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A WORLD OF PRETENDERS: Partial Review of the Filipino Novel, THE PRETENDERS by F. Sionil Jose

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Upon his return to Manila, Antonio Samson marries Carmen Villa, a daughter of one of the city's powerful business families--a family which has seen its wealth rise dramatically in the wake of American-Japanese Occupation (1898-1946, i.e. after WWII) to take over from the ancient regime of colonial powers and old wealth of the Philippines. Soon, Antonio had thrown in the towel on his academic career and had become a PR (public relations) expert for his father-in-law. In this job, due to his brilliant writing skills and his connections in the news media, Antonio is extremely successful at his new endeavor.

However, unlike a character in a Shakespeare play, Antonio has not been true to himself in 1960s Philippines.

By all measures of the era, Antonio should be a happy young man--i.e. rising so fast in the modern Filipino society--, but he is not. He is at heart an academic, a teacher, and an idealist. In some ways, he is still like his father who had finally revolted against the mestizo classes after WWII--only to find himself in prison for the rest of his life. In the meantime, Antonio, however, is no strong character. He is critical of his father's futile definitions of honor. Antonio's father in Rosales had confronted the new post-WWII Filipino elite by acts of violence. He burnt down the home of those who had stolen his family's (and his people's) land in the name of law-and-order. Moreover, he had burnt down the courthouse that had sided with the political and economic authorities in approving the taking over of the land of a generation of Rosales settlers--making them indentured servants on their own property.

Nor is Antonio like his grandfather, who was more of a Moses to his own generation of Ilocano tribesmen. I say this because Antonio notes again-and-again in his own diary that his own grandfather had long ago led a tribe of impoverished Ilocano peoples from the north of the island to the Rosales region in order to build a new life. Through this repeated tale, it is apparent that Antonio's academic skills are rooted in his grandfather's bloodline. His grandfather had been fluent in Latin and had also written a thesis in that same Romantic language for the reading of Catholic priests, whom he had served as an acolyte for many years prior to leading his people off to Rosales.

In the end, the weak young man, Antonio Samson, has inherited and acquired several generations of cynicism soon finds that suicide is the only option for him because all-in-all he has a sense honor and he finds he has acted and lived dishonorably numerous times. In summary, Antonio feels that he must take that conclusive action for denying himself the destiny and honor striven for on his behalf by his forefathers and loved ones--such as the mother, Emy, of his illegitimate child. In short, by capitulating to the forces of modern Philippine history of nationalism, capitalism, Aseanism and Westernism, Antonio has no longer been true to himself, his family, and his own heritage.

Like Socrates (in the real world) or like the Young Woerther of Goethe (in the literary world) before him, Samson steps into the abyss of suicide. Surprisingly, however, the repercussions from his suicide are not an unanswered echo in the life of Manila or in the world. Questions of the young Samson's death continue to reverberate within the family of the Villas. For example, Carmen, his unfaithful wife, publishes Antonio's writing posthumously and these writings become the talk of the academic world.

Antonio's honor is somewhat restored in this final chapter.

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KEVIN STODA-has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades.--He sees himself as a peace educator and have been-- a promoter of good economic and social development--making-him an enemy of my homelands humongous DEFENSE SPENDING and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global (more...)
 

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