Sy, Kathleen Ann C32

Research: F Sionil Joses Puppy Love and Thirteen Short Stories

The concept and idea of love has always been a constant elusive subject.
The philosophers, psychologists, and biologists, historians have been
seeking for its meaning since the beginning of time and has found no exact
meaning of what love is. Wars have been waged because of love and many
peoples throughout generations has fought over it. Also, friendships have
been built and started because of it but at the same time have ended
because of this idea. So most people would ask, what exactly is love?
According to Audrey Hepburn in Me: Stories of My Life, Love has nothing
to do with what you are expecting to get only with what you are
expecting to give which is everything. There are many definitions of love,
but there is no exact definition of it since there are different kinds of love.
In ancient Greek, love is divided into six different kinds Eros, or
sexual passion. The first kind of love was Eros, named after the Greek god
of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire, Philia,
or deep friendship, Ludus, or playful love. Agape, or love for everyone,
Pragma, or longstanding love, Philautia. or love of the self. Some of these
kinds of love have been tackled in the story of F Sionil Joses Puppy Love
and Thirteen Short Stories and and issues associated with it which is also
present and can be seen in todays society.
In the fist story Puppy Love it talked about an innocent kind of love
and mistaking it for true love. The issue tackled here can be related to the
youth in todays society and how they view love. You can see today that even
grade school students already have boyfriend or girlfriend and mistake their
love as something that is true and would last forever without knowing the
possible consequences that comes with it. In fact, one in ten young Filipino
women age 15-19 has begun childbearing: 8 percent are already mothers
and another 2 percent are pregnant with their first child according to the
results of the 2013 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Also,
among six major economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
the Philippines has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. Although there
wasnt a teenage pregnancy issue in the in the story, it can somehow relate
to it on how sometimes, when you are young, you dont really think about
love thoroughly and only act according to what you think you feel.
In the story The Female Principle you can see how it can relate to the
issues here in our country especially killing due to jealousy. Especially in the
recent news, the Sta. Rosa killings, a tricycle driver from Muntinlupa City
claimed that a man hired them to kill a mother and her one-year-old son in
Sta. Rosa, Laguna early this month due to jealousy. The confessed killer
cited jealousy in his extra-judicial confession as the reason behind the

killings. The suspect, who surrendered to barangay officials in Muntinlupa

City on Friday, told the police that he and his cohort were paid P30,000
each by another person to kill Pearl Helene Sta. Ana and her son Denzel.
This is only one of the many stories like this. The man even hired someone
to kill his wife and one year old son, this shows how jealousy can sometimes
lead to something worse and how sometimes the person who kills due to
jealousy is already not in his right mind and how it consumed him.
Also, in the story Waltz which is about incest relationships between
cousins and a taboo kind of love which ended tragedy since they did not end
up with each other. In this story, you can clearly see how even though there
are many different kinds of taboo relationships depending on the culture
like the same sex marriage, it is still present in the society even though
most people, especially traditional ones chose not to believe or recognize
these kind of love. Also, most child abuse cases are incest so this kind of
love is not accepted by the society so there are laws prohibiting these kind
of love.
There are a lot of social issues tackled in F Sionils stories can relate
to the current issues in the Philippines since it shows the different kinds and
aspects of love and how love doesnt always have a happy ending and how it
can sometimes lead to something worse like obsession when triggered by
something. The stories are very realistic in a way that it showed the
different kinds of relationships and love and its different facets and how the
stories dont really have a happy ending unlike the tv shows and dramas
that people would watch everyday in the tv.
You can see clearly in the story the issues like prostitution, poverty
and social classes which are present during that time and even today in our
society. All if these issues affected the ending of the stories and how it
progressed over time since most of the problems faced by the protagonists
revolved in these issues.
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Lovekar, V. (n.d.). Deforestation Solutions. Retrieved August 9, 2014, from
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http://www.fao.org/philippines/en/
Psychological Research on Love and Its Influence in Adult Human
Relationships - Riordan Clinic. (2012). Retrieved July 28, 2016, from

https://riordanclinic.org/2012/02/psychological-research-on-love-and-itsinfluence-in-adult-human-relationships/