The Universality of Love: A Linguistic Analysis of Manuel E. Arguilla’s “MIDSUMMER”
Arguilla’s “Midsummer” is about a peasant boy and a peasant girl’s encounter in a remote village well at noontime with the burning summer heat. The young man in his cart was struck by the looks and bearing of a young woman carrying a jug of water from the well. At first, she made it appear that she did not notice him. After a while, they were finally able to start a conversation. Before they parted, the girl asked him to stop by her house. The story ended with the young man following the girl in the direction of her house.
The following paragraph describes the setting of the story which dramatizes the theme focused in this paper.
There was not a house in sight. Along the left side of the road lean the deep, dry gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sun-burned cogon grass. In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Farther, beyond the shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue than the cloud-palisaded sky. On the right stretched a land waste of low rolling dunes. Scattered clumps of hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren monotony of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin indigo line that was the sea. (Arguilla, “Midsummer,” 1933)
I chose to elaborate on the theme, “Universality of Love.” Arguilla’s skillful description of the setting provides appropriate background in this story. The contrast brought about by the bareness of the landscape and the vigor of the characters which he compares with the “quivering heat waves” magnifies his point. The use of person deixies (pronouns) exophorically and the common nouns, man and woman gives the impression of universality.
Literary critic, Bienvenido Lumbera, asserts that “Midsummer” is “fashionably ‘modern’ in the spareness of its plot, creating a problem for one who would extract values from the text.” Other critics view Arguilla’s story as “modern” through the way the writer gives life to the dead and barren landscape. However, I don’t see any contrast between the character of the young girl and the image of a perfect woman during the Spanish Colonial Period as exemplified by Rizal’s Maria Clara in “Noli Me Tangere.” The descriptions of the young woman in the story could be misconstrued as development in the struggle of Filipino women who refused the indoctrination of the abusive friars of the colonial times. The seemingly sexual advances initiated by the girl whose “single bodice instantly clang to her bosom molding the twin hillocks of her breasts…” “…not once having raised her eyes, she passed by the young man…”, “He was half through with his meal, when the girl came down the path once more” and others, are mere manipulations of the narrator.
Reading closely, Arguilla’s “Midsummer” shows no regard of the historical realities of the time when the story was written. Indeed, love as a universal feeling which gives no account of particulars or standard, a universality that carries very rich implications is successfully shown.
Linguistic approach could provide a new perspective on the concept of universality. I used Aileen Salonga’s six categories of speech representation which include: Narrative Report Action (NRA), Narrative Report of Speech Act (NRSA), Indirect Speech (IS), Free Indirect Speech (FIS), Direct Speech (DS), and Free Direct Speech (FDS). The whole story is predominantly NRA with maximum control from the narrator. Thus sexually inclined behaviors of the young characters are based on the writer’s perception of their actions.
During the conversation between the young man and woman, the speech of representation category switched from NRA to FDS as follows:
“Won’t you join with me, Ading,” he said simply. He remained seated.
Her lips parted in a half smile and a little dimple appeared high upon her right cheek. She shook her head and said: “God reward you, Manong.”
“Perhaps the poor food I have is not fit for you?”
“No, no. It isn’t that. How can you think of it? I should be ashamed. It is that I have must eaten myself. That is why I came to get water in the middle of the day – we ran out of it. I see you have eggs and shrimps and sugar. Why, be nothing but rice and salt.”
“Salt? Surely you joke.”
“I would be ashamed…”
“But what is the matter with salt?”
“Salt…salt…Makes baby stout,” he intoned. “My grandmother used to sing that to me when I complained of our food.”
Both of them are true and straightforward, yet, their conversation reveals politeness. “Surely you joke” or “But what is the matter with salt?” is an admission of the negative implication of having mere “rice and salt” for meal, likewise, “My mother used to sing that to me…” The absolute social deictics, “Manong” and “Ading” used by the characters contribute to the consistency of the setting.
In the last section, Arguilla again switched to DS which shows certain control of the narrator on the conversation of the characters. The story ends with fruitfulness which is evident in the positive development that occurred between the young man and woman in the following:
…More than ever he was conscious of her person. She carries the jar on her head without holding it. Her hands swung to her ever steps. He drew his square shoulders, lifted his chin, and sniffed the motionless air. There was a flourish in the way he flicked the rump of the bull with the rope in his hand. He felt strong. He felt very strong. He felt that he could follow the slender, lithe figure to the end of the world.
On the feminist perspective, subversion has not been attained by the woman. The young woman has to survive with only “rice and salt” in contrast with the young man’s “rice, egg, salt, brown sugar and dried shrimps.” In fact, she feels bad and hardly expressed it as shown by the writer’s use of ellipsis in “I would be ashamed…” She still treated low and deprived as any marginalized woman in the society.
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