Philippine Literary

Turns and Tropes

Reporters:

Zent Kierlby A. Morgado

John Radz Niuda

Catherine faith Ramirez

 01
VIEW
Throughout history, the storm has
figured in the imagination of Filipino
writers
 May bagyo ma’t may
rilim
* Written by unnamed “ Una Persona Tagala ”

*Appeared in the book Memorial dela Vida Cristiana

en Lengua Tagala

*Used the image of the “bagyo” to praise the good

writing (“nitong mabuting sulat”) of the friar-writer
Francisco Blancas de San Jose

The life of the persona as he seeks the Christian God is tumultuous and stormy,and
the book being praised in the poem becomes the speaker’s stronghold(“aquing
sasandatahin”),light(“...ito ang liuanag”),
lifesaver(“timbulang icaligtas”),and staff(“toncoday inilaan”).
 Tagalog Salawikain (proverb)-
that dramatizes what seems like
our ironic blithenes:

“Nang ang bagyo’y

nakaraan, saka pa mandin
nagsuhay”(After the storm
had ravaged,only then was
the house propped).
 Maria Makiling

Described as one who loved to walk

“after a storm...running across the
fields and whenever she passed,life
was reborn-order and peace” by Rizal
 Panay Region
The tears of mythic
Tungkung Langit
longing for his wife
Alunsina are said to
be the cause of rain.
Paoay and Sampaloc Lakes

There are myths about

powerful storms created
lakes like the ones in
Paoay,Ilocos Norte and
Sampoloc,Laguna
 Storms have often represented aspects of our
daily lives.A storm is a phenomenon that brings
about devastation,as well as
creative,transformative potential.In the 1970’s
for instance,the potential unrest led by the
youth against the Marcos regime was called the
“First Quarter Storm”.
We have also imagined the storm as the
formidable force that defines our geographic
condition, at the disaster-prone fringes of the
Pacific.In the age of climate change, the storm
has become a wake-up call of sorts, showing
humanity the violent consequences of taking our
environment for granted for generations.The
storm has also become a literary turn or trope
embodying current Filipino(and
global)experiences of natural calamities and our
shared smallness in the presence of nature.
We always turn to our imaginative wellspring
every time a storm unsettles us, as in the
poem for discussion in this lesson,”The
Haiyan Dead” by Merlie M. Alunan.Amidst the
havoc, people collectively share thier pain
and grief.For us Filipinos,the storm represents
so many things in our lives,as it makes us
confront our own mortality and the
changeability of our Earth.
 Markers
A trope-is the creative use of language
mostly found in literature.True to its Figurative language-uses tropes
etymology,tropes change,turn,or alter and figures of speech to alter our
language,making it new,refreshing,and experience by turning our attention
thus literary. to similiarities(as in simile and
metaphor),representation(as in
A metaphor-directly synecdoche and metonymy),and
contradictions(as in irony and
compares without the paradox).
connective words

A simile- is a comparison that Tenor-is the part of the

utilizes connective words(i.e. metaphor that is the subject of
like, as, so, etc. the comparison to which
characteristics are attributed.

A vehicle - the object which owns

the attributed characteristics.
 TRACKBACK
Remembering Super Typhoon Haiyan or
Yolanda
The Hurricane Research Division of the Atlantic
Oceanographic and Meteorological laboratory defines a super
typhoon as one that reaches maximum sustained 1-minute
surface winds of at least 65 meters per second. In 2013, much
of the country was devastated by Super Typhoon
Haiyan,known locally as Yolanda. Strong winds and
unforgiving storm surges battered significant areas of
Leyte,Cebu,the Panay islands,and Palawan.It was described by
CNN.com as “one of the strongest storms recorded on the
planet.”Recent storm behaviors like that of Haiyan have been
attributed to the radically changing climate.
do not sleep.
They walk the streets with us climb stairs
of roofless houses latchless windows blown-off doors
THE HAIYAN DEAD
they’re looking for the bed by the window Merlie M. Alunan
cocks crowing at dawn lizards in the eaves
they’re looking for the men who loved them Leyte
at night the women they crawled to like puppies
to the teats the babe they held in arms the boy
who climbed trees the Haiyan dead *The poem “The Haiyan Dead” by Merlie
are looking in the rubble for the child they had been M. Alunan memorializes those who perished
the youth they once were the bride with flowers in the super typhoon. The primary trope
in her hair perfumed red-lipped women
white-haired father gap-toothed crone employed here is comparison,often seen
selling peanuts by the church door the drunk through similes and metaphors.
by a street lamp waiting for his house to come by
the dreaming girl under the moon the Haiyan dead *The mere fact that the dead seem to come
are looking for the moon washed out to life in Alunan’s poem suggests an
in a tumult of water that melted their bodies attribution of life and the capacity to “look”(to
they're looking for their bodies that once
moved to the dance to play to the rhythms of love search,to scour,perhaps)to the dead being
moved in the simple ways—before wind lifted sea remembered. In this regard,the dead here
and smashed it on the land—of breath talk words
shaping in their throats lips tongues become not literal ghosts(though they could
the Haiyan dead are looking for a song they used to love be, given the circumstances) but more a
a poem a prayer they'd raised that the sea had swallowed manifestation of the lives lost in the vast
before it could be said the Haiyan dead are looking
for the eyes of God gone suddenly blind in the sudden murk devastation, of how life once thrived in that
white wind seething water salt sand black silt— locally before the storm.
and that is why the Haiyan dead will walk among us
endlessly sleepless…
 On Merlie M. Alunan and Her Chronicles of
the Storm

Merlie M. Alunan is one of the more

influential and respected writers in the
Visayas region.As one who experienced Typhoon
Haiyan first hand in Tacloban City, Leyte,
where she is professor emeritus at the
University of the Philippines Visayas, she
wrote extensively about the "chaos and terror"
and the challenges of recovering from the
calamity during the early days of
devastation.People followed her travails with
her family rising up from the storm through
online news, when there was scant infor- mation
on the worsening conditions in the locality.In
the weeks after that storm, she released online
the poem "The Haiyan Dead," which was
subsequently translated into different Filipino
languages.
Her GMA News Online accounts of the storm gripped readers, and
the images of havoc conjured in this excerpt easily suggest
what may have compelled the writing of the poem: "Three to
four hours the wind raged and, when it left,the landscape had
turned into a holocaust; gutted, roofless buildings,rubble and
debris piled on the streets,hundreds of thousands left
homeless, children orphaned, mothers dazed lamenting for the
infants that the storm surge had torn from their arms, old
people bereft of support. The living wandered the streets
looking for their dead or for their loved ones among the
corpses of the drowned that littered the city. The wounded,
the maimed, the sick had nowhere to go for treatment for even
hospitals had been washed out."
As a contemporary voice writing in English and Cebuano,
Alunan represents the Visayas region, in that particular
instance where it needs ample "strength" to "heal and
rebuild." As author of celebrated poetry collections
Tales of the Spiderwoman, and Pagdakop sa
Bulalakaw, she has powerfully articulated the
Visayan "Southern" experience by reiterating
that "(a)way from the center, southern lifeways
thrive on their own. These lifeways yield their
own stories,and breed their own unique modes
of thinking and seeing." Her unique perspective
had immediately located the experience in the
Visayan terrain as one that is badly hit but
has the courage and determination to emerge
from the devastation caused by the storm. As a
way of witnessing,her writings on Haiyan are
testimonies to the Visayan and collective
 Visayan Poetry and "Southern
Consciousness"
The archipelagic condition of the country calls for more
specific assessment and appreciation of the multifarious
literatures coming from the Philippine regions. For Alunan,
Visayan literature, which covers all the literary productions
in the different languages of the region (Cebuano, Hiligaynon,
Kiniray-a, and Waray, to name a few), maybe understood by what
she calls the "southern consciousness." In her book,Fern
Garden: Women Writing in the South, Alunan problematizes the
idea of writing in the south as a response to a geo-cultural
positioning brought about by the "imperialisms" of the Manila
and Luzon centers. In an interview with the literary website
Kalatas, she elaborates:"(t)he south is a socio-political idea.
It implies adominant north where resources, talent, expertise
are concentrated,where power and authority emanate, where
quality of performance is assessed and affirmed. For the
southern writer, the concept of the north includes a colonizing
national language which reduces the regional languages to
secondary status."
While emphasizing specificities of experience and
perspective, this emphasis on "southern consciousness" as
typifying the Visayan experience may be seen as articulating
the continuing project of forming Filipino national identity in
diversity. "The rhythms of southern speech are as diverse as
the languages spoken in the major Visayan islands and among the
many tribes of Mindanao. The diversity of language also implies
a diversity of attitude and habits of thinking," she says in
the same interview. The poem in this lesson embodies an
experience that is specifically located in the Visayas, and yet
deeply embedded in our collective national consciousness. We
resonate with this experience not just because we have all
experienced storms, but because the image of the storm stands
as a common reminder of our ability to rise up to challenges,no
matter where in the country we live.
The poem,described by the National Artist for Literature Edith L.
Tiempo as “steeped in methapor”,is usually examined by
considering its:

LITERAL LEVEL- is something that refers to

the dramatic situation or what is
happening in the poem.
METAPHORICAL LEVEL- is where we see the
literal dramatic situation unfolding into a
figurative articulation of what is taking place.
THANK
YOU!