Republic of the Phillippines

Bulacan State University-Sarmiento Campus

City of San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan

A Stylistic Analysis of the Use of Honorifics in Manuel E. Arguilla’s

How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife

by:

Jeramheele F. Pinera

BSED English 3A

Bulacan State University Sarmiento Campus

City of San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan

Submitted to:

Ms. Rizelyn Morales-Marantan

Associate Professor
A Stylistic Analysis of the Use of Honorifics in Manuel E. Arguilla’s How My Brother Leon
Brought Home a Wife

Abstract

This study is concerned primarily with the honorifics of “How My Brother Leon Brought Home

a Wife”, and aims to provide an integrative, systematic stylistic analysis of the short story,

deriving its underlying theories from Type Hierarchy of Icons method. This study will also focus

on the graphological, phonological, grammatical, and pragmatic level. The features that will be

analyzed under graphological level are unusual capitalization and the use of foreign word/s. The

phonological level will analyze the alliteration. The grammatical level will cover the lexical and

syntactical features. The researcher will also analyze the use of parallelism and identify the

implication of the use of honorifics to the culture of Philippines.

Keywords: Stylistics, Stylistic Analysis, Honorifics, Type Hierarchy of Icons, icons, dialogue,

addressor, addressee, rank, higher-or-int, lower-or-int

1. Introduction

1.1 Stylistics

Stylistics is a branch of applied linguistics, originated as a way of applying linguistic

models to literary text. Widdowson (1975) defines it as “the study of literary discourse from a

linguistic orientation”. According to Short and Candlin (1989) stylistics is an approach to the

analysis of literary texts using linguistic description. However, the term has been a controversial

one as there are a number of approaches and orientations which the analyst may adopt. These
varied approaches, as Wales (1989) observes, are “due to the main influences of linguistics and

literary criticism”. While Widdowson (1975) is of the view that stylistics is a link between the

disciplines; literary criticism and linguistics, David Crystal (1980) sees stylistics as a part of

linguistics which “studies certain aspects of language variation”. In this sense stylistic analysis

tends to explore and explain the particular choices made by the writer/author in the selection of

words and sentence structure. In other words the style employed by the author serves to present a

particular emotion and meaning. Leech and Short (2007) also explain style as the way of the

writer to convey message to the reader.

1.2 Stylistic Analysis

Traditionally stylistic analysis was seen as a way of exploring the meaning of literary text

but now it has gone beyond this structuralistic approach and moved towards a more pragmatic

orientation to “link choices in text to social and cultural context” (Thornborrow & Wareing,

1998). According to this view an author makes certain choices in relation to the particular

context. This does not imply that the trend of exploring the meaning in stylistic analysis has

changed altogether. Along with the discovery of meaning, stylisticians have started taking

interest in the ways in which features of text: particular choice of words are viewed in relation to

the context in which it is produced and received. Though different in their approach, all these

research works are aimed towards the same goal i.e. to study and explore the choices made by

the writers and how these choices create the effect that writer wishes to communicate to the
readers. These choices can create deviations in the text by employing the stylistic feature and

characteristics of some other genre.

1.3 Related Literature

A Son is Born (Arguilla, 1937) Set in a Philippine barrio at Christmas time; it relates the

story of the birth of the third son in a poor provincial family. The eldest son explains to his

younger brother the traditional practices that are involved in the birth of the baby. The story

serves mainly to paint a quaint picture of barrio life by presenting local color and the rhythms of

the lives of simple folk. The story has the honorifics Don, Mang, Itay, and Manong.

Rice (Arguilla, 1938) An afternoon on a hut with a tamarind tree beside it, Pablo, an old

farmer, came from the farm and unhitched his carabao upon its empty sled and began to feed it

with a zacate. Then, he called her wife, Sebia, from their hut but no one answers him. He goes to

the neighborhood to ask if they’ve seen Sebia and his children but Osiang, their neighbor, seems

not hearing what Mang Pablo is asking and give a question back regarding his husband Andres.

Later sometime Osing told Mang Pablo that his wife and three children went to the creek for

some snails. Mang Pablo reminisce the scenario later that morning when he with the several

other tenants driven with their sleds to the house of the senora to borrow some grains. But as

they go changes come, their usual tersiohan system on borrowing became takipan meaning the

amount that they borrow becomes double at harvest time. His co-tenants refuse for this is too
much and can’t even know if they can pay it exactly at the time given. In the end everyone leave

with an empty sled and will come home without any rice to eat. Then, Osiang’s voice broke the

silence, asking if he had already cooked their rice and offered him pieces of coal. When he is

about to go back home Andres came and give a sign telling he must wait for him. Andres – dark,

broad and squat man, wearing a printed camisa de chino appeared asking Mang Pablo if he is

coming with them. Mang Pablo advised him not to continue this because they will commit

stealing but Andres together with other men is desperate. As he turned, he had seen wife and

three children and was accompanied with a man. The man told him that they are fishing in the

fields but Sebia disagreed and told him that they are just gathering some snails. Then, the

watchman told Mang Pablo that they must pay five cavanes. Sebia is asking for the rice but

Mang Pablo told him that there is no rice while looking in his hungry children seeing weakness

and pain then he asks for his bolo joining Andres and together they walked to the house of Eli.

The story has the honorifics Mang and Itay.

Morning in Nagrebcan (Arguilla, 1940) is about the life of boy named Baldo in the

Philippine countryside. His dog had puppies that he loved, cared for and protected. He and his

younger brother Ambo got into a fight over the puppies. The younger brother had snatched a

puppy out of the older brother’s arms. While they were tussling they both fell on the puppy.

Ambo pulled the tail of the puppy and got bitten by it. The children’s father beat the puppy until
it dies, as well as the younger brother very badly. In the end, the two brothers buried the puppy

and life went on as usual. This story uses honorifics such as Tang and Nana, which means father

and mother in English.

Midsummer (Arguilla, 1940) is set in the middle of summer where we can feel the

hotness and scorching heat of a relationship that is growing. It is during midsummer when plants

are growing just like the growing relationship of the two characters. The story is a not-so-special

meeting between a man and woman that might have a promising relationship in the future. The

character’s conversation is plain just like the landscape setting but it was filled with passion and

emotions. The story is very detailed which let us readers conclude that they both have the same

feelings for each other. Although the story is more on portraying the feelings of Manong, we can

also say that Ading is attracted to him in the way she observes and approach him . The story uses

the honorifics Manong and Ading which means older brother and younger sister in English.

Heat (Arguilla) This 21st literary piece of Mister Manuel Arguilla depicts the scene on

Nagrebcan, Bauang La Union where he was born and spent his childhood days. It highlights a

decent, serene, and simple living in countryside of a frisky boy Melo Cruz who loves to spend

his day in Lacay Julian’s yard. He beats Polo, his friend and son of yard’s owner, in hand

wrestling and they would stood in the warm gold of the afternoon sunlight, flexing their biceps.

Meliang and her two sisters were also there pounding rice busily. He adored Meliang so much
but the lady would pay no attention towards his admiration to her. Heat is a state of a body

perceived as having or generating a relatively high degree of warmth. As observed in the story,

heat has been associated in different manners unfolded in some of the scenarios in it. The heat

experienced by Mero is the heat of the sun because he was working during the afternoon which

is the hottest part of the day. The second type of “heat” is the desire he has for Meliang because

she is attractive to the eyes of Mero.

1.4 Statement of the Problem

Specifically, this stylistics study will attempt to answer the following questions:

1. What are the graphological and phonological feautures of the story?

2. What are the lexical features and syntactical features of the story?

3. How do honorifics related to the lexical and syntactical features?

4. What do honorifics imply to the culture of Philippines?

1.5 Theoretical Framework

1.5.1 Honorifics

In linguistics, an honorific (abbreviated hon) is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form

that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. Distinct from

honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality form, social distance, politeness pol,
humility hbl, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic,

grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely different lexical item. A key

feature of an honorific system is that one can convey the same message in both honorific and

familiar forms—i.e., it is possible to say something like (as in an oft-cited example from Brown

and Levinson) “The soup is hot” in a way that confers honor or deference on one of the

participants of the conversation. Honorific speech is a type of social deixis, as an understanding

of the context—in this case, the social status of the speaker relative to the other participants or

bystanders—is crucial to its use.

There are three main types of honorifics, categorized according to the individual whose

status is being expressed: Addressee (or speaker/hearer), Referent (or speaker/referent),

Bystander (or speaker/bystander). Addressee honorifics express the social status of the person

being spoken to (the hearer), regardless of what is being talked about. For example, Javanese has

three different words for “house” depending on the status level of the person spoken to. Referent

honorifics express the status of the person being spoken about. In this type of honorific, both the

referent (the person being spoken about) and the target (the person whose status is being

expressed) of the honorific expression are the same. This is exemplified by the T–V distinction

present in many Indo-European languages, in which a different 2nd person pronoun (such as tu

or vous in French) is chosen based on the relative social status of the speaker and the hearer (the

hearer, in this case, also being the referent). Bystander honorifics express the status of someone
who is nearby, but not a participant in the conversation (the overhearer). These are the least

common, and are found primarily in avoidance speech such as the “mother-in-law languages” of

aboriginal Australia, where one changes one’s speech in the presence of an in-law or other

tabooed relative. A fourth type, the Speaker/Situation honorific, does not concern the status of

any participant or bystander, but the circumstances and environment in which the conversation is

occurring. The classic example of this is diglossia, in which an elevated or “high form” of a

language is used in situations where more formality is called for, and a vernacular or “low form”

of a language is used in more casual situations.

Honorific forms express the speaker’s social attitude to others and also indicate the social

ranks of the participants in the discourse and the intimacy. Because honorifics are crucial for

using the language in a socially correct way, they have been studied in computational linguistics

as well as theories of grammar. Particularly, using the honorific information improves anaphora

resolution, and helps machine translation systems provide more natural-seeming output

sentences (Mima et al., 1997; Siegel, 2000; Nariyama et al., 2005).

1.5.2 Related Theory

Individual Constraints

Minimal Recursion Semantics is the formalism employed to compute semantic

compositionality in the present work. In addition, the current work employs ICONS (Individual

CONStraints) in order to incorporate discourse-related phenomena into semantic representation

of human language sentences. The representation method used in the present study (i.e.

MRS+ICONS) has to do with not only semantic information incrementally gathered up to the

parse tree, but also other components required to be accessed in the process of cross-lingual

processing. MRS+ICONS enables us to model several discourse-related items within an

intrasentential system (i.e. sentence-based processing). Notice that there exist several discourse

related items that can be at least partially resolved without seeing adjacent sentences. This can be

conceptualized in the format of Dependency MRS (Copestake, 2009). Going into the details, the

type hierarchy of icons for honorification is sketched out in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Type hierarchy of icons

icons

dialogue … rank

addressor addressee higher or lower or

int int
higher lower

int

Regarding honorification, icons includes two immediate subtypes: namely, dialogue and

rank. The former branches out into addressor and addressee, and the latter includes two levels of

subtypes. Higher-or-int indicates that one individual is socially higher than the other or intimate

to the other. Recall that father can be canonically used when the referent is higher than the
speaker (formal) or intimate to the speaker (less formal). The word itself has the [ICONSKEY

higher-or-int] feature, which can be further constrained by the value that the predicate assigns to

the word. Honorification is normally relevant to which is “higher” than which, but the linguistic

forms can sometimes be altered when talking to someone in the lower position. For instance,

Korean employs six levels of imperative inflections conditioned by the relationship between the

speaker and the hearer. Lower-or-int and lower work for this case. Finally, note that int inherits

from both higher-or-int and lower-or-int.

2. Methodology

The study involves the stylistic analysis of the short story How My Brother Leon Brought

Home a Wife by Manuel E. Arguilla with the aim of analyzing the use of honorifics of the author

throughout the story by using the Individual Constraints theory as the basis of the analysis. This

study also focused on the graphological, grammatical, and pragmatic level. The features under

graphological level are unusual capitalization and use of foreign words. The feature under

phonological level is the alliteration. The features under grammatical level are the lexical and

syntactical features. The researcher will also analyze the use of parallelism and identify the

implication of the use of Honorifics in the culture of the Philippines.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1 Graphological Level

3.1.1 Unusual Capitalization

The story displayed an unusual capitalization in the words Father and Mother which

usually starts with a small letter. These capitalizations were shown in the following lines:

‘There was no light in Father's room.’

‘“No, Father,” I said.’
‘“She is very beautiful, Father.”‘
‘There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see
her smiling shyly.’

‘The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were...’
‘“He is in his room upstairs,” Mother said, her face becoming serious.
These unusual capitalizations of the words father and mother imply the high authority

that the father and mother have in their role in the family. In this story, the words father and

mother are used as Honorifics which have equivalent words in Tagalog. The word father can be

translated in Tagalog as tatay, itay, ama, amang, tatang, etc. The word mother can be translated

in Tagalog as nanay, inay, ina, inang, nanang,etc. As of now, the capitalization of the words

father and mother is rarely used because we follow the grammar rule that a Common noun

should start with small letter.

3.1.2 Use of Foreign Words

The researcher found some foreign words and these are carretela and camino real. These

words are Spanish words. Carretela means cart and camino real means street or passage. These

words are found in the following lines:

‘She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace.’
‘At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his

braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.’

‘Why do you follow the Waig instead of the camino real?”‘

‘In a little while we drove up the grassy side onto the camino real.’

The use of these foreign words was influenced by the time when the story was written.

The story was written by Arguilla during the early American Colonization Period when the

Filipinos are still using Spanish words. That’s why some Spanish words are used in the story.

3.2 Phonological Level

3.2.1 Alliteration

The repetition of initial consonant sounds in closely occurring words is called alliteration.

The text under study displays numerous instances of alliteration in the following lines:

 Repetition of th, h and m sound

‘I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria;

and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.’

 Repetition of h and w sound

‘...her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small

dimple high up on her right cheek.’

 Repetition of sh and h sound

 ‘She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my

brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into

the cart.’

 Repetition of w sound

 ‘I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we

went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them.’

 Repetition of l and th sound

‘Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said ...’
 Repetition of l and th sound

‘My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed
to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.’
The purpose of using alliteration in the story that is found in these lines is to add style and

to the simple setting and flow of the story.

3.3 Grammatical Level

3.3.1 Lexical Features

The story ‘How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife’ has a total of 2,716 words

which is comprised of 234 articles, 580 nouns, 446 pronouns, 540 verbs, 227 adverbs, 178

adjectives, 187 conjunctions, 322 prepositions, and 2 interjections.

Out of 580 nouns, the most frequently used nouns in the story are Leon which is used 38

times, brother 38 times, Labang 35 times, Father 19 times, and Maria 14 times. The story

focused more on the characters Leon, Labang, Father, and Maria than the main character,
Baldo, himself. It is because the story is all about the journey of Leon taking his wife Maria to

their home town and introducing her to his family, and Baldo, the one who tells the story, is

merely a spectator as the one who drives Labang, even though he is part of the story.

Out of 446 pronouns, the most frequently used pronouns in the story are my which is

used 52 times, I 47 times, he 41times, she 35 times, her 33 times, and his 27 times. As

mentioned by the researcher, the story revolves around Baldo watching his brother Leon and

Maria as they make their way home that’s why the story used the 1st and 3rd person point of view

of pronoun more often, because Baldo is just watching them and not totally in the conversation.

Out of 540 verbs, the most frequently used verb in the story is the auxiliary verb was

which is used 47 times. The verb was is the past tense of the verb is. It implies that the story has

already happened because it is in its past tense, which is true because the other verbs like were,

had, did, would, looked, laughed, and stopped are all in past tense of the verb. The verb was is

also often used when Baldo is describing Maria. It is shown in the following lines:

She was lovely. She was tall.

She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom.

3.3.2 Syntactical Features

The story is composed of 187 sentences that is comprised of 68 simple sentences, 33

compound sentences, 61 complex sentences, and 25 compound-complex sentences. The number

of sentences that is in S-IV pattern are 20 sentences, while S-TV-DO pattern has a total of 57
sentences. S-LV-SC pattern has a total of 24 sentences, S-TV-DO-IO has a total of 45 sentences

and S-TV-DO-OC has a total of 41 sentences. Here are some examples:

 Simple sentences

‘She was lovely.’

‘She was tall.’

‘We stood alone on the roadside.’

 Compound sentences

‘The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road

echoed in my ears.’

‘He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard.’

‘I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice

as she said her last words.’

 Complex sentences

‘At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his

braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.’

‘When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope.’

‘Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still.’

 Compound-complex sentences

‘I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through

its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.’

‘I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria;

and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.’

 ‘Labang's white coat, which I had washed and brushed that morning with coconut husk,

glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.’

The researcher observed that the author is fond of using simple sentences and the S-TV-

DO pattern of a sentence. Although the author used more simple sentences, it is noticeable that

he also made use of many complex sentences and compound-complex sentences. He used these

sentences to show his own style of writing–using commas, colon, and semi-colon to separate

different ideas or movements in a single sentence which adds beauty to the story itself. He rarely

used the S-IV pattern because he is fond of composing long sentences that even a single

sentence can be compared to the length of a paragraph.

3.4 Parallelism

Parallelism is other means by which foregrounding effects can be created in texts . In

cases of parallelism, the foregrounding effects arise out of a repeated structure. Parallelism can

be seen in the following lines:

 Parallelism of the word her

‘…her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple

high up on her right cheek.’

 Parallelism of the words 'There was no

‘There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement.’

 Parallelism of the word He

 ‘He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He

was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it

carefully on the windowsill before speaking.’

Parallelism is used in these lines to emphasize that the actions were done by the same

subject in a successive manner or in a particular order as described by the author.

3.5 Use of Honorifics

The researcher noticed that the main character Baldo made use of the Ilocano honorifics

Manong in referring to his brother Leon when he was directly talking to him or talking about him

with someone. She also noticed that the author made use of the Ilocano honorifics such as Ca

when Baldo is referring to the driver of carretela or cart which is Mr./Ca Celin; and Lacay when

he was referring to his neighbor named Julian. These honorifics can be found in the following

lines.

 Manong

‘“Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong.”‘

‘“Soon we will get out of the Waig and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong.”‘

‘“She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang.”‘

 Ca

‘She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace.’

‘He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan.’
‘I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its

forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.’

 Lacay

‘We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come

to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family.’

The researcher also observed that in the narration of the main character Baldo, he always

use the words my brother when referring to his older brother Leon instead of just calling him

Leon or brother alone. These words are repeated 36 times in the whole story. The example of

these words being used can be found in the following lines:

‘My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road.’

‘“Maria---” my brother Leon said.’

‘“There is Nagrebcan, Maria,” my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.’

The author made use of these honorifics in order to indicate the status and the authority in

of the characters in the story.

‘“Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the

Waig instead of the camino real?”

“Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong.”‘

In the dialogue between Baldo and Leon above, the researcher observed that the

addressor (Leon) in the first sentence, called the addressee (Baldo) by his name only, without

using any honorifics. This shows that the addressor (Leon) has higher authority than the
addressee (Baldo). In the second sentence, the researcher also noticed that the addressor (Baldo)

used the honorifics Manong, which means older brother in English, in addressing the addressee

(Leon). This indicates that the addressor has lower authority than the addressee. Although the

age of the characters was not mentioned in the story, the use of honorifics helped the researcher

in determining who has the higher authority between the addressor and addressee.

4. Conclusion

The author made use of different linguistic features to express his own style in writing.

He used the graphological features that include the use of unusual capitalization and using

foreign words to uncover the culture of the Philippines which is influenced by countries like

Spain and America. He also used phonological feature like alliteration to create a sound pattern

that adds beauty to the story as the readers read it. The lexical features showed the focus of the

story, which is mainly describing Maria as they take their journey towards their home. This was

proven by the word classes used by the author. The syntactical features described the style of the

writer, who is fond of using compound sentences while describing the sceneries, the events, and

the characters. He used many S-TV-DO pattern and rarely used the S-IV pattern because he is

fond of composing long sentences that even a single sentence can be compared to the length of a

paragraph. He used parallelism in the story to emphasize that the actions were done by the same

subject in a successive manner or in a particular order as described by the author.

Arguilla used honorifics to indicate the status and the authority in of the characters in the

story. The main character Baldo is always referring his brother as my brother Leon in his
narration in the story to show respect to his older brother. Unlike in many foreign countries

wherein they call their older brothers or sister by their names only, the Filipinos living in the

Philippines have a culture in which they call their older brothers and sisters as Kuya, Ate,

Manong, Manang, etc. The same also applies even to the people who are not their family to

show respect. The use of honorifics in the Philippines implies that Filipino people are naturally

polite, and they value and respect the authority of the ones who are older or who have higher

status than them. The story also showed that Filipinos have the tradition of introducing the lover

or the fiancé of the sons/daughters to their family, and the parents testing their soon-to-be in-

laws to make sure that they are worthy for their children.

All in all, the researcher concludes that the story is not just simple as it seems for it

contains many linguistic features that enriches its characteristics and it uncovers the unique

culture of the Philippines.

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Appendices

About the Author

Manuel E. Arguilla

(1910-1944)

Manuel E. Arguilla was an Ilocano who wrote in English and best known for his short

story “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife” which received first place in the

Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940. Most of his stories depict scenes in Barrio Nagrebcan,

Bauang, La Union, the place where he was born. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Education in

1933 in the University of the Philippines. He became a member and later on the president of the

UP Writers’ Club and editor of the Literary Apprentice of the said university. He got married to

Lydia Villanueva, also a writer in English of Ermita, Manila. Arguilla became a teacher of

creative writing in the University of Manila and worked in Bureau of Public Welfare as a

managing editor of the Welfare Advocate until 1943; afterwards, he was elected in Board of

Censors. He was secretly established the guerilla intelligence unit against the Japanese during
the World War II. In August 1944, Manuel Arguilla was captured and executed at Fort William

McKinley (now known as Fort Bonifacio).

Synthesis of the Story

The story How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife started when Leon and his

younger brother Baldo were both waiting for the arrival of Leon’s wife, Maria, riding in a

carretela. As Baldo saw his older brother’s wife, he described her as lovely, tall, and beautiful.

He narrated their journey to Nagrebcan, their hometown. Leon wondered why Baldo drove them

to the Waig instead on the Camino Real. Baldo answered that he drove them to the Waig

because their Father told him to follow the Waig. The Waig route served as a test for the wife to

see if she could really live in a province which was very different in a life in a city where she

lived. While travelling, Maria described the place of Leon as clean, and free of dust and smoke.

Maria admitted of having some fears if the Father of Leon would not accept her as to be

his daughter-in-law because she may not able to survive the life in the province. When they got

home, Leon’s family talked to Maria. Baldo and his Father had a conversation about what had

happened while they were travelling. The Father asked Baldo if Maria was afraid in their place.

Baldo answered that Maria was not afraid and instead she enjoyed the journey. The writing style

of the author was good because he used figurative languages which made the story more

interesting, convincing, and beautiful. The message of the story was easy to understand because
it was clear and concise. The characters of the story were presented well of what were their

roles. The flow or the plot or the scenes in the story were organized. The words used were

appropriate. The story also taught us many moral lessons in life like one may have to sacrifice

small part of one’s life in order to be happy.

How My Brother Leon brought home a Wife

By: Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was

lovely. She was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level

with his mouth.

“You are Baldo,” she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were

long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom.

And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. “And this is Labang of whom I

have heard so much.” She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and

Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cuds

and the sound of his insides was like a drum.

I laid a hand on Labang’s massive neck and said to her: “You may scratch his forehead

now.”
 She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and

touched Labang’s forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud

except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very

daintily.

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca

Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing

beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his

horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

“Maria---” my brother Leon said.

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called

her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said ‘Maria’ and it was a

beautiful name.

“Yes, Noel.”

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking

Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it

sounded much better that way.

“There is Nagrebcan, Maria,” my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.
 She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said

quietly.

“You love Nagrebcan, don’t you, Noel?”

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where

the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the

wheel.

We stood alone on the roadside.

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and

deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the

southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through

which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang’s

white coat, which I had washed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like

beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth

seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in

answer.

“Hitch him to the cart, Baldo,” my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with

him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.
 “Why does he make that sound?” she asked. “I have never heard the like of it.”

“There is not another like it,” my brother Leon said. “I have yet to hear another bull call

like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him.”

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang’s neck

to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of

laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.

“If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become

greatly jealous.”

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to

me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always

like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my

brother Leon had to say “Labang” several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon

lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my

brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the

cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I

could do to keep him from running away.

 “Give me the rope, Baldo,” my brother Leon said. “Maria, sit down on the hay and hold

on to anything.” Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instant Labang leaped forward . My

brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack

of the rope hiss above the back of Labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling

of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent together to one side, her skirts

spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. Her eyes were on my

brother Leon’s back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon

handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang

was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.

“What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?” my brother Leon said.

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we

went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the

wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead

the sky burned with many slow fires.

I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which

could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my

shoulder and said sternly:

“Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?”

 His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we

were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.

“Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow

the Waig instead of the camino real?”

His fingers bit into my shoulder.

“Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong.”

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang.

Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:

“And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him

instead of with Castano and the calesa.”

Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, “Maria, why do you think

Father should do that, now?” He laughed and added, “Have you ever seen so many stars

before?”

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped

across knees. Seemingly, but a man’s height above the tops of the steep banks of the Waig, hung

the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang’s

coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the

banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with

the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.
 “Look, Noel, yonder is our star!” Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very

low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and

brightest in the sky.

“I have been looking at it,” my brother Leon said. “Do you remember how I would tell

you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?”

“Yes, Noel,” she said. “Look at it,” she murmured, half to herself. “It is so many times

bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach.”

“The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke.”

“So it is, Noel,” she said, drawing a long breath.

“Making fun of me, Maria?”

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my Brother Leon’s hand and

put it against her face.

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between

the wheels.

“Good boy, Baldo,” my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart and my heart

sank.

Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais

flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of
Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked

jerkily with the cart.

“Have we far to go yet, Noel?” she asked.

“Ask Baldo,” my brother Leon said, “we have been neglecting him.”

“I am asking you, Baldo,” she said.

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

“Soon we will get out of the Waig and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---

Manong.”

“So near already.”

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice

as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my

brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song

and the song was ‘Sky Sown with Stars’---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in

the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she

joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one . And each

time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon

would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.
 Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light

of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more

frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.

“But it is so very wide here,” she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the

darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

“You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don’t you?” My

brother Leon stopped singing.

“Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here.”

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was

breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drove up the grassy

side onto the camino real.

“---you see,” my brother Leon was explaining, “The camino real curves around the foot

of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I’ll

be asking Father as soon as we get home.”

“Noel,” she said.

“Yes, Maria.”

“I am afraid. He may not like me.”

 “Does that worry you still, Maria?” my brother Leon said. “From the way you talk, he

might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is

troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know.”

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not

come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought

of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and

Celin, and I said “Hoy!” calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother

Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to

make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.

I stopped Labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my

brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate

and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother

Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in

the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the

wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother’s hand were:

“Father... where is he?”

“He is in his room upstairs,” Mother said, her face becoming serious. “His leg is

bothering him again.”

 I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I

hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to

bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia

and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.

There was no light in Father’s room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair

by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed

the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before

speaking.

“Did you meet anybody on the way?” he asked.

“No, Father,” I said. “Nobody passes through the Waig at night.”

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hitched himself up in the chair.

“She is very beautiful, Father.”

“Was she afraid of Labang?” My Father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to

resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother

Leon around her shoulders.

“No, Father, she was not afraid.”

“On the way---”

“She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang.”

 “What did he sing?”

“---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him.”

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia

downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father’s voice must

have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once

more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the

night outside.

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

“Have you watered Labang?” Father spoke to me.

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.

“It is time you watered him, my son,” my Father said.

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall

and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning

when papayas are in bloom.