STORY ANALYSIS
Submitted by: Frances Sam M. Tahum
1. MGA IBONG MANDARAGIT
Mga Ibong Mandaragit is a novel written by the Filipino writer and social activist, Amado V.
Hernandez in 1969. Mga Ibong Mandaragit, hailed as Hernandez's masterpiece, focuses on
the neocolonial dependency and revolt in the Philippines. The novel reflects Hernandez's experience as
a guerrilla intelligence officer when the Philippines was under Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945.
This story illustrates Hernandez's yearning for change and the elevation of the status of Philippine
society and living conditions of Filipinos. The setting is in the middle of 1944, when the armed forces of
the Japanese Empire were losing. The novel acts as a sequel to Jose Rizal's historic Noli Me Tangere
and El filibusterismo. The protagonist Mando Plaridel is tested by Tata Matyas, an old revolutionary, on
his knowledge about Rizal and Rizal's novels. Similar to Rizal's novel, the main character examines the
Philippines as an outsider while traveling in Europe. Hernandez's novel also tackles the lead character's
search for Simoun's treasure, acting as a continuation of Rizal's El Filibusterismo. The novel portrays
the conditions of the citizenry at the onset of industrialization brought forth by the Americans in the
Philippines. Mga Ibong Mandaragit had been translated into English and Russian.
2. THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
This story was written by a prominent Filipino writer, playwright, and journalist, Nicomedes
Joaquín y Márquez (Nick Joaquin) in 1961, it would seem that the author presents the story without
the consistency of narrative styles and narrates the themes with anon-linear manner. By this means,
the story gradually unfolds settings, themes, and plots when each character is orderly introduced. The
story revolved around the upper middle class expatriates’ consciousness during the American period of
colonization. It portrayed every character’s struggle to maintain their “selves” in a foreign setting like
Hongkong. It can also be defined as coming to terms with the political consciousness during that
period. The novel also contained mixtures of hatred, love, anger, insecurities, and sufferings that
manifest in the realities of life making the flow of the story more provocative and appealing to the
audience. The Woman Who Had Two Navels, on the other hand, maintains the mixtures of hatred, love
and sufferings that manifest the realities of life, making the story more provocative and appealing to
the readers. The title of a book, “two navels” probably represents Hong Kong and the Philippines. That
is to say, even if the story is mostly set in Hong Kong, still, the culture and the traditions of the
Philippines are presented throughout the novel. As the story continually progresses, it has been found
that the attempt to establish roots and need to bond, especially the cultural identity is continuously
and clearly shown through the Filipino’s characters namely Connie, Concha, Paco and Dr. Monson. At
this point, the sense of nationalism or being the Filipinos is portrayed not only through main female
characters such as Connie and Concha, symbolizing their homeland, but also through the character of
Dr. Monson, who has still longed for his native country, the Philippines. Before the Spanish colonizers
firstly settled in the Philippines, the native Filipinos had lived simple lives, depending on natural
resources. Communalism was also apparent within the country and people’s connection with the
nature maintained balanced environments. Unfortunately, the Spanish colonizers left nothing but
drastically distorted both trading and infrastructures of the Philippines since then.
3. PO-ON
It is a novel written by Francisco Sionil José, a Filipino English-language writer. This is the
original title when it was first published in the Philippines in the English language. In the United States,
it was published under the title Dusk A Novel. For this novel's translation into Tagalog, the title Po-on
Isang Nobela – a direct translation of Po-on A Novel - was adopted. The events in Poon A Novel
happened from 1880 to 1889, when an Ilocano family abandoned their beloved barrio in order to
overcome the challenges to their survival in southern Pangasinan in the Philippines, and also to flee
from the cruelty they received from the Spaniards. One of the principal characters of the novel is Istak,
a Filipino from the Ilocano stock who was fluent in Spanish and Latin, a talent he inherited from the
teachings of an old parish priest in Cabugao. He was an acolyte aspiring to become a priest. He was
also knowledgeable in the arts of traditional medicine. The only hindrance to his goal of becoming a
full-pledged priest was his racial origins. He lived in a period in Philippine history when it a possible
Filipino uprising against the Spanish government was about to erupt, a time after the execution of
three mestizos, namely Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (or the Gomburza,
an acronym for the three) at Bagumbayan (now known as Rizal Park) in February, 1872. Po-on the
novel is only one part of F. Sionil José's Rosales Saga, the historical epic narrative composed of four
other novels considered by the Filipino poet and literary critic Ricaredo Demetillo as "the first great
Filipino novels written in English." Specifically, Po-on had been described by Random House as a work
of fiction which is "more than" the character of a "historical novel", a book with "extraordinary scope
and passion" that is "meaningful to Philippine literature." a book as meaningful to Philippine literature
as One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature.
4. BANAAG AT SIKAT
Banaag at Sikat is a love story framed in the context of a political tale from Lope K Santos’
novel. Published in 1906, it became the fountain head of social realism in the Tagalog novel and hailed
as Asia’s first proletariat novel. It revolves around Delfin, a poor man in love with Meni, a capitalist’s
daughter. Delfin is a socialist while Felipe, his friend, is an anarchist. Delfin wants the citizens to have
more rights in business and property relations. He believes that society could be changed through
education. On the other hand, Felipe believes in tearing down society’s walls. Factories should be
owned by those who work there and land owned by those who till it. Although he is a landlord’s son,
Felipe hates his father’s ways. He wants to see a society with equal status for all, where the horizon of
hope is limitless. Banaag at Sikat mirrors the clash of forces during the early days of the American
empire. Its burning passages on race, class, and colonialism still resonate today. Translated by ‘one of
Asia’s best writers’, may this modern rendering inspire new readers to shape their lives so they ‘can
help change the world’. The literary novel Banaag at Sikat , according to Agoncillo, the book had a flaw
but it established a method of creating a Tagalog novel. The novel portrays that Filipinos tend to fight
for what they believe in, regardless of whether it is wrong or right and regardless of how they
accomplish it. The novel also shows that society is unjust; there are poor and rich people.
5. ILLUSTRADO
It is written by Miguel Syjuco. Ilustrado is basically a novel presenting the lives of two more or
less expatriate Filipino writers, but there's little about it that's very basic. The writers are Crispin
Salvador, found floating the Hudson in New York City in 2002, and 'Miguel Syjuco', an acolyte who is
writing his biography, Crispin Salvador: Eight Lives Lived. Much of the novel is presented as this
Syjuco's first-person account, in which he describes his own relationship with Salvador, the research he
is conducting for the biography he is working on (and where it leads him), as well as much of his own
life-story -- one strikingly similar to that of the actual author Miguel Syjuco. Interspersed throughout
the narrative there are, however, also many excerpts from both the biography-in-progress, Crispin
Salvador: Eight Lives Lived and many of Salvador's own works -- which range from his own
autobiographical Autoplagiarist to a wide variety of fiction, from pulp-thriller to literarily ambitious, to
the libretto for a "disco opera". There are also excerpts from newspaper articles, blogs posts, and The
Paris Review-interview with Salvador. The novel is an enormous, many-voiced work of pastiche the
many voices including Salvador's own many very different ones, as he employed any number of
different styles. “Ilustrado” is being presented as a tracing of 150 years of Philippine history, but it’s
considerably more than that. Just as this country is searching for its identity, its author seems to be
searching for his own. What does it mean to live in exile? What does it mean to be a writer? The
fictional Syjuco tells Salvador that he wants to change the world through his writing. “Changing the
world is good work if you can get it,” his master replies. “But isn’t having a child a gesture of optimism
in the world?” “Ilustrado” received the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008. Spiced with surprises and
leavened with uproariously funny moments, it is punctuated with serious philosophical musings.
Searching for the cause of Crispin Salvador’s death, and for his missing manuscript, Syjuco comes
across an old woman, formerly a photographer, who knew Salvador in her youth. When she last saw
him, she reports, he too had been searching. “Angry men,” she reflects, “have little to live for when
their rage becomes ineffective.” The reader senses that this possibility worries the author of
“Ilustrado” as well.
References:
Gibney Frank, Everybody's Colony (page 2), A review about F. Sionil Jose’s Dusk (p
age 2), New York: The Modern Library. 323 pp., The New York Times, NYTim
es.com, August 2, 1998
Hernandez, Amado V. Mga Ibong Mandaragit: Nobelang Sosyo-Politikal, with a Prologue by Carlos P.
Romulo and Epilogue by Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Progressive Printing Palace, Quezon City, 1969, 416 pages.
https://www.academia.edu/29998805/
The_Woman_Who_Had_Two_Navels_A_Short_Analysis_of_Themes_and_Characters
https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-southern-mindanao/liteartures-of-the-philippines/
banaag-at-sikat-analysis/41800797
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Bonner-t.html
