I recently unearthed a paper I wrote for a comparative literature class on Filipino fiction in English. I didn't realize how personal this essay was until I finally finished writing my thesis. Even then, I was drawn to the subject of estrangement between children and their parents. Perhaps studying works of fiction with this theme was my subconscious's way of telling me that I had serious family issues I needed to deal with. And in writing, I knew I couldn't blindly ignore this reality.
I never submitted this paper to any workshop or journal, and I don't intend to in the future. I might as well share it here for other students in case they ever need it for their Philippine literature assignments. If you stumble upon this during your research, I hope it helps.
From
the Home to Literature:
Estrangement
between Children and Parents
I.
Estrangement in the Filipino Family
Estrangement is
defined as a condition where an individual is distanced from another as a
result of disaffection. Such disaffection or “turning away from feeling” between
individuals and groups are often complex, implying the displacement of love and
sense of belonging with acute apathy and hostility. It creates rifts in
relationships, becomes entrenched with the passage of time, and is evident when
an individual exhibits signs of disconnection from his or her immediate social
environment. To narrow the subject of this discourse, the paper will focus on
the basic unit of society which is the family—the first social institution that
shapes an individual in early life. Estrangement, I believe, is most palpable
when an individual is emotionally and physically separated from the home.
Sociology professor Belen T.G. Medina describes the
traditional Filipino family as a social unit that demands interest and loyalty
from its members more than other institutions in the larger society. However,
over the years, this traditional characteristic of the family has changed. As
Prof. Medina puts it, the Filipino society has undergone transitions due to
modernization; industrialization and jobs overseas, liberalization of ideas,
and education, this changes how individuals interact and regard their surroundings.
Inevitably, parents, due to generational differences, will have opposing
beliefs with their children. Though this is an important factor in familial misunderstandings,
it does not always result in estrangement between parents and children. Taking
a closer look into the situation at home will shed light on one’s understanding
of this phenomenon and how individuals (the parent and the child) deal with the
situation.
Interactions between family members change,
especially in an age where Filipinos have more opportunities to travel, with the
advent of advanced telecommunications. However, while modes of interaction
between family members are transformed, the reasons behind familial
disaffection are still personal. Reading literature about the Filipino family
is one way of understanding this phenomenon. Let’s take for example Myrna Peña
Reyes’s poem about a daughter’s relationship with her father who is ten
thousand miles away.
Breaking Through
Haltingly I undo the knots
around your parcel that came this morning.
A small box should require little labor,
but you've always been thorough,
tying things tight and well.
The twine lengthens,
curls beside the box.
I see your fingers bind and pull,
snapping the knots into place
(once your belt slapped sharply against my skin).
You hoped the package would hold it's shape
across 10,000 miles of ocean.
It's not a bride's superstition
that leaves the scissors in the drawer.
Unraveling what you've done with love
I practice more than patience
a kind of thoroughness
I couldn't see before.
I shall not let it pass.
My father, this undoing is
what binds us.
In Breaking Through, the persona, who is the daughter, talks of how she
patiently opens a tightly-wrapped package sent by her father. We speculate the
daughter is an adult who has lived away for several years. While “undoing” the
knots, she recalls how her father has always been thorough, implying firmness
when it comes to exercising authority in their household. The persona describes
how the father “binds and pulls the knots, snapping them into place,” followed
by a line in parenthesis, “once your belt slapped sharply against my skin”
revealing an event that perhaps strained the daughter’s relationship with the
father. How an individual treats another person consequently leaves a lasting
impression on the receiver of an action: it could either be a positive or
negative memory of an experience. This slapping of the belt as punishment and
how the persona recalls it with slight pain indicates a period wherein the
daughter was emotionally estranged from her father. As an adult, however, she
realizes the father’s strictness was born out of genuine love and concern,
rather than lack of kindness. She finally sees a thoroughness she couldn’t
understand before; the daughter is grateful her father went to great pains to teach
her important values, which in her younger years seemed harsh.
Breaking Through
is one example of how estrangement is dealt with in a Filipino family. The poem
shows how distance can aggravate relationships or make them better. The father
attempts to reconnect with his daughter by sending her a package, while the
daughter accepts the package and patiently opens it. The poem’s epiphany comes
in its final lines, “My father, this undoing is / what binds us.” The act of
undoing is a metaphor for the disintegration of a painful memory that separated
the daughter from the father. She had enough detachment and maturity from
painful events in her past that enabled her to see beyond the harsh memory and
forgive her father. With the passage of time and her physical distance from
home, the persona’s realization was forthcoming.
II.
Estrangement in Literature
As a general theme, estrangement is most common in
stories that capture the heightened solitary experience of the main character.
It is mentioned in the introduction to twentieth-century literature in the Norton Anthology that a distinct feature
of the new fictional selfhood was a consequence of existential loneliness—the I constantly questioning the self about being—a condition that yields self-discoveries
possible only in moments of quiet introspection.
In 2011, Berdien Veldhuis’s creative writing thesis for Utrecht University in Netherlands
offered another definition of psychological estrangement in literature. Veldhuis wrote: “psychological estrangement
is a literary theme dealing with depersonalisation and derealisation – meaning,
respectively, the feeling of estrangement towards the body, and the ‘self’, and
feeling estranged towards the living environment – and a literary effect using
adjusted tools such as syntax, plot, and setting to describe the estranging
sensation.” Veldhuis
referenced Samuel Beckett, author of the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The
Unnamable (works with the
consistent theme of estrangement). Beckett described psychological estrangement as “more
than an effect: it is a blend of theme and effect, and it often comes naturally
to the author – his prose is a reflection of how he lives life.” Samuel Beckett
wrote a letter in 1937 wherein he feels “it is indeed becoming more and more
difficult, even senseless, to write an official English. And more and more my
own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get
at the things behind it.” Beckett concludes that everything in a writer’s power
should be used to dissect, and at last eliminate language as we know it, so as
to let “what lurks behind... seep through.”
According to psychologist Ellen B. Sucov in Fragmented Families: Patterns of Estrangement and Reconciliation,
“When we reflect on these stories of families who have remained estranged, we
can trace the evolution of hostilities… The occurrence of estrangement then
becomes an opportunity for growth; it can actually serve as an incentive to
clarify the boundaries of relationships and re-define one's separate identity.”
Estrangement, as rooted in social and psychological separation, is an
individual human condition. This implies that introspection, or having the time
to think alone, may serve as a catalyst for deeper realization.
Therefore,
a character in a story is in itself a manifestation of a human person’s consciousness.
A character’s complexity of being can be read through his action or behavior:
how the human person deals with his condition. By analyzing a character, what
human condition is brought to the fore? This paper seeks to find out how the main
characters in selected Philippine short stories in English arrive at certain
realizations, and what these realizations or insights say about the kind of
character they have become from being estranged with their father, mother, or
child. The short stories chosen for this research are Chambers of the Sea (1955) by Edith L. Tiempo, Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro (1960) by Gregorio C. Brillantes, The Invincible (1974) by Estrella D.
Alfon, The Homing Mandarin or, After the
First Death There Are Others (1995) by Jaime An Lim, Phantom Pains (2002) by Katrina Tuvera, and Things You Don’t Know (2008) by Ian Rosales Casocot. The paper will
examine the estranged character’s point of view: their attitude towards their
situation, their relationship with their child or parent, and the significant
discoveries they find as the story progresses.
Prof. Sucov writes, “In the midst of this process
(estrangement), family members come to acknowledge a basic paradox of human
existence: we know ourselves only in the context of living with others, and we
experience relationships only in the effort to differentiate ourselves from
others.” A close reading into these stories’ main characters allow us to gain
insight into what is essential to the human person and, as readers, take part
in the journey of the characters' unique realization.
III. Estrangement from
the Perspective of a Son and Daughter
A. Chambers of the Sea
In Edith L. Tiempo’s Chambers of the Sea (1955), the main character, Teban Ferrer or Tio Teban (Uncle Teban), is introduced
as an annoyed man who locked himself in the bathroom just as his cousin Amalia
ordered her youngest son Tony to call him for lunch. The story is told from a
third person’s observance of events in Teban’s life. The narrator would
occasionally fade and assume the perspective of the main character. The
succeeding paragraphs reveal that Teban would get upset whenever his cousin’s
children, Deena, Mario, and Daniel, disturbed his privacy. He lost his nerve
when Deena and Mario snuck into his room, took his letters, and folded them
into paper boats. Teban quaked in horror when he caught Daniel reading one of
his letters. “What right had that young lout to read what people wrote to him
of their secret selves... What right had he to act amused like somebody
superior! And was he exempt from pain and worry just because he was not a grown
man yet?” To express his anger, Teban would lock himself thinking it would make
the children feel guilty.
Teban’s character shows contempt over the invasion
of his privacy, ultimately because he was made fun of by children who found his
“oddness” amusing. He threatened to leave many times, but he never did. This shows
the present situation and attitude of the main character towards his immediate
environment. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to ask, why is Teban living
with his cousin’s family? What about him is so peculiar that the children often
disrespected him?
Chambers
of the Sea is an
example of a short story depicting gays in early Philippine Literature. It was
set in a time when homosexuality was taboo; it is there, but not acknowledged
in society’s norm. The story uses flashbacks and dialogues that reveal the main
character’s relationship with his father and sister, and the events which led
him to leave his hometown Bangan. “He felt violated and exposed, and had
started to become suspicious of everyone. For he could not help fearing that
others looked askance at him the way his family did,” this could account for
why he reacted with such defiance whenever the children poked fun at his
queerness. Teban decided to pursue an MA in Political Science as a pretext for
staying away from Bangan, and to perhaps further assert his intellectual superiority.
Teban is described as an effeminate man fond of literature
and art, often found reading, painting, or tending his rose garden—much to his
father’s dismay. “The old man could not forgive his only son for turning out to
be so like him in looks but quite unlike him in ways. His father had only a
distant contempt for what to him was his son’s womanish disposition.” Teban
sought respect and acceptance in the intellectual plane, moving away from home,
knowing that he could not grant his father’s expectations to manage their land.
Nevertheless, as the years passed, his pursuit of
intellectual superiority mattered little in the house of his cousin Amalia. He
found himself doing household chores and taking care of children to his silent
consternation. In the story, Teban is asked to take care of Tony while his
parents were away. That morning, he decided to go for a walk on the beach just
behind the house, taking the child along with him. The image of the sea,
divers, and fishermen were apparent throughout his rumination. He watched with
as much delight and sadness as divers jumped into the ocean. “Under the gently
waving surface was active life. And the eyes of man could only steal brief
glances at that life.” The depths of the sea may very well be a metaphor for
the depths of his being; a beautiful life hidden away, contrary to the
queerness his father found harrowing. The use of divers, on the other hand,
shows the character’s keen observance and fondness for the male form, enhancing
the story’s gay undertones.
In this crucial time of introspection, he asked himself
“a question even more disturbing—why am I not bothered by the loss of these
occupations? What is wrong with me, anyway, that I should have betrayed myself
into mean domestic involvements? In all those years, there was one thing that
comforted him, though: he was still essentially untrammeled; with Miguel and Amalia
he could never be forced to do anything against his will… he could involve
himself or not as he pleased. Always as
he pleased.” Here, the character realizes he is afforded freedom to be himself
in his cousin’s home. The children might still find him odd, but nobody would
force him to do anything against his will.
Teban received a telegram that afternoon carrying
news of his father’s death. The message was from Antero, his brother-in-law,
informing him that the funeral would take place in a week’s time as soon as he
arrived. He recalled the day his father suddenly stopped behind him while he
was painting a landscape. It could have been “one of the times the two of them might
have spoken, forgetting self and prejudice.” However, his father had come to
bestow responsibility on him; to lead the municipio’s
Red Cross Drive because he was already too old. Surprised, Teban smirched the
painting with his shaky hand and refused his father’s request. Seeing he could
not be convinced, his father turned and walked away. Soon after, he went to
study in Dumaguete.
There seemed tenderness in this father-son
encounter, especially when the father stopped for a while to glance at his
son’s painting. His father expected he would finally take on masculine
responsibilities, while Teban expected tolerance. The main character longed for
any sign of respect from his father. But alas, he never received affirmation.
Towards the end of the story, Teban goes for a second
walk on the beach. By this time, the reader knows it is a place that calms the
main character’s thoughts. Upon reaching the shore, he saw two huge sea
creatures being heaved by fishermen. The author wrote a vivid description for
the weird creatures, “A couple of dark things… As he stood over the creatures
lying side by side he saw with horror that they were truly monsters of the
deep. Strange, terrifying, half-human. Dark course hair sprouted from the heads
and fell about their long horse-like faces… Only the fin that formed the base
of each figure was fish-like. Were they perhaps man and wife? Or twins? He
pushed off the horrible thought.” The unsightly half-human creatures can be
read as a metaphor for the main character’s queerness that is traditionally
viewed as an abomination of male nature. The pairing of the creatures signifies
the character’s search for likeness; surely, there must be others like him. It
suggests the main character’s search for belonging can be fulfilled when he
finds someone he can connect with in a mutual level: another individual who
understands his predicament.
Teban reckoned the sea monsters were actually
merman and mermaid, that they must be beautiful and graceful in the deep as
depicted in popular tales. He instantly identifies with the strange creatures’
situation because like him they were left vulnerable to prying eyes. The image
of the strange creatures mirrors the main character’s emotions; he feels
exposed and judged whenever his family calls attention to his queerness.
He thought, “Why could they not have been left to
die in the sea? Who was to delight in this ugly nakedness?” Still empathizing
with what has become of the creatures, Teban expresses how he detests those who
expose others in order to shame them. Certainly, when he dies, he does not want
to be scorned for who he is.
“At least Tio
Teban knew one thing for himself as he turned and walked rapidly away.” What
could that one thing be? Despite all superficial judgments, Teban knows in the
core of his being that he is a good man. On a positive note, the reader may
even think there is hope he will find friends who will understand his
disposition. Or perhaps the answer lies in the understanding of his being; that
home is where I can be who I am, at home
with myself.
B. The Homing Mandarin or, After the First Death
There Are Others
Jaime An Lim’s
The Homing Mandarin or, After the First Death There Are Others (1995) is
told in the point of view of Mickey, the youngest son of a Chinese refugee from
a wealthy family who fled to Cebu during the height of civil war. The story is about
Chinese-Filipino children, Mickey and Lisa, who were abandoned by their Chinese
father just as he turned sixty. Their father, having escaped the communist
regime in the 1930s, longed to return to his first wife and family in
Nan-p’ing, China.
From the onset of the story, it was established
that Mickey’s father “never felt at home in the Philippines. In a country of
brown, large-eyed people, his yellow skin and almond eyes marked him as
different.” His father wanted to raise him Chinese but he chose to isolate himself
from Chinese culture by refusing to learn the language. “By the time I
transferred to public school, the stigma attached to my being a Chinese mestizo had almost disappeared… I had
finally become my mother’s son.” Mickey talks about how children in their old
hometown would make fun of him and his father. “…naughty kids in the
neighborhood had a song for him… He pretended not to care, but I knew he was
hurt—just as I felt hurt when the same kids would chant MIC-key, BI-hon, PAN-cit, MIC-key, BI-hon, PAN-cit! over and over
in a singsong trochaic beat. It made me ashamed to be part Chinese.” These events
explain why Mickey grew distant from his father. Growing up in Cebu, he was
conditioned to think that being Chinese was odd. Instead of accepting his Chinese
roots, his immediate reaction was to reject it. The main character grew up
identifying more with Filipino culture, further alienating his father.
Like Teban, Mickey is estranged from his father due
to indifference and conflicting expectations in their relationship. Mickey’s
father was not pleased with his son’s decision to become a teacher. “I would
say I was going to be a teacher. Somehow to him, there was something vaguely
disreputable about a man doing what he felt was a woman’s job. He seemed sorry
he asked. And a smirk, a slight one, would creep involuntarily to the corners
of his mouth. Medicine, engineering, business—now there’s a worthwhile dream…
Sure, on a thirty-peso-a-month allowance, I thought fiercely. Dream on.
Bastard.” Here, the reader gets a clear sense of how the main character regards
his father. Mickey detests his father for being a negligent parent who failed
to support his education. Due to his father’s lack of responsibility, not to
mention several failed businesses, Mickey’s older sister Lisa postponed her
marriage and bore the task of sending him to college. Seeing the father through
the eyes of the main character, the reader is drawn to think that the father is
self-centered and insensitive.
The author may have inscribed the father-son
relationship as a cold, but the main character was never depicted to treat his
father with disrespect even with his condescending tone. Though one might say
he was good to him only because of his sister Lisa, Mickey’s character is
carefully portrayed as a thinker who is more concerned with duty. At first, he
was angered when he realized their father would soon abandon them. But over
time, he learned to accept his father’s departure; Mickey realized he had to
grow up faster, take responsibility, and get used to living without a guardian.
Lisa on the other hand is more transparent about
her anxiety over their father’s departure. However, unlike the main character,
she does not harbor ill feelings towards their father. She is hurt that her
father refuses her affections but she remains a loving daughter to him. Her
character shows longing for an attentive father. Lisa tolerates her father’s
standoffish disposition, constantly trying to reach out to him even when she is
ignored. In the story, her character was in denial; she went on for years
hoping for her father’s return, but he never did.
The main character masks his sadness with sarcasm,
is defensive, and puts up white lies for the sake of his sister when he
realizes his father might never return. Sending off his father to China, Mickey
thought “I did not want to kiss him in front of the milling crowd, so I just
shook his hand and muttered something inane and cheerful. Ba-bye, tah-tah,
enjoy!” But no matter how much the character tries to put a wall against his
father, the reader eventually asks if he really does not care. Indifference and
images of “being out of place” is apparent throughout the story. The flashbacks
would eventually reveal that the presented family situation is but an
indication of tragedy deeply buried in their family’s past. A traumatic event
in the family forever impinged on the main character’s attitude towards his
father.
Mickey narrates the last time he saw his mother.
She had fallen ill after giving birth to his brother Bobby (who died a year
later). A maid helped her get to a provincial hospital by riding a truck used
to haul sacks of copra and corn. When his mother died, during the funeral “Nobody
spoke to Father. Perhaps, they blamed him for our mother’s early death (this
was in 1956 and she was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight then), perhaps they
felt he did not take care of our mother well enough.” This event reveals the
root of the main character’s contempt towards his father. The recollection of
this event implies the main character blamed his father’s negligence for his
mother’s death. However, the main character’s sister does not share the same sentiment.
After his mother’s death, he grew up thinking his father was irresponsible. Later
on, this notion would further be embedded on the main character’s psyche as his
father fails to support his studies and succumbs to drinking and gambling.
Mickey and Lisa’s Chinese uncles (their father’s
friends) looked after them from time to time while their father was away. It
was during those years Mickey learned more about his father’s past from Uncle
Kee Chuan and Papa Kai Sin. Strangely enough, he got to know more about his
father from other people. What he learned opened his eyes to the reality of his
father’s life: the communists took everything away from their family. During
Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward, “entire populations from towns and cities
were moved to the countryside to participate in the massive program of
agricultural recovery. Everybody became farmers.” Thousands died of starvation,
including his father’s parents.
Upon learning this, the main character felt
cheated, “Why didn’t anybody tell us about this before?” He felt a sense of
guilt for deliberately distancing himself from his father just when he needed
companionship. He remembered his father’s drunken fits and even sympathized for
his loss. “It dawned on me that our father must have suffered while these
things were going on in his homeland. Perhaps the very horror of those events
drove him to reckless oblivion of the bottle and mahjong. For the first time, I
began to understand his loneliness and bewilderment. Understanding his wretched
humanity, I could finally begin to forgive.”
Their father lived for twenty years in China until
they receive word of his death from an uncle. “Now we could finally lay to rest
our dream of his return. It was over, the hope, the uncertainty, and the silent
wait by the window for an old man leading his long weary shadow home.”
By the time the main character arrived at his
realization, he was already working and his sister Lisa had three children, but
was separated from her husband. At that point, he had accepted his father would
always be a distant man. Perhaps he wished he had understood him better when he
was growing up. Even though he felt rejected when he left, the main character
ceased to blame his father for their hard luck. Forgiveness did not come easy
for Mickey, but letting go of his father made him see beyond abandonment. He
was no longer angry at him. His father had returned home.
C. Things You Don’t Know
In Ian Rosales Casocot’s Things You Don’t Know (2008), the main character is a housewife
whose husband was laid-off work because of watching too much internet porn. Told
in the point of view of Doris, the story is about how she deals with the
reality of taking care of her family during a time of crisis; how she confronts
her husband about the loss of his job, raising her six-year-old daughter, and
dealing with her domineering and often demanding mother. The author devoted a
good part of the story to dialogue that depicts their mother-daughter
relationship.
Like Teban and Mickey, Doris is portrayed to be
quite distant from her mother. But unlike the previous male main characters, Doris’s
estrangement from her mother is largely due to disparate moral and spiritual
beliefs, rather than failing to meet familial expectations. Doris is not
pressured to follow in her mother’s footsteps, fulfill a role, or pursue a more
favorable career. She is simply in opposition of her mother’s principles. Doris
is portrayed to be in frequent communication with her mother, and yet it is
evident she feels uneasy around her. The following excerpt shows how her
strained relationship with her mother even affects how she raises her daughter.
“How do you tell a six-year-old there are things
you just don’t know? That reality is hard enough to deal with, and fairy tales
are just fairy tales? I tell her instead,
“Should I believe in God, baby?”
“Lola
says I should pray and believe in God, or else I go to hell.”
“Your lola called again?”
Margot nods.
There is an eternal gulf between that
and my own sighing.
“Well, your lola is always full of
bullshit,” I say.
Margot’s eyes open wide, and then she
covers her mouth with her small hands.
“Don’t say bad words, Ma.”
“How she reconciles her superstitions and
her intractable Bible belief is beyond me. Sometimes I pretend I don’t hear
her. It is not easy. Her voice assails me, and I know too well the forcefulness
of that tone. I lost an entire childhood to that.”
When the main character says “There is an eternal gulf between that and my
own sighing,” the author hints at the depth of Doris’s emotional distance from
her mother. Doris describes her mother as a 74 year-old religious chain smoker
who looks at least fifteen years younger. For all her “Bible talk,” her mother
is severe in passing judgments, and yet unable to see her own shortcomings. The
reader can speculate that the mother must have been very hard on Doris when she
was growing up, causing a rift in their relationship. In the story, the two
women are in constant disagreement; one character either says or does something
to contradict the other. Doris feels she never gets approval from her mother. The
old woman always has something to
say. Below is an excerpt that demonstrates tension in the mother-daughter
relationship.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I ask
her.
“Looking for Marlon,” she says.
“Marlon’s at work.”
There is a pause, and then: “Doris, look at me,” she says. But I don’t
look at her at all. “I’m washing dishes Ma.”
“Fine. You’re always like this every time I come to visit. Am I not
welcome around here anymore?”
“You don’t know anything, Ma.”
“Because you don’t tell me anything at all. What am I, a prophet?” She is gripping the top of her chair, as if
she is afraid she will be toppled over.
“How much do you need to tide you over?”
she says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Doris
is clearly not pleased her mother is meddling on her family life. The character
feels her present home situation is being criticized. Instead of seeing her
mother’s gesture as a form of concern, she dismisses her for being
disrespectful. However, at the back of her mind, she knows her mother only meant
well. Later on, the
story reveals the reason for her mother’s demanding behavior: as a call for
help, she deliberately requires Doris’s attention however she can get it. “She
has taken to dyeing her hair since my sister, Soledad, died… Mother also has
her way of persuading me to slide into an old sense of guilt: that of her empty
nest, her world now devoid of daughters to berate, and feed, and love, and
suffocate with attention.”
The reader can speculate that Doris’s mother is
hard on herself for the death of her younger sister. Her behavior explains why
she is overly concerned for Doris to the point of suffocating their
relationship. After complaining about stomach aches and the possibility of
having stomach cancer, Doris’s mother checked in the hospital. She visits her,
showing support and care for the old woman. The main character is sympathetic
to her mother’s disposition. In the end, she knows that her mother’s love, and perhaps,
even her guilt is behind her difficult attitude. Though Doris gets irritated by
her mother’s backhanded comments, she tries to understand her pain. When Doris
arrives home, her mother calls to bring news that she has stomach ulcers—a
relief after entertaining the possibility of cancer.
That
evening, the main character searches for her six year-old daughter who ran
away. While searching, instead of finding her daughter, she finds her husband
in the playground. There, her husband confesses he lost his job. After the delicate
confrontation, they decide to go home hoping to find their daughter back. Upon
finding the child, Doris says, “Everything will be all right,’ I whisper at
her. And I look at my husband, a question hanging in the air between us. And he
also says, ‘Everything will be all right.’ Somehow, like how one knows the truest
things, we both know we are no longer playing pretend.”
The story is concerned with “when to stop playing
pretend” or how to deal with reality. However, more than coming to terms with
the truth, the main character realized the importance of having faith in
something. In this case, it’s faith in people. Doris is pragmatic in thinking
that people are flawed and will always let her down. However, she learned the
value of trust despite her frustrations; keeping it in tact and having faith in
loved ones.
IV.
Estrangement from the Perspective of a Parent
A.
Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro
The main character in Gregorio C. Brillantes’s Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro (1960)
is a middle-aged family man and doctor practicing in the province of Tarlac.
Called late at night to attend to an ailing newborn, Dr. Lazaro had trouble
going to his patient. The main character was disturbed, even angered that he
was called so late, saying “most likely it was hopeless, a waste of time… One
can only cure and know nothing beyond one’s work.” The author depicts Dr.
Lazaro as a jaded pragmatist worn by years of hard work and skewed dreams.
Dr. Lazaro’s wife urged him to take his youngest
son Ben to drive him out to town. In the story, the main character even reprimands
his wife regarding the whereabouts of their son. He grumbles, “I hardly see that boy around the house. He
seems to be on vacation both from home and school.” The
previous line shows the main character’s attitude towards his son. He seems to take
it against Ben that he never spends enough time at home. At first the reader is
drawn to think the father harbors ill feelings towards his son. However, as the
story unfolds, the reader realizes the main character feels the need to reconnect
with him. “They did not speak; he could sense his sons’ concentration on the
road, and he noted, with a tentative amusement, the intense way the boy sat
behind the wheel, his eagerness to be of help.”
He appreciates his son’s assistance and is glad
to spend time with him. Despite being temperamental, the main character tries
to engage his son in small talk. “What course will you pursue? What is that
book you’re reading?”, or banters about his religious inclinations, “Father
Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?” He tells his son that he doesn’t
have to become a doctor like him, that he could pursue engineering if he
wishes. Ben responds by saying he doesn’t know yet, that he has the entire
summer to think about it. Unlike the previous male characters’ Teban and Mickey,
Ben isn’t exactly pressured by his father; he actually gives him career options.
Dr. Lazaro “felt a need to
define unspoken things, to come closer somehow to the last of his sons; one of
these days… they might go on a picnic together… father and son, as well as
friends.”
The
main character in fact sees much of himself in his son; idealistic, full of
life and promise, leading what seemed a good future. “Dr. Lazaro watched the young face intent on the
road… his own face before he left to study in another country, a young student
full of illusions, a lifetime ago; long before the loss of faith, God turning
abstract, unknowable, and everywhere, it seemed, to him, those senseless
accidents of pain.” The reader becomes
privy to Dr. Lazaro’s past and comes to ask how does a passionate young doctor
become so tired and weary? Was he truly unaffected by daily deaths in the
provincial hospital? Is it really just duty rather than sincere kindness that
drives him?
Later
on, the story reveals his older son, a student studying medicine, committed
suicide. “Dr. Lazaro said…
Now if your brother—“ He closed his eyes, erasing the slashed wrists, part of
the future dead in a boarding-house, the landlady whimpering, “He was such a
nice boy, Doctor, your son…” The
reader then understands where the main character’s cold cynicism is coming from:
Dr. Lazaro must have carried guilt for not being present enough for his son. One
can only speculate why his son killed himself. Was it too much pressure from
his father, from his studies? The story only gives the reader clues. The desperate
need to connect with Ben, the loss of passion for his vocation, and his
faithlessness in God were all due to this unfathomable loss. The main character
may have been estranged from his older son. With Ben, he intends to be more
present, also allowing him more independence to choose for himself.
As foreshadowed, the baby doesn’t make it
through the night. Dr. Lazaro “tried to draw air into (the baby’s) faltering
lungs, pressing and releasing the chest; but even as he worked to rescue the
child, the bluish color of its face began to turn grey.” The baby can be a metaphor for Dr. Lazaro’s
older son, how he tried so much to save him. The image of the dead baby
represents snagged hopes and grief. As a gesture of kindness, his son proceeds
to baptize the child with water. This act represents peace and salvation: a
sign assuring the main character that there is life beyond human death, one he
has long forgotten. On their way back, he asks Ben, “What if you hadn’t
baptized the baby and it died? What would happen to it then?” Ben answered, “It
won’t see God,” to which the main character replied “But isn’t that unfair?” Dr.
Lazaro sensed his son was desperately groping for answers, much like how he
seeks to understand why certain things in life don’t turn out the way he hopes
them to be.
For all his indifference, Dr.
Lazaro realizes he is never unfazed. The heart grows hard through the years,
but it is not rid of feeling. By the time they reached home, he felt closer to
his son than he had ever been in years. Observing the youth and eagerness of
his son enabled him to recover parts of his old self. “It came to Dr. Lazaro
faintly in the late night that for certain things like love, there was only so
much time.” The main character emerges with a renewed sense of hope through his
son knowing he has a second chance at making things right. The final line, “But
the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep
rising now in his brain.” It hints at the reality surrounding his disposition. There
is hope there, and yet, he mustn’t allow the world’s indifference or his own lack
of faith take it away from him.
B.
The Invincible
In Estrella D. Alfon’s The Invincible (1974), Minda the main character is an accomplished
career woman in her fifties who has gone through a failed marriage and
life-threatening heart attack. She has managed to provide for her children and
even give support for her grandchildren throughout the difficulties in her life.
Her profession was not mentioned in the story, but the author seemed to portray
her as a long-time editor of a popular newspaper or magazine. Readers find it
striking that the character does not want to die yet because “people might
think she died of a broken heart.” She thinks it is pathetic and does not want
to be remembered that way.
The story, as told in third person perspective, begins
with the main character preparing her clothes for a long busy day: going to a
wake, being a ninang to child’s
baptism, attending a birthday party, going to the opening of her son’s art
exhibit, and meeting a man who had once been her lover. All the events draw the
reader into getting a better sense of the main character; her reflections give
insight to life and death, love and family, and her estranged relationship with
her son. Her concern for her son’s affairs was unmistakable, especially after
witnessing how his marriage turned sour. “Her son had asked her money for this
exhibition and out of pique over what he was doing with his life, the constant
quarreling with his wife, the inability to earn enough money, which had been
the perennial bone of contention with his wife, Minda had only given him a
fraction of what he asked. She had enjoined him to start trying to earn a
decent income from his art. I am, she had said, an artist myself, I hope. But,
somehow, with the kind of art I know, I have fed you, all of you, housed you,
clothed you, been able to send you through school.” The previous excerpt shows
her frustrations towards her son. On the surface, she appears to be reliable
and independent. Invincible and always in control: that was the image Minda
earned for herself. Then again, there were things out of her hands, like how
she knew she could not change her son. Her many layers are delicately stripped
by the author, revealing her depth and complexity, a softness not seen by
looking at accomplishments. She is hardened by years of reality, yet wise in
her own ways. The reader learns that what the main character makes up for in
appearance is what she lacks in her relationships. She cannot control the
circumstances around her, but she is in control of her life. She loves whom she
loves and gives as much as she can.
Later on, the reader learns that the main character
sees so much of her husband in her son. She grew distant from him because of
the very qualities that led her to break up with her husband. “This son she
loved very much, she also despised very much. She saw in him the qualities that
made her leave his father. A laziness in dealing with life, a tendency to think
the world owed him a living. But she could never really be angry with him
thoroughly. Anytime she hinted at giving him what he asked for, a regret always
nagged her afterwards. She could be generous with other people, why not him?”
She cared so much for her son but could not express it in a way he would
understand. Minda thought her son would become a responsible man after marrying
and having a family, but that was not the case. She often regarded him as
thoughtless and self-centered. “She wanted him to face his own realities…
(instead) he had saddled her with additional mouths to feed.”
However, Minda would be proven wrong. Her attitude
towards her son would change after seeing his work. “The exhibit humbled her…
he had expressed a genius she knew she did not have. A sensibility touching the
hidden meanings of life that she had begun to overlook, and perhaps had killed
with the facile words she strung together to make a living… it brought quick
tears to her eyes when she saw the title she had made for it: Hoy, anong ginagawa niyo rito? Hey, what
are you all doing here?” The main character somehow knew her son was sensitive
enough to recognize his shortcomings. For Minda, this is his way of saying his artistic
pursuits are not useless. As a mother, the main character still expresses
unwavering support for her son, no matter how much frustration he brought her
in the past. Before she left, her son kissed her goodbye—a far cry from the
days when he told her not to kiss him in public because it would embarrass him.
Her son had expressed gratefulness.
The author’s description for the artwork was vague,
“made out of little pieces of colored cardboard and delicate pen strokes.” It
was described as something that appears to be “a cemetery for the dead, or a
city for the living”— this is the pervading image in the story, a truth about
human life rendered artistically by her son. While people are living, they are
dying. How life cannot be separated from death, a condition that indicates
impermanence, a kind of balance. Whether one sees semblances of life or death,
it’s how one chooses to see. The reader can speculate that the main character
was moved to tears after reading the title,
“Hoy anong ginagawa niyo rito?” because, all at once, the title appeals to
the person’s will, while drawing feelings of being trapped in a place wretched
with sadness, that maybe there is another place, a way out.
Towards
the end, the main character goes to a motel with her past lover. At this point
in the story, the reader realizes Minda still has an intimate relationship with
her ex-husband though they have been separated for years. During intercourse,
she almost had a heart attack. Her ex-husband, worried, stops the deed while Minda
reaches for her medication. The main character recognizes that she must love as
much as she can before her time is cut short. She muses “Wouldn’t it be a rich
joke if I died now? Dead from loving. She would write her own death notice.” She
is pleased with this thought.
C.
Phantom Pains
Katrina Tuvera’s
Phantom Pains (2002) is a story about a middle-aged widow struggling to
recover her faded relationship with her daughter. The main character, Celing,
lost her husband to a bus accident. Told in third person perspective, the story
begins with Celing waking up from sleep due to a persistent throbbing where her
amputated left leg used to be. “Phantom pains, the doctor had called them;
often, he said, when a leg is cut off, the victim still feels the missing
limb.” Just as Celing woke, she heard her daughter’s footsteps going to the end
of the hall. Her daughter had come home just as the sun rose.
The
main character’s daughter, Anna, is portrayed as an aloof twenty-two year old,
silent with “shoulders sagged in infinite boredom.” She is extremely secretive
and has begun to lock her room to keep her mother away from her things. Celing
prepared breakfast for her and Boyet, Anna’s older brother. As soon as Celing’s
children left for work, her days were empty, leaving her with excess time to
think of the state of her family, especially her relationship with Anna. The
main character is only shown once to have a conversation with Anna, in which
Anna doesn’t say anything but “Rent, my share”, slapping a wad of money on the
table. “It was hard for her to recall the woman she’d once been, strong and
uncompromising, as wife and mother wielding a power rarely contested… She
thought of Anna, once a child with runny nose tugging at her skirt, now this
stranger sitting silently at breakfast, handing over money for rent and food.”
Anna didn’t bother to listen to what Celing was saying about her physical
discomfort. After breakfast, she left for work carrying what seemed to be an
unusually big purse.
The
main character is portrayed as a strict mother, but she has grown old and
fragile after the accident. The reader slowly begins to understand that the
tension between mother and daughter must have been caused by the mother’s
harshness. In the present scenario, the main character is no longer as strong-willed.
She is depicted as more introspective and sensitive to her children—a huge
contrast to the mother from eight years back who always had her way in their
household.
The reason for Anna’s indifference towards her
mother is revealed through flashbacks. Her pain is deep and enduring. The main
character knew very well what she had done to her daughter, and knowledge of
her sin made her fears loom. “Her fear had no shape, like a child’s fantasy
that varied from day to day. Her husband was dead and yet she mourned more for
the living, because for them she feared another kind of death was waiting.
Around some corner, there was a kind of death that did not kill, only left its
victim stuck on some middle-ground, half-forgiven, half-condemned.” These
concerns pervade her mind now that she has reached the twilight of her life.
When Anna was fifteen, she had an
affair with a twenty year-old boy that lived in the neighborhood. “Larry, the
name was like a slap on Celing’s face… she had trusted him.” The boy was
friends with Boyet and occasionally had supper with them. Not long after, a
neighbor caught Anna inside a sari-sari store lying naked on the floor with
Larry. Celing was furious, she felt
betrayed and ashamed for what her daughter had been doing. “As for Larry, Celing
met him at the door and bluntly told him that if he came again, she would cut
him where it hurt most, between his legs. Days later, a note came for her
daughter. Celing tore it to pieces… They did not hear from him again.” As if
Anna’s first heartbreak was not enough, this event was just a precursor for the
actual trauma that ensued. A few weeks later, Celing learned that Anna was
pregnant.
The
main character sought help from Aling Rosa, another resident in the compound.
She had arranged for the baby to be aborted. Celing’s husband did not agree
with her plan. He headed out early in the morning expressing contention, but
she had made up her mind. From the outside, it seemed an innocent task
performed by compassionate women. Anna clearly did not want to have an abortion.
“Celing knelt at the foot of the bed, gripping Anna’s legs. She had wanted
this, and she forced herself to watch, because to shut her eyes would mean she
had been wrong… From that day, many things faded from her family, among them
the light in Anna’s eyes.”
The
author used phantom pains as a metaphor for the main character’s estranged
relationship with her daughter. As a limb that persistently aches even after
it’s been severed, it is also a metaphor for Anna’s aborted child. She resents
her mother for conceding to Aling Rosa’s advice, and ultimately because she was
not given any right to decide if she could keep the baby.
The main character is fearful because she knows her
daughter might never forgive her after all those years, though she only wanted what
was best for her. The reader comes to wonder how a mother can ever make it up
to her child after inflicting that kind of emotional and physical trauma.
Celing hangs on and even tries to reach out to Anna, knowing Anna will continue
to be indifferent. Out of anxiety, Celing took a crowbar and broke into Anna’s
room. Finding her cabinet almost empty, a new fear dawned on the main character
when she realized Anna was slowly leaving. “One more trip, Celing thought, and
she would have taken everything she owned.” The huge purse, the frequent nights
away from home, and the locked room were all signs of her impending departure.
The
story ends with Celing noticing a car pull up in front of their apartment.
Somehow she found the sound of her daughter’s footsteps comforting. She ceased
to notice the pain on her aching leg. However, as far as her daughter was
concerned, she doesn’t consider her mother as part of her life anymore. The
reader can only guess if Celing mustered the courage to ask her daughter for
forgiveness, or if she was simply content seeing her daughter move on with her life.
Like the character of Dr. Lazaro, Celing harbors guilt over an event she can
never undo. After years of denial, the main character finally acknowledged what
she had done to her daughter was wrong. Though there is no end to the misery of
her guilt, knowing her daughter still came home was a relief. Little hope
lingered that perhaps one day she may be able to restore her relationship with
Anna.
V.
Estrangement in Relation to Epiphany
In
all six stories, emotional distance between parents and children is made
apparent when characters exhibit resistance toward each other through dialogue
and action. Their attitudes become clear when presented through introspective
thought. In most cases, frustration and differences in expectation cause rifts
between parent and child to widen. The authors were able to tackle the theme of
estrangement and its complexity by showing different facets of human behavior. They
have woven stories that ultimately depicts how they see the world they live in
after a string of influential events. How the characters emerged reflects the
consciousness of the writers and their attitude towards certain issues.
Much of the characters’ realization arrived through
reflection; in particular moments when they were quiet and absorbed in careful
thought. The epiphanies each character had surpassed issues that only concerned
their relationship with their father, mother, or child. The stories have come
to reveal hard truths about the world we live in, whether it’s about love and
marriage, regret, life and death, hope, and salvation. It is not so much
whether the character successfully reconnected with a family member, but the
process: what is in the how, the core of each character that makes their
condition real for readers to relate with.
It is only when characters realize and accept the
truth about themselves that they are able to confront issues that have long
silenced, trapped, and strained their most valuable relationships. This search
for truth is as much an important endeavor in literature as it is in real life.
For nothing enriches human life much like having the uniqueness of experience
and illumination of thought.
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, M.A. Abrams eds. “The Twentieth Century and After. Introduction.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 1827-1847.
Medina, Belen T.G. The Filipino Family. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2001. 12, 44.
Reyes, Myrna Peña. “Breaking Through”, The River Singing Stone. Pasig: Anvil Publishing Inc., 1994. 46.
Sucov, Ellen B. Fragmented Families: Patterns of Estrangement and Reconciliation. Jerusalem, Israel: Southern Hills Press, 2006. 197, 198.
Online References
Dictionary and Reference. Dictionary.com, LLC. Sept. 2012.
Parks, Tim. “Beckett. Still Stirring”, The New York Review of Books. 13 Jul. 2006. Sept. 2012. 6, 7. .
Veldhuis, Berdien. Psychological Estrangement. Creative Writing Bachelor Thesis, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands. Feb. 2011. 1, 3.
Short Stories
Alfon, Estrella D. “The Invincible”, Underground Spirit: Philippine Short Stories in English, 1973-1989: Volume 1. Edited by Gemino H. Abad. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2010. 56-72.
An Lim, Jaime. “The Homing Mandarin or, After the First Death There Are Others”, Catfish Arriving in Little Schools. Edited by Ricardo M. de Ungria. Pasig: Anvil Publishing Inc., 1995. 100-25. (First published in Sands and Coral ’95, 13-25).
Brillantes, Gregorio C. “Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro” 2nd prize in both Palanca and PFP, 1960. PFP, 18 June 1960: pp.? Brillantes, The Distance to Andromeda, 1960. 44-59
Casocot, Ian Rosales “Things You Don’t Know”, Beautiful Accidents. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2011.
Tiempo, Edith L. “Chambers of the Sea”, Philippine Short Stories 1941-1955: Volume 2. Edited by Leopoldo Y. Yabes. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1981. 662-671.
Tuvera, Katrina. “Phantom Pains”, Testament and Other Stories. Pasig: Anvil Publishing Inc., 2002. 69-84.
