can't I come to say good-bye?"
"Oh, you don't need to!"
"No, but I want to."
"There is no time."
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a
pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects the senses as does sol-
emn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a cessation of tumult when all violence of
feeling tones down to the wistful serenity of regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her
dark eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.
"Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life."
"I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old things."
"Old things?"
"Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage." He said it lightly, unwilling to
mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for one whirling second.
22
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind.

Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her face
away, but he heard her voice say very low, "Good-bye."
II
ALFREDO Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and entered
the heart of the town--heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung roofs, of indolent drug
stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-repairing establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith's cub-
byhole where a consumptive bent over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with
quaint hand-and-ball knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of
ancient church and convento, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as
the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the voice of the biggest of the church
bells kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their long wax candles,
young women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still alive), older
women in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in droves, elbowing each other under the
talisay tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display
while from the windows of the older houses hung colored glass globes, heirlooms from a day
when grasspith wicks floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device.
Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the length of the
street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters where the saints' platforms
were. Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the choir, steeped in incense and
the acrid fumes of burning wax.
The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows sud-
denly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines of light into component indi-
viduals. Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried to look unaware, and could not.
The line moved on.
Suddenly, Alfredo's slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was coming
down the line--a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that could cause violent
commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and then
back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions end. At last Our Lady of Sor-
rows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir, whose voices now echoed from
the arched ceiling. The bells rang the close of the procession.
A round orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the
iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets
the young women with their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way
home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had
dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived farther out. It was past
eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him
as he said "Good evening" and fell into step with the girl.
"I had been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said in a voice that was both ex-
cited and troubled.
"No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go."
23
"Oh, is the Judge going?"

"Yes."
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned else-
where. As lawyer--and as lover--Alfredo had found that out long before.
"Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate you."
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
"For what?"
"For your approaching wedding."
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not offend?
"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are slow
about getting the news," she continued.
He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He heard nothing
to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones of early acquaintance. No rev-
elation there; simply the old voice--cool, almost detached from personality, flexible and vibrant,
suggesting potentialities of song.
"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly.
"When they are of friends, yes."
"Would you come if I asked you?"
"When is it going to be?"
"May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.
"May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what seemed to him a shade of
irony.
"They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"
"Why not?"
"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"
"If you will ask me," she said with disdain.
"Then I ask you."
"Then I will be there."
The gravel road lay before them; at the road's end the lighted windows of the house on the
hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so keen that it was pain, a wish
that, that house were his, that all the bewilderments of the present were not, and that this wom-
an by his side were his long wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home.
"Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose between
something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"
"No!"
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man who
was in such a situation."
"You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.
24
"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"

will not, because it no longer depends on him."
"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That is his problem
after all."
"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That is his problem
after all."
"Doesn't it--interest you?"
"Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house."
Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope trembled
in his mind though set against that hope were three years of engagement, a very near wedding,
perfect understanding between the parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself--
Esperanza waiting, Esperanza no longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the
intensely acquisitive.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind of
aversion which he tried to control.
She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable appear-
ance. She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor with startling reserves of beauty.
At home, in church, on the street, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and
clear of complexion, spare of arms and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman
dressed with self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman distinctly not average.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about Ca-
lixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened, understanding imperfect-
ly. At a pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: "Well, what of it?" The remark sounded ruder
than he had intended.
"She is not married to him," Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice.
"Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her up. We never thought
she would turn out bad."
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?
"You are very positive about her badness," he commented dryly. Esperanza was always
positive.
"But do you approve?"
"Of what?"
"What she did."
"No," indifferently.
"Well?"
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her mind. "All
I say is that it is not necessarily wicked.
"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not know that your ideas
were like that."
25
"My ideas?" he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. "The only test I
wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody? No? Then I am justified
in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is not married--is that it? It may be
wrong, and again it may not."
"She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her voice was tight with resentment.
"The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled by the passion
in his voice.
"Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you have
been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what perhaps some are try-
ing to keep from me." The blood surged into his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points
of acute pain. What would she say next?
"Why don't you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me and of
what people will say." Her voice trembled.
Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What people
will say--what will they not say? What don't they say when long engagements are broken al-
most on the eve of the wedding?
"Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, "one tries to be fair--
according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one's self first. But that is too
easy, one does not dare--"
"What do you mean?" she asked with repressed violence. "Whatever my shortcomings,
and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of my way, of my place, to find
a man."
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or was that a
covert attack on Julia Salas?
"Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. "If you--suppose I--" Yet how
could a mere man word such a plea?
"If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of--why don't you tell me
you are tired of me?" she burst out in a storm of weeping that left him completely shamed and
unnerved.
The last word had been said.
III
AS Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the lake,
he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this trip of his. He was supposed
to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had
kept him, and there he would have been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the de-
fense. He had to find that elusive old woman. That the search was leading him to that particular
lake town which was Julia Salas' home should not disturb him unduly. Yet he was disturbed to
a degree utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness of his errand. That inner tumult was no
surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become used to such occasional storms. He had
long realized that he could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and not to re-
member too much. The climber of mountains who has known the back-break, the lonesomeness,
and the chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up some-
times from the valley where settles the dusk of evening, but he knows he must not heed the ra-
diant beckoning. Maybe, in time, he would cease even to look up.
26
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of capitulation to
what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of character. His life had simply
ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From
his capacity of complete detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the him-
self that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and alone.
When claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fast-
ness, and from that vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and alien, as inci-
dents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle,
even tender, but immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-tilted town nes-
tling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood beside the ancient church.
On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose
and lost themselves in the purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew
slowly luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening.
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the
dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat-
-slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he
could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to
meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.
"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"
"What abogado?" someone irately asked.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with Brigida
Samuy--Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's second letter had arrived
late, but the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house."
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the
boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had received his first let-
ter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman re-
plied, "but he could not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we
went there to find her."
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do some-
thing for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.
Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somno-
lent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be inviting at
that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he
picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.
How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issu-
ing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional couple saun-
tered by, the women's chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices
of children playing games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought
of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her?
That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incom-
pleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he maybe a
27
recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away
sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as
to an insistent, unfinished prayer.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon wove
indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow
athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soar-
ing jets of sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely
be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low
and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather
than saw her start of vivid surprise.
"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.
"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint
"Won't you come up?"
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the win-
dow, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted
candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her hand. She had not changed much--a little
less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her,
looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this
and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though with
a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her face. What
had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl
must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.
Gently--was it experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undis-
turbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him.
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded
sky.
So that was all over.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?
So all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extin-
guished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable
refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchang-
ing freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
After Reading
ACITVITY 6: Literary Reflection

(Note: This will count towards your quiz—20 points)
Answer the succeeding questions:
1. The story begins with and develop using flashbacks. What does the author gain by not pre-
senting the events chronologically?
28
2. Discuss Alfredo’s character. How is it revealed? What attributes does he possess?

3. What is the climax of the story? Account for the decision alfredo makes. Was his decision a
result of his character, chance, or general environment?
4. The author resorts to using/naming symbolism in the story. Explain the significance of
“Esperanza,” “Calle Luz,” and “Calle Real”?
5. What other symbolisms can you find in the text?
6. Why is the story entitled “Dead Star?”
JOURNAL ENTRY
Share your thoughts:
“If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were en-
gaged, he could not possibly love another woman.”
2.1.2.4 What is an Educated Filipino? (Francisco F. Benitez)

Before Reading

(Note: This will count towards your exercises—10 points)
Answer the following:
1. What is your concept of education? Why is it important?
2. Is education essential in fulfilling your function as a citizen of a country?
Francisco F. Benitez, one of the country's foremost educators, was born in Pagsan-
jan, Laguna on June 4, 1887 to Don Higinio Benitez, a signer of Malolos Constitu-
tion, and Soledad Francia. He had four brothers: Ceferino, Teofilo, Conrado, and Eu-
logio, and a sister, Antonia. His brother Conrado was an economist, historian, and a
business leader, while Eulogio was a congressman of Laguna and the first to use
English in the sessions of the Philippine House of Representatives. After his gradua-
tion from the Philippine Normal School in 1904, he started his educational career. He
served as principal of a school in Pakil, Laguna, before being sent as a government
pensionado to the United States in 1905. He graduated three years later from the
Western Illinois State Normal School. Back in the Philippines, he was appointed as-
sistant supervising teacher in Bacoor, Cavite. He was to married Paz Marquez, a
fellow writer. He died on June 30, 1951.
What is an educated Filipino and what qualities should distinguish him today?
The conception of education and of what an educated man is varied in response to funda-
mental changes in the details and aims of society. In our country and during this transition stage
in our national life, what are the qualities which an educated man should possess?
29
Great changes have taken place in the nature of our social life during the last forty years.
The contact with Americans and their civilization has modified many of our own social customs,
traditions, and practices, some for the worse and many for the better. The means of communica-
tion have improved and therefore better understanding exists among the different sections of
our country. Religious freedom has developed religious tolerance in our people. The growth of
public schools and the establishment of democratic institutions have developed our national
consciousness both in strength and in solidarity.
With this growth in national consciousness and national spirit among our people, we wit-
ness the corresponding rise of a new conception of education – the training of the individual for
the duties and privileges of citizenship, not only for his own happiness and efficiency but also
for national service and welfare. In the old days, education was a matter of private concern; now
it is a public function, and the state not only has the duty but it has the right as well to educate
every member of the community – the old as well as the young, women as well as men – not on-
ly for the good of the individual but also for the self-preservation and protection of the State it-
self. Our modern public school system has been established as a safeguard against the shortcom-
ings and dangers of a democratic government and democratic institutions.
In the light of social changes, we come again to the question: What qualities should distin-
guish the educated Filipino of today? I venture to suggest that the educated Filipino should first
be distinguished by the power to do. The Oriental excels in reflective thinking; he is a philoso-
pher. The Occidental is the doer; he manages things, men and affairs. The Filipino of today
needs more of his power to translate reflection into action. I believe that we are coming more
and more to the conviction that no Filipino has the right to be considered educated unless he is
prepared and ready to take an active and useful part in the work, life, and progress of our coun-
try as well as in the progress of the world.
The power to do embraces the ability to produce enough to support oneself and to contrib-
ute to the economic development of the Philippines. Undoubtedly, a man may be, and often is,
an efficient producer of economic goods and at the same time he may not be educated. But
should we consider a man who is utterly unable to support himself and is an economic burden
to the society in which he lives as educated merely because he possesses the superficial graces of
culture? I hope that no one will understand me as saying that, the only sign of economic effi-
ciency is the ability to produce material goods, for useful social participation may take the form
of any of any of the valuable services rendered to society trough such institutions as the home,
the school, the church and the government. The mother, for example, who prepares wholesome
meals, takes good care of her children and trains them in morals and right conduct at home, ren-
ders efficient service to the country as well as the statesman or the captain of industry. I would
not make the power to do the final and only test of the educated Filipino; but I believe that in
our present situation, it is fundamental and basic.
The educated Filipino, in the second place, should be distinguished not only by his
knowledge of the past and of current events in the world’s progress but more especially by his
knowledge of his race, hi people, and his country, and his love of the truths and ideals that our
people have learned to cherish. Our character, our culture, and our national history are the core
of national life and consequently, of our education. I would not have the educated Filipino ig-
nore the culture and history of other lands, but can he afford to be ignorant of the history and
culture of his own country and yet call himself educated?
30
The educated Filipino, in the third place, must have ingrained in his speech and conduct
those elements that are everywhere recognized as accompaniments of culture and morality; so
that, possessing the capacity for self – entertainment and study, he may not be at the mercy of
the pleasure of the senses only or a burden to himself when alone.
There are, then, at least three characteristics which I believe to be the evidence of the edu-
cated Filipino – the power to do, to support himself and contribute to the wealth of our people;
acquaintance with the world’s progress, especially with that of his race, people, and the commu-
nity, together with love of our best ideals and traditions; and refined manners and moral con-
duct as well as the power of growth.
After Reading
ACIVITY 8: Literary Reflection

(Note: This will count towards your quizzes—15 points)
1. What is the author’s purpose in writing this essay?
2. What sort of Filipino image does the author consider truly inspiring?
3. In your opinion, what qualities of an educated Filipino should distinguish him from other na-
tionalities?
Assessment
Critical Essay (20 points)

Write a critical essay regarding your concept “what is an educated
Filipino.
31
2.2 References
Lacia, F. (2008). The Literatures of the Philippines. Manila: Rex national Bookstore
Pilapil, E. (2015). World Literature: New Text, New Voices, New Perspectives. Malabon: Mutya Publishing
House
Biographies
Accessible at:
http://geocitiessites.com/sinupan/BenitezF.htm
https://peoplepill.com/people/amador-daguio/
https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/972/today-in-philippine-history-march-3-1894-paz-
marquez-benitez-was-born-in-lucena-city-quezon
https://english.colostate.edu/news/filipino-american-history-month-jose-garcia-villa/
Philippine Literature in the American Period
Accessible at:
https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/20/filipino-american-literature/
http://musicmediaandculture.blogspot.com/2012/11/philippine-culture-literature- and-
music.html
http://ncca.gov.ph/subcommissions/subcommission-on-the-arts-sca/literary- arts/the-literary-
forms-in-philippine-literature/
https://www.slideshare.net/josephestroga/philippine-literature-during-american period
2.3 Acknowledgment
The images, tables, figures and information contained in this module were
taken from the references cited above.

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2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 14

UNIT 2: AMERICAN PERIOD LITERATURE

2.0 Intended Learning Outcomes

Our country have been colonized by the Americans for several

(Note: this will count towards your exercises—10 points)

The Americans brought about new chang-

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 15

3 Frames in American Period Literature

2.1.1 Features of American Literature

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 16

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 17

2.1.2 Selected Literary Selection

2.1.2.1 Footnote to Youth (Jose Garcia Villa)

ACTIVITY 2: Literary Journey

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 18

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Suddenly, he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow, he was ashamed to

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 21

Life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams.

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 22

ACTIVITY 3: Literary Reflection

2.1.2.2 The Wedding Dance (Amador Daguio)

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 23

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“This house is yours,” he said. “I built it for you.

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ACIVITY 4: Literary Reflection

JOURNAL ENTRY (20 points)

2.1.2.3 Dead Stars (Paz Marquez-Benitez)

ACTIVITY 5: Literary Journey

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 29

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 30

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"And heart's desire."

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"The house of the prettiest girl in the town."

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 35

Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind.

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 36

"Oh, is the Judge going?"

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 37

"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 38

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ACITVITY 6: Literary Reflection

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 41

2. Discuss Alfredo’s character. How is it revealed? What attributes does he possess?

2.1.2.4 What is an Educated Filipino? (Francisco F. Benitez)

ACTIVITY 7: Literary Journey

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 42

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 43

ACIVITY 8: Literary Reflection

Critical Essay (20 points)

2 | Survey of Philippine Literature in English 44

Philippine Literature in the American Period