Dorothy Parker

1893–1967

On August 22, 1893, Dorothy Parker was born to J. Henry and Elizabeth Rothschild, at their summer home in West End, New Jersey. Growing up on Manhattan’s
Upper West Side, her childhood was an unhappy one. Both her mother and stepmother died when she was young; her uncle, Martin Rothschild, went down on the
Titanic in 1912; and her father died the following year. Young Dorothy attended a Catholic grammar school, then a finishing school in Morristown, NJ. Her
formal education abruptly ended when she was fourteen.

In 1914, Dorothy sold her first poem to Vanity Fair. At age twenty-two, she took an editorial job at Vogue. She continued to write poems for newspapers and
magazines, and in 1917 she joined Vanity Fair, taking over for P.G. Wodehouse as drama critic. That same year she married a stockbroker, Edwin P. Parker. But
the marriage was tempestuous, and the couple divorced in 1928.

In 1919, Parker became a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal gathering of writers who lunched at the Algonquin Hotel in Midtown
Manhattan. The “Vicious Circle” included Robert Benchley, Harpo Marx, George S. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber, and was known for its scathing wit and
intellectual commentary. In 1922, Parker published her first short story, “Such a Pretty Little Picture,” for Smart Set.

When the New Yorker debuted in 1925, Parker was listed on the editorial board. Over the years, she contributed poetry, fiction, and book reviews as the
“Constant Reader.”

Parker’s first collection of poetry, Enough Rope  (Boni & Liveright), was published in 1926 and was a bestseller. Her two subsequent collections were Sunset
Gun  (Boni & Liveright, 1928) and Death and Taxes (The Stratford Press, 1931). She published a work of collected fiction, Laments for the Living (The Viking
Press), in 1930. 

During the 1920s, Parker traveled to Europe several times. She befriended Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, socialites Gerald and Sara Murphy, and
contributed articles to the New Yorker and Life. While her work was successful, and she was well-regarded for her wit and conversational abilities, she suffered
from depression and alcoholism. She also attempted suicide.

In 1929, she won the O. Henry Award for her autobiographical short story “Big Blonde.” She produced short fiction in the early 1930s, and also began writing
drama reviews for the New Yorker. In 1934, Parker married actor-writer Alan Campbell in New Mexico; the couple relocated to Los Angeles and became a
highly-paid screenwriting team. They labored for MGM and Paramount on mostly forgettable features, the highlight being an Academy Award nomination for  A
Star Is Born in 1937. They divorced in 1947, and remarried in 1950.

Parker, who became a socialist in 1927 when she became involved in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, was called before the House on Un-American Activities
(HUAC) in 1955. She pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

Parker was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959 and was a visiting professor at California State College in Los Angeles in 1963. That
same year, her husband died of an overdose. On June 6, 1967, Parker was found dead of a heart attack in a New York City hotel at age seventy-three. A firm
believer in civil rights, she bequeathed her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Upon his assassination the following year, the estate was turned over to
the NAACP. 

In 2006, Penguin Classics published The Portable Dorothy Parker , revised and edited by Marion Meade, who also penned the landmark biography Dorothy
Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This  (Penguin Books, 1989). Meade’s revision updates Brendan Gill’s first portable edition with new material, including a 1956
interview with the Paris Review. 
William Saroyan
Born on August 31, 1908: an American institution whose stories celebrated the best of life, even during the most difficult trials of the Great Depression.  William Saroyan drew for influence for
his writing from his personal experiences.  His advice to one young writer summarized his philosophy on life:
"Try to learn to breathe deeply; really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh
like hell."
William Saroyan was born in Fresno, California, of an Armenian immigrant father who came to New Jersey in 1905 with his wife, Takoohi.  Armenak had been a preacher and a poet in Armenia,
but he was forced to take farm-labor work in America.  He died in 1911 from peritonitis, and Saroyan and his brothers were placed temporarily in an orphanage in Alameda.  Six years later, the
family reunited in Fresno, where Takoohi had found work in a cannery.

In 1921, Saroyan attended the Technical School in order to learn to become a professional typist.  But when at age 15 his mother shared with him some of his father's writings, he decided to
become a writer.  He worked hard at developing a style of his own that reflected his zest for living and his impressionistic outlook on life, a style that would eventually be called Saroyanesque.
After leaving school, Saroyan continued his education by reading and writing on his own while supporting himself at odd jobs.  He worked as an office manager at the San Francisco Telegraph
Company while several of his early short articles were published in The Overland Monthly.  His first collected stories appeared in the 1930s.  Among these was The Broken Wheel, which was
published under the pseudonym of Sirak Goryan in the Armenian journal, Hairenik, in 1933.
"The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is.  He is discontented with everything and everybody.  The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy - the
good and great enemy.  He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them.  The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops." - from The William Saroyan Reader, 1958
Saroyan's big break as a writer came with the release of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934).  In it, the protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a
Depression-ridden society:  "Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed.  Amusing it was, astoundingly funny.  A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of
eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace."  The story was republished in Saroyan's bestselling collection, from which royalties the writer financed his trip to
Europe and Armenia, where he learned to love the taste of Russian cigarettes.  He also developed a theory that "you may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much,
not from the smoking itself."

Many of Saroyan's stories are largely autobiographical, based on his childhood, his experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley, or his views of immigrant
migrant workers.  The short story collection, My Name Is Aram (1940), a bestseller, was about a young boy, Aram Garoghlanian, and the colorful characters of his immigrant family.
As a playwright, Saroyan drew upon the unconventional idea that conflict is not necessarily essential to drama.  His first play, My Heart in the Highlands (1939), was a comedy about a young boy
and his Armenian family.  It was produced at the Guild Theatre in New York.  Among Saroyan's best known plays is The Time of Your Life (1939), set in a waterfront saloon in San Francisco.  It
won a Pulitzer Prize.  Saroyan refused the honor on the grounds that commerce should not judge the arts, but he accepted the New York Drama Critics Circle award.  In 1948 the play was
adapted to the big screen and starred James Cagney.

The Human Comedy (1943) was set in Ithaca, in California's San Joaquin Valley, where the young Homer, a telegraph messenger, becomes a witness of sorrows and joys of small town people
during World War II.
"Mrs. Sandoval," Homer said swiftly, "your son is dead.  Maybe it's a mistake.  Maybe it wasn't your son.  Maybe it was somebody else.  The telegram says it was Juan Domingo.  But maybe the
telegram is wrong." - from The Human Comedy
The story was purchased by Louis B. Mayer at MGM for $60,000.  Mayer also gave Saroyan a job for $1,500 a week as a producer-director.  After seeing Saroyan's short film, Mayer gave the
direction to Clarence Brown.  The sentimental final sequence of the Oscar-winning film, starring Mickey Rooney and Frank Morgan, has been called by David Shipman "the most embarrassing
moment in the whole history of movies."  Saroyan also worked on a screenplay of Clifford Odet's play, Golden Boy (1939).

Besides short stories and plays, Saroyan published numerous essays and memoirs in which he depicted the people he met on his travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, including playwright
George Bernard Shaw, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and Charlie Chaplin.  During World War II, Saroyan joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Astoria, Queens.  He spent most of his
time at the Lombardy Hotel in Manhattan, far from army life.  In 1942, he was posted to London as part of a film unit and narrowly avoided a court martial when his novel, The Adventures of
Wesley Jackson, turned out to be pacifist.

In 1943, Saroyan married seventeen-year-old Carol Marcus, with whom he had two children, Aram and Lucy.  When Carol admitted that she was Jewish and illegitimate, Saroyan divorced her. 
They remarried and divorced a second time.  Lucy became an actress.  Aram was a poet who published a book about his father.  Saroyan's ex-wife later married actor Walter Matthau.

Saroyan's financial situation--which was often grim because of the writer's carelessness with money and his penchant for drinking and gambling--grew worse following the war as public interest
in his work declined.  Suddenly he was seen in the wake of novelists such as Hemingway and Falkner as old-fashioned and overtly sentimental.  Saroyan praised freedom, brotherly love, and
universal benevolence while continuing to write prolifically.  One of his readers asked, "How could you you write so much good stuff and still write such bad stuff?"
In 1952, Saroyan published the first of several book-length memoirs, The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills.  In the title novella, The Assyrian, and Other Stories (1950), and in The Laughing
Matter (1953), he combined allegorical elements within a realistic novel.  His plays, Sam Ego's House (1949) and The Slaughter of the Innocents (1958), explored moral issues but still failed to
catch the public's eye.
Once, when Saroyan joked about Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway replied: "We've seen them come and go.  Good ones too.  Better ones than you, Mr. Saroyan."

Many of Saroyan's later plays, including The Paris Comedy (1960), The London Comedy (1960), and Settled Out of Court (1969), premiered in Europe.  Even more of his works, housed at
Stanford University with his other papers, were never performed.  Saroyan wrote quickly, rarely editing his text or rewriting.
From 1958, the author lived mainly in Paris, where he had an apartment.
"I am an estranged man, said the liar: estranged from myself, from my family, my fellow man, my country, my world, my time, and my culture. I am not estranged from God, although I am a
disbeliever in everything about God excepting God indefinable, inside all and careless of all." - from Here Comes There Goes You Know Who, 1961
By the early 1970s, Saroyan had managed to write himself out of debt and had actually created a substantial income.  He died from cancer on May 18, 1981, in Fresno.  "Everybody has got to
die," he had said, "but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case."
At his bequest, half of his ashes were buried in California and the remaining half in Armenia.

Books

 The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)

 Inhale and Exhale (1936)
 Three Times Three (1936)
 Little Children (1937)
 The Trouble With Tigers (1938)
 The Gay and Melancholy Flux (1938)
 Love Here Is My Hat (1938)
 A Native American (1938)
 Peace, It's Wonderful (1939)
 My Name Is Aram (1940)
 Hilltop Russians in San Francisco (1941)
 Saroyan's Fables (1941)
 Razzle-Dazzle (1942)
 The Human Comedy (1943)
 Get Away Old Man (1944)
 Dear Baby (1944)
 The Adventures of Wesley Jackson (1946)
 The Twin Adventures (1950) Saroyan's journal with reprint of Wesley Jackson
 The Assyrian and Other Stories (1951)
 Rock Wagram (1951)
 Tracy's Tiger (1952)
 The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills (1952)
 The Laughing Matter (1953)
 Love (1955)
 The Whole Voyald and Other Stories (1956)
 Mama I Love You (1956)
 Papa You're Crazy (1957)
 Here Comes, There Goes, You Know Who (1961)
o "Gaston" (1962), short story collected in Madness ...
 Me: A Modern Masters Book for Children (1963), illustrated by Murray Tinkelman[39]
 Not Dying (1963)
 Boys and Girls Together (1963)
 One Day in the Afternoon of the World (1964)
 Short Drive, Sweet Chariot (1966)
 I Used to Believe I Had Forever, Now I'm Not So Sure (1968)
 The Man with the Heart in the Highlands and other stories (1968)
 Letters from 74 rue Taitbout (1969)
 Places Where I've Done Time 1972
 Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon (1973)
 Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang In Forever (1976)
 Chance Meetings (1978)
 Obituaries (1979)
 Births (1983)
 My name is Saroyan (1983)
 Madness in the Family (1988), collected late stories
Short stories

 "The Snake"
 "An Ornery Kind of Kid"
 "The Filipino and the Drunkard"
 "Gaston" (date unknown)
 "The Hummingbird That Lived Through Winter"
 "Knife-Like, Flower-Like, Like Nothing At All in the World" (1942)
 "The Mourner"
 "The Parsley Garden"
 The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse (1938)
 "Seventy Thousand Assyrians" Archived January 8, 2015, at the Wayback Machine (1934)
 "The Shepherd's Daughter"
 "Sweetheart Sweetheart Sweetheart"
 "Third day after Christmas" (1926)
 "Five Ripe Pears" (1935)
 "Pomegranate Trees" (year unknown)
 "Seventeen" (written during the Great Depression, in the collection of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
and Other Stories)
 "The Barber´s Uncle"
Poem

 "Me" (The Saturday Evening Post, March 9, 1963, illustrated by Murray Tinkelman)[41]
Song

 "Come On-a My House", a hit for Rosemary Clooney, based on an Armenian folk song, written with his
cousin, Ross Bagdasarian, later the impresario of Alvin and the Chipmunks.]
 "Eat, Eat, Eat" (words and music) sung by Danny Kaye with the Vic Schoen Orchestra
Ernest Hemingway

-who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, had a great impact on other writers through his deceptively simple,
stripped-down prose, full of unspoken implication, and his tough but vulnerable masculinity, which created a myth that
imprisoned the author and haunted the World War II generation.

-On July 21, 1899, Ernest Miller Hemingway, author of such novels as “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Old Man and the
Sea,” is born in Oak Park, Illinois. The influential American literary icon became known for his straightforward prose and use of
understatement.

-Hemingway's writing includes themes of love, war, travel, wilderness, and loss

 -(1923) Three Stories and Ten Poems

 (1924) in our time
 (1925) In Our Time
 (1926) The Torrents of Spring
 (1926) The Sun Also Rises
 (1927) Men Without Women
 (1929) A Farewell to Arms
 (1932) Death in the Afternoon
 (1933) Winner Take Nothing
 (1935) Green Hills of Africa
 (1937) To Have and Have Not
 (1938) The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories
 (1940) For Whom the Bell Tolls
 (1950) Across the River and into the Trees
 (1952) The Old Man and the Sea

Sherwood Anderson

-was born in Camden, Ohio. Considered one of the great American writers, Anderson published a number of novels, short story
collections, volumes of poetry, and memoirs during his lifetime, but he is best known for Winesburg, Ohio (1919). Set in a small
Ohio town, the series of interconnected short stories influenced a generation of writers, including Ernest Hemingway and William
Faulkner.
The son of a day laborer, Anderson left school early and took various jobs to support his family. He attended Wittenberg
Academy in Springfield, Ohio, for a year and, after his mother died when he was 19, moved to Chicago to work in advertising. He
returned to Ohio in 1906 and worked as a businessman, writing fiction in his spare time while running his own manufacturing
business. Following a breakdown in 1912, Anderson left his wife and children and returned to Chicago, where he was befriended
by writers such as Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, and Floyd Dell. He began publishing short stories in little magazines, such as
the Little Review and the Masses. Anderson was influenced by modernist writers, such as his friend Gertrude Stein;
in Winesburg, Ohio, his laconic, searching prose subtly evokes the alienation of small-town life. In the words of Bruce Falconer,
“Most of the book takes place at night, as if Winesburg’s inhabitants are scavengers, sneaking through the darkness in search of
understanding—something none of them ever finds. Anderson’s opening chapter, ‘The Book of the Grotesque,’ is his great
philosophical statement about human nature: that each of us goes through the world alone, seeing only with our own eyes, fixated
on our own experience, incapable of real understanding. Winesburg is not a place of promise and hope; it’s desolate and brutal, as
isolated emotionally as it is geographically.”
Anderson eventually quit advertising to devote himself full time to writing. His many works include the novels Windy
McPherson’s Son (1916), Marching Men (1917), Many Marriages (1923), Dark Laughter (1925), and Beyond Desire (1932). In
addition to Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson published the short story collections The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and
Men (1923), and Death in the Woods (1933) and the memoirs A Story Teller’s Story (1924), Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926),
and Memoirs (1942). His collections of poetry include Mid-American Chants (1918) and A New Testament (1927). Later in his
life, Anderson moved to Marion, Virginia, where he bought and ran two newspapers. He died unexpectedly in Panama, on a trip to
South America, and was buried in Marion.
Though he fell out of critical favor later in his life—Hemingway skewered Anderson’s style in The Torrents of Spring (1926)—
Anderson remains an important and influential figure in early-20th-century American letters. In his biography of Anderson, the
critic Irving Howe remarked, “When I read Winesburg, Ohio in my adolescence, I felt that a new world had been opened to me,
new possibilities of experience, new dimensions of emotion. Not many years later I found myself rejecting Anderson’s work: I
was impatient with his vagueness, superior to his uncertainty. Yet he still meant more to me than other writers of unquestionably
greater achievement.”

Summary of The Fence

The story takes place in a desolate region where only two nipa huts can be seen from a long way away. The people who live in
both houses do not get along with each other very well. They act in ways that show how far away and empty their place is. A
fence keeps them from getting too close to each other.

The setting tells us what kind of people and what kind of situation they would be in. The nipa huts look desolate and empty,
symbolic of how their occupants act and feel for each other.

They do not have neighbours but their need for each other seems far away and remote. Hatred rules. They are most afraid that one
of them would give way. They seem to think that they need to build a fence to keep each other safe.

Hatred comes from a betrayal – when Aling Biang caught her husband with Aling Sebia, the childless widow.

Aling Biang built the fence out of rage after catching her husband with Aling Sebia and now wishes to safeguard her “properties”
from the “thief”. Aling Sebia, on the other hand, built the other half of the fence as a result of the pain she felt as a result of Aling
Biang’s disrespectful and frigid words toward her. The author used the fence to symbolise their mutual anger, which is why it was
built by both of them, because in addition to the fence they literally built, there is also the great hatred exerted by both of their
hearts, acting as a barrier that prevents them from forgiving one another.

Aling Biang couldn’t forgive. Aling Sebia, too, does not seem to be sorry as she shows the same anger and hatred as Aling Biang.
The husband flees silently and never returns.He is part of the mess, but he did not solve it.

Some of the vegetable rows that used to separate the huts are dying. Because the owners are afraid that if they watered the
vegetables, they would also water and care for plants from the other garden. This seems to show that they do not want to forgive
and start over.

Aling Sebia is going to give birth to a child. Aling Biang is the only person who could help her. She needs to speak with her
immediately. This could have been an opportunity for them to reconcile. However, even after Aling Biang assisted her, the
bitterness continued unabated.

The hate is like a curse. The children of the two women get fat and ugly. The children’s qualities were influenced by their conflict.
As their children grew ill and unattractive, the hatred festered like a curse. The author even employed ironies such as “the fence
his mother had built and strengthened—to crush his soul. ” and the barrier’s “crushing sternness”. These ironies were used to
illustrate how Iking felt about his mother’s wrath, which had been crushing him, his soul, for years. He may have been pleased if
there had been no animosity between the two women. Aling Biang makes Iking hate himself, even though Iking thinks the
opposite.

Iking, AlingBiang’s son, and Aling Sebia’s daughter grow up unaware of each other’s existence. They are the unwitting victims of
their family strife. They, too, are condemned to a life of desolation on either side of the brutal bamboo fence. They are both
physically ungifted, yet in their loneliness, they yearn for company and even friendship. Iking takes a glance at the girl through the
decaying fence one day, and his heart is captured by her. Even though she appears to be more attractive than him, his need for
companionship leads him to fall for the only girl he has ever seen.

Then he notices her playing the guitar. She does not finish her notes, and Iking is impatient to hear her finish. Aling Biang tries to
instil enmity in Iking’s heart, but he exhibits calm resistance.

Slowly but steadily, he becomes captivated to the music emanating from the house next door. His mother no longer sleeps next to
him when he is 15. This is what he wants. He wants to be able to see and hear the guitar being played through the door. There are
signs that he is getting angry, but he is still very weak. He even begins sleeping beside the door, where he can hear the girl playing
the guitar. He feels compelled to dismantle the fence, but his mother reinforces it, and finally, the guitar stops playing.

The plot then jumps forward three years to Christmas Day. Iking has become malnourished and feeble as a result of being
deprived of the girl’s sight and music. Aling Biang, his mother, requests that he rest while she prays to God.
It is Christmas time. There are times when they pray, but Iking is not sure if his mother could really pray at all.

If the fence gets to her heart, he is afraid. There is no fence in his heart, though. But Iking is only interested in hearing the guitar
and goes to the fence. He speaks to the girl through the openings in the fence. He asks her to play the guitar, and she nods, as
though she agrees.

He waits for the girl to respond to his subdued appeal. However, there is no music. He is concerned that the girl may harbour a
grudge against him, despite the fact that he does not. Unfortunately, the boy dies at 2 a.m. before the girl can fulfil his wishes.

This time, he knows that the girl who plays the guitar is the one who does it. If he can not get the fence down, he does not want to
do it. His mother, on the other hand, keeps up with the decaying stakes that had been worn down by time.

A situational irony occurred between Iking and Aling Sebia’s daughter when Iking spoke to Aling Sebia’s daughter for the first
time; it was also the final time, While Iking waits for the music, he begins to lose hope and considers the possibility that, unlike
him, the girl harboured no ill will or hatred. This means that you have the option of living a life of hatred or not. And “as the moon
descended” alluded to his heartbeat steadily diminishing. He died without a trace of fury in his heart, with an ear anticipating but
never receiving music.

The guitar played as though in lament for Iking’s demise, but Aling Buang viewed it as a joke. She stood and gazed accusingly to
the other side, but saw nothing except the stately white fence that symbolises her hatred. When she stares at her neighbour, she is
overcome with hatred.

Iking death does not make her heart any kinder. The fence is still strong.

Thus, the author asks us to comprehend the ramifications of creating hatred in our hearts. I believe that the author of this storey is
speaking omnisciently in the third person. He was well aware of every detail that should have been reserved for the two women
alone.

Theme of The Fence

The author demonstrates the implications of hatred in our daily lives. The story’s primary theme is hatred. Hatred is a strong
hatred or malice. While the author was able to convey to us the intensity of the two characters’ animosity for one another, he also
wishes to convey to us that hatred should not be something we grow and nourish in our hearts. This is something that would
devastate us, our life, and those around us. Why would you waste your time hating someone to death when you could have gone
on and lived a happy life? As the proverb goes, we only have one life, and hatred is not anything worth wasting a lifetime on.

 What is the subject in the fence by Jose Garcia Villa?

Answer: The moral of Jose Garcia Villa’s storey The Fence is that it is important to forget the past and forgive other people. If
you do not forgive, you can not make things right. When you are angry or revengeful, you keep the flames going by being angry
or sad.

What does the fence represent in the story the fence by Jose Garcia Villa?

Answer: The nipa huts appear dismal and abandoned, which reflects their occupants’ behaviour and feelings for one another. They
have no neighbours, but their dependence on one another appears remote and distant. The fence represents the barriers that
separate even the closest friends, family, and relatives.

Q. What kind of woman is Aling Biang in the story the fence?

Answer: Aling Sebia was a childless widow who exhibited no remorse or shame for her acts. Aling Biang’s spouse fled after his
misdemeanour was discovered, and his wife did not attempt to stop him.

Q. What was the story about the fence?

Answer: Once upon a time, there was a small child who possessed an uncontrollable temper. His father gave him a bag of nails
and instructed him to pound a nail into the back of the fence if he lost his temper. After a few days, the young boy was finally able
to inform his father that all the nails had been removed.
Footnote to Youth by Jose Garcia Villa (Short Story) -
Footnote to Youth is a story by Jose Garcia Villa that was published in 1933. The year the story was published plays an important
role in understanding the story and what it means. The situation in the Philippines back in the 1930s is very different from today
(it's 2021 as I write this). If you've read the story, then you should agree with me when I say that it's an indictment of the common
Filipino practice of marrying young and unprepared. I'd like to think that marrying young was way more rampant in the 1930s
than in the 21st century.

The Characters

1. Dodong - A 17-year-old youth wanting to marry his sweetheart.

2. Teang - The girl whom Dodong wanted to marry.
3. Dodong's father
4. Dodong's mother
5. Lucio - A former suitor of Teang who was nine years older than Dodong.
6. Blas - Dodong's eldest son.
7. Tona - The girlfriend of Blas.

Plot and Summary

The plot of the story is four-pronged. It has four parts that sweep through two generations from the day Dodong decides to get
married to the day his eldest son Blas approaches him to tell him that he himself wants to get married. Dodong was seventeen
when he married Teang. They immediatley conceived Blas sson after. Blas is eighteen when he asks his father permission to
marry his sweetheart Tona. That said, the story covers a time span of 17 years.

Part I - On a sunny afternoon after a hard day's work in the fields, Dodong decides to tell his father that he wants to marry his
sweetheart Teang. He's only seventeen years old. After a sumptous dinner, he spills out his plans to his father. His proposition is
met with hesitation and discouragement. His father tells him that he's too young to get married. But in the end, his father agrees to
his wishes and grants him the permission to marry Teang. Part II - Nine months after their marriage, Teang gives birth to her first
son. Dodong experiences a whirlwind of conflicting emotions during the bithing process - confusion, fear,
discomfort,embarrassment, and guilt. But when he hears the little baby whimper and cry, he swells with happiness.

Part III - Blas is followed by six more children. Dodong didn't want any more children but they came anyway. This makes him
angry at himself sometimes. The parade of children is also taking its toll on Teang. She often wishes that she's not married. She
sometimes wonder if her life would've been better had she married Lucio, a former suitor she rejected for the reason that he was
nine years older than Dodong.

Part IV - Blas is eighteen years old. One night, he tells his father that he wants to marry his girlfriend Tona. Like his father before
him, Dodong doesn't want Blas to marry as he's too young. He knows what's going to happen if Blas marries too early. He gives
him permission to marry anyway. But he does so with sadness in him.

THE SUNSET BY PAZ LATORENA

The story revolves around two characters – the maid and the cobbler. One evening, a girl is caught in the rain and stumbles upon
Barranco, a small shop, for shelter. The cobbler that lives in that shop is surprised for her sudden appearance but then lets her stay
in because the rain outside is still pouring heavily. The girl has explained how she arrives to his shop that rainy night. She has
been running away from her señorita’s house. The cobbler becomes terrified after hearing that the señorita’s younger brother
has harassed the girl that night. Because of that, he promises to marry her, but they have to wait until he saves enough money for
the wedding. They are happily living together. However, not a word about marriage has been said since that day. They plan a
simple wedding and having many kids in the future. One morning, while the cobbler is away for his work, the señorita has arrived
at their house. They are talking about why the maid left her house without her knowing. as they talk along the senorita has been
lean money for the maid and consider it as a return for her hard work to her and all service that she had done to the senorita. The
girl is so happy as she talks about her new life with the cobbler and their plan to marry later on. As they dream to get married and
live their life happily.

-It tells the story of a maid and a cobbler who meets when the former stumbles upon the latter's house after she ran away from her
employer's house where she was harassed by a certain man named Pepe (who later turns out to be her employer's brother).

ZITA by Arturo B. Rotor

Turong had his own story to tell in the barber shop that night, a story as vividlyetched as the lone coconut palm in front of the sho
p that shot up straight intothe darkness of the night, as vaguely disturbing as the secrets that the seawhispered into the night.

“He did not sleep a wink, I am sure of it. When I came from the market thestars were already out and I saw that he had not touche
d the food I hadprepared. I asked him to eat and he said he was not hungry. He sat by thewindow that faces the sea and just looked 
out hour after hour. I woke up threetimes during the night and saw that he had not so much as changed hisposition. I thought once 
that he was asleep and came near, but he motionedme away. When I awoke at dawn to prepare the nets, he was still there.”
“Maybe he wants to go home already.” They looked up with concern.

Even his words were so difficult, just like those dark and dismaying things thatthey came across in their readers, which took them 
hour after hour in thedictionary.

What did such things as original sin, selfishness, insatiable, actress of athousand faces mean, and who were Sirse, Lorelay, other n
ames she could notfind anywhere? She meant to ask him someday, someday when his eyes werekinder.

They would not believe it, they must see it with their own eyes and so theycame.

Sometimes he stayed for a few minutes, sometimes he came twice or thrice inone evening.

The knowledge came keenly, bitingly, like the sea breeze at dawn, like the prickof the rose’s thorn, or-yes, like the purple liquid th
at her father gave the visitorsduring pintakasi which made them red and noisy.

The people remembered the day when he went up Don Eliodoro’s house, thelight of a great decision in his eyes, and finally accept
ed the father’s requestthat he teach his daughter “To be a lady.”
“We are going to the city soon, afterthe next harvest perhaps; I want her not to feel like a ‘provinciana‘ when weget there.” They r
emembered the time when his walks by the seashore becameless solitary, for now of afternoons, he would draw the whole crowd 
of villageboys from their game of leapfrog or patintero and bring them with him.

His pupils still remember those mornings he received their flowers, the camiawhich had fainted away at her own fragrance, the ka
mpupot, with the night dewstill trembling in its heart; receive them with a smile and forget the lessons ofthe day and tell them all a
bout those princesses and fairies who dwelt inflowers; why the dama de noche must have the darkness of the night to bringout its f
ragrance; how the petals of the ylang-ylang, crushed and soaked insome liquid, would one day touch the lips of some wondrous cr
eature in somefaraway land whose eyes were blue and hair golden.

Box after box came in Turong’s sailboat and each time they contained thingsthat took the words from her lips.

“In society, women use clothes to reveal, not to hide.” Was that a sneer or asmile in his eyes? The gown showed her arms and sho
ulders and she had neverknown how round and fair they were, how they could express so many things.

As she came nearer, swaying like a lily atop its stalk she heard the harsh, muttered words:
“One would think she’d feel shy or uncomfortable, but no ohno not a bit all alike comes naturally.” There were books to read; pict
ures, names to learn; lessons in everything; how to polish the nails, how to use a fan, even how to walk.

How did these days come, how did they go? What does one do when one is sohappy, so breathless? Sometimes they were a memo
ry, sometimes a dream.

“Look, Zita, a society girl does not smile so openly; her eyes don’t seek one’sso-that reveals your true feelings.”
“But if I am glad and happy and I want toshow it?”
“Don’t. If you must show it by smiling, let your eyes be mocking; ifyou would invite with your eyes, repulse with your lips.” That 
was a memory.

All the great names of the capital were there, stately ladies in wonderful gownswho walked so, waved their fans so, who said one t
hing with their eyes andanother with their lips.

They were all so clever and charming but she answered:
“Please, I am tired.” For beyond them she had seen him alone, he whose eyes were dark andbrooding and disapproving and she w
as waiting for him to take her.

Her heavy hair hung in a big, carelessly tied knot that always threatened tocome loose but never did; its dark, deep shadows showi
ng off in startlingvividness how red a rose can be, how like velvet its petals.

She had done her best; for hours she had stood before her mirror and for hoursit had told her that she was beautiful, that red lips an
d tragic eyes werebecoming to her. She’d never forget that look on his face when she came out.

Dreamily she closed her eyes and dimly wondered if his were shut too, whetherhe was thinking the same thoughts, breathing the s
ame prayer.

Turong came up and after his respectful “Good evening” he handed an envelopeto the school teacher.
His eyes lost their sparkle, his gaze wandered from time to time.

The tears came to her eyes for she felt utterly powerless.

“Someday, Zita, you will do it too, and then you will understand.” One dayTurong came from Pauambang and this time he brough
t a stranger.They knew at once that he came from where the teacher came-his clothes, hisfeatures, his politeness-and that he had c
ome for the teacher.

She shuddered as he laughed, it was that way when he first came.If her lips quivered, her eyes must smile, if in her eyes there wer
e tears Sheheard her fat her go out, but she did not go; although she knew his purpose, she had more important things to do.
Little boys came up to the house and she wiped away their tears and told themthat he was coming back, coming back, soon, soon.
For the sun was too bright, or was her sight failing?
she saw a blur of whitemoving out to sea, then disappearing behind a point of land so that she couldno longer follow it; and then, c
learly against a horizon suddenly drawn out ofperspective,
“Mr. Reteche,” tall, lean, brooding, looking at her with eyes thattold her somebody had hurt him.
They came down unchecked and when she tried to brush them off with herhand, the color came away too from her cheeks, leaving 
them bloodless, cold.

HARVEST by Loreto Paras Sulit

He first saw her in his brother’s eyes. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late afternoon sun, were losing their trampled,
wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudible whispers.

The rhythm of Fabian’s strokes was smooth and unbroken. So many palay stalks had to be harvested before sundown and there
was no time to be lost in idle dallying. But when he stopped to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to
fathom the other’s state of mind in that one, side-long glance.

The swing of Vidal’s figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the crescent-shaped scythe. How stubborn, this younger
brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled stalk after stalk. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is,
how he is so much run-after by all the women in town. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange adorations,
his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and the dullness of long nights of unbroken silence
and sleep. But he would bend… he must bend… one of these days.

Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. He wondered how his brother could work that fast all day
without pausing to rest, without slowing in the rapidity of his strokes. But that was the reason the master would not let him go; he
could harvest a field in a morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He had always been afraid of this older brother
of his; there was something terrible in the way he determined things, how he always brought them to pass, how he disregarded the
soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes how he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. There were flowers,
insects, birds of boyhood memories, what Fabian had done to them. There was Tinay… she did not truly like him, but her
widowed mother had some lands… he won and married Tinay.

I wonder what can touch him. Vidal thought of miracles, perhaps a vision, a woman… But no… he would overpower them…he
was so strong with those arms of steel, those huge arms of his that could throttle a spirited horse into obedience.

“Harvest time is almost ended, Vidal.” (I must be strong also, the other prayed). “Soon the planting season will be on us and we
shall have need of many carabaos. Milia’s father has five. You have but to ask her and Milia will accept you any time. Why do you
delay…”

He stopped in surprise for his brother had sprung up so suddenly and from the look on his face it was as if a shining glory was
smiling shyly, tremulously in that adoring way of his that called forth all the boyishness of his nature—There was the slow crunch,
crunch of footsteps on dried soil and Fabian sensed the presence of people behind him. Vidal had taken off his wide, buri hat and
was twisting and untwisting it nervously. “Ah, it is my model! How are you, Vidal?” It was a voice too deep and throaty for a
woman but beneath it one could detect a gentle, smooth nuance, soft as silk. It affected Fabian very queerly, he could feel his
muscles tensing as he waited for her to speak again. But he did not stop in work nor turn to look at her.

She was talking to Vidal about things he had no idea of. He could not understand why the sound of her voice filled him with this
resentment that was increasing with every passing minute. She was so near him that when she gestured, perhaps as she spoke, the
silken folds of her dress brushed against him slightly, and her perfume, a very subtle fragrance, was cool and scented in the air
about him.

“From now on he must work for me every morning, possibly all day.”
“Very well. Everything as you please.” So it was the master who was with her.

“He is your brother, you say, Vidal? Oh, your elder brother.” The curiosity in her voice must be in her eyes. “He has very splendid
arms.”

Then Fabian turned to look at her.

He had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, with a regal unconscious assurance in her figure that she carried so well, and pale
as though she had just recovered from a recent illness. She was not exactly very young nor very beautiful. But there was
something disquieting and haunting in the unsymmetry of her features, in the queer reflection of the dark blue-blackness of her
hair, in her eyes, in that mole just above her nether lips, that tinged her whole face with a strange loveliness. For, yes, she was
indeed beautiful. One discovered it after a second, careful glance. Then the whole plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed;
one realized that her pallor was the ivory-white of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of silken lines were but the
undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you. The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he
met her grave, searching look that swept him from head to foot. She approached him and examined his hot, moist arms critically.

“How splendid! How splendid!” she kept on murmuring.

Then “Thank you,” and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away.

The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word. Once Vidal attempted to whistle
but gave it up after a few bars. When sundown came they stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with
difficulty on the dried rice paddies till they reached the end of the rice fields.

The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It augmented the spell of that woman that was still over
him. It was queer how he kept on thinking about her, on remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him
and the look of her eyes on his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, feverishly. Why was her face always
before him as though it were always focused somewhere in the distance and he was forever walking up to it?

A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long, feathery antennae quivering
sensitively in the air. Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he
carried. The moth fell to the ground, a mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.

After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, “Why are you that way?” “What is my way?”

“That—that way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths… like…”

“If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.”

“That is not the reason.”

“Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.”

To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his mind. But gradually, slowly the
topics converged into one. He found himself talking about the woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a
relative of the master. A cousin, I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hidden name… like her beauty.
She is convalescing from a very serious illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men out of clay, of stone. Sometimes
she uses her fingers, sometimes a chisel.

One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the model for a figure she was
working on; she had asked him to pose for her.

“Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the patio, many dreams, many desires
come to me. I am lost… I am glad to be lost.” It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brother’s
face. But it was cruel that the darkness was heavy and without end except where it reached the little, faint star. For in the deep
darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.

On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he cooled his warm face and bathed
his arms in the other. The light from the kerosene lamp within came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his
arms to discover where their splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown.
Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the power beneath. His wife was crooning to the baby inside. He started guiltily and
entered the house.

Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said. She was a small, nervous woman
still with the lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes
hanging from the ceiling. Trining, his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.

Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside, faces, faces in a dream. That
woman in the fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now. But the unrest, the fever she had left behind… was still on him.
He turned almost savagely on his brother and spoke to break these two grotesque, dream bubbles of his life. “When I was your
age, Vidal, I was already married. It is high time you should be settling down. There is Milia.” “I have no desire to marry her nor
anybody else. Just—just—for five carabaos.” There! He had spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he did not like the way
his brother pursed his lips tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid where
he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it and would not give it up. She pinched,
bit, shook his pants furiously while he laughed in great amusement.

“What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just husked; and her nose, what a high
bridge. Ah, she is going to be a proud lady… and what deep, dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on
your lips. That means you are very talkative.”

“You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal!” Tinay rocked the child almost despairingly. But the young man would not have
stopped his teasing if Fabian had not called Trining to his side.

“Why does she not braid her hair?” he asked his wife.

“Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.” “We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out
to work tomorrow.”

Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes… well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room and fell in a deep sleep unbroken
till after dawn when the sobs of a child awakened him. Peering between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls
falling from a child’s head to the ground.

He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the carabao question with Milia to boot.
For another there was the glorious world and new life opened to him by his work in the master’s house. The glamour, the
enchantment of hour after hour spent on the shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped many
kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked on.

In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet group. And he brought that look,
that was more than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong, deep emotions.

His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart… If that look, that quiver of voice had been a moth, a curl on
the dark head of his daughter… Now more than ever he was determined to have Milia in his home as his brother’s wife… that
would come to pass. Someday, that look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.

When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia would leave within two days; she
wanted Vidal to go to the city with her, where she would finish the figures she was working on.

“She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always be near her. Oh, I am going! I am
going!” “And live the life of a—a servant?”

“What of that? I shall be near her always.”

“Why do you wish to be near her?”

“Why? Why? Oh, my God! Why?”

That sentence rang and resounded and vibrated in Fabian’s ears during the days that followed. He had seen her closely only once
and only glimpses thereafter. But the song of loveliness had haunted his life thereafter. If by a magic transfusing he, Fabian, could
be Vidal and… and… how one’s thoughts can make one forget of the world. There she was at work on a figure that represented a
reaper who had paused to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. It was Vidal in stone.

Again—as it ever would be—the disquieting nature of her loveliness was on him so that all his body tensed and flexed as he
gathered in at a glance all the marvel of her beauty.

She smiled graciously at him while he made known himself; he did not expect she would remember him.

“Ah, the man with the splendid arms.”

“I am the brother of Vidal.” He had not forgotten to roll up his sleeves.

He did not know how he worded his thoughts, but he succeeded in making her understand that Vidal could not possibly go with
her, that he had to stay behind in the fields. There was an amusement rippling beneath her tones. “To marry the girl whose father
has five carabaos. You see, Vidal told me about it.”

He flushed again a painful brick-red; even to his eyes he felt the hot blood flow.

“That is the only reason to cover up something that would not be known. My brother has wronged this girl. There will be a child.”

She said nothing, but the look in her face protested against what she had heard. It said, it was not so.

But she merely answered, “I understand. He shall not go with me.” She called a servant, gave him a twenty-peso bill and some
instruction. “Vidal, is he at your house?” The brother on the patio nodded.

Now they were alone again. After this afternoon he would never see her, she would never know. But what had she to know? A
pang without a voice, a dream without a plan… how could they be understood in words.

“Your brother should never know you have told me the real reason why he should not go with me. It would hurt him, I know.

“I have to finish this statue before I leave. The arms are still incomplete—would it be too much to ask you to pose for just a little
while?”

While she smoothed the clay, patted it and molded the vein, muscle, arm, stole the firmness, the strength, of his arms to give to
this lifeless statue, it seemed as if life left him, left his arms that were being copied. She was lost in her work and noticed neither
the twilight stealing into the patio nor the silence brooding over them.

Wrapped in that silver-grey dusk of early night and silence she appeared in her true light to the man who watched her every
movement. She was one he had glimpsed and crushed all his life, the shining glory in moth and flower and eyes he had never
understood because it hurt with its unearthly radiance.

If he could have the whole of her in the cup of his hands, drink of her strange loveliness, forgetful of this unrest he called life, if…
but his arms had already found their duplicate in the white clay beyond…

When Fabian returned Vidal was at the batalan brooding over a crumpled twenty-peso bill in his hands. The haggard tired look in
his young eyes was as grey as the skies above.

He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. “Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my dear sister-in-law because I shall be
seeing Milia every night… and her father.” He watched Fabian cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his
brother that long to wash his arms, why he was rubbing them as hard as that…