Module V

Common Expository Devices in the Essay

General Objective:
To learn the qualities of expository writing, as language and as literature, with emphasis
on the essay.

Specific Objectives:
At the end of this module, the student is expected to:
1. know the various characteristics of these two expository devices commonly used
in the essay:
a. Contrasted style
b. Irony and satire
2. be able to recognize and appreciate the applications of these two literary
devices, and through the study of five (5) essays and the testing of four (4)
others; and
3. be able to write five (5) to six (6) essays using these two expository devices.

Contents:
Lesson 1 Contrasted Styles
A. “The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln
B. “The Gettysburg Address Analysis” by Walter Blair and John C. Gerber
C. “Requiem for Melchora and a Hometown” by Domini Torrevillas

Lesson 2 Irony and Satire

A. “Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury” by Domini Torrevillas
B. “Lament for the Lost Brand” by Alfred A. Yuson
C. From “The Man of Forty Crowns” by Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Textbook:
Tiempo and Tiempo. College Writing and Reading. Manila: Rex Printing
Company, Inc.

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English 3A
Module V

Module V of English 3 is a study of exposition, with emphasis on the essay form.

There is, however, a higher course on exposition, English 13, entitled “Advance
Expository Writing,” of which English 3 is a prerequisite. Since English 13 constitutes a
more intensive study and application of expository writing, therefore in Module V of
English 3 we will be taking up the study of just two expository devices which are most
commonly used in the essay.

Lesson 1. CONTRASTED STYLES

The literary device known as “contrasted styles” is much preferred by essayists

because by using it, the exposition of the topic or idea is made easier to organize and
present, and easier for the reader to grasp. These are the aspects that mark the
procedure of “contrasted styles” as used in the development of the essay.

1. The topic or idea is seen in the light of two contrasting viewpoints that we may
label as Viewpoint A and Viewpoint B.
2. Each viewpoint is developed to the necessary fullness; there are no important
“idea threads” left hanging in the exposition of either viewpoint.
3. The essay assigns Viewpoint B as the preferred one; accordingly, in its
exposition this second viewpoint develops the conclusion preferred and
intended by the essay.
4. The second viewpoint develops this intended conclusion by using the
following means:
a. It uses the first viewpoint as its stepping-stone toward its own development;
that is, it departs from the ideas, facts, attitudes presented in the first view
point and contrasts them with a presentation of other ideas, facts, attitudes
that show this contrast as the preferred viewpoint.
b. In the chronological sequence, the two Viewpoints, in developing, may
intersperse each other.
5. The essay may or may not absolutely reject the first viewpoint; definitely,
however, it favors the second viewpoint, which exposes the more favorable
and reasonable picture of the idea which is the essay’s intention to impart.

A. “The Gettysburg Address”

The Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln, 1809 -1865, Sixteenth President of the United States
(Delivered at the dedication of the National Cemetery, November 19, 1863)

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 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that
we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow
– this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it
far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.

B. An “Analysis of the Gettysburg Address”

The Gettysburg Address: Analysis

Walter Blair and John C. Gerber

This address had more than one purpose. Like any utterance of a man in high political
office, it might have its immediate political values. Lincoln’s enemies had claimed that,
on the battlefield of Antietam a year before, Lincoln had told horrible jokes and had
cackled obscenely at them. To scotch such lies, he wanted the public to see how he really
felt about the sacrifices of soldiers. Too many state governors were on the platform at
Gettysburg, and Lincoln was eager to win their sympathetic cooperation. An important
end of the address, therefore, was to make known the speaker’s real character. Again, like
Paine in The Crisis, the President was urging an army and a people to continue a hard
fight.
What gave the speech an appeal lasting beyond the occasion; however, was its poetic
defense of the democratic philosophy. As Mr. Carl Sandburg has noted, two men, in the
weeks just before the address, had done their best ‘to make him (Lincoln) see himself as a
spokesman of democracy, popular government, the mass of people as opposed to
aristocrats, classes, and special interests.” One of these men, John Murray Forbes, wrote
an eloquent letter. The other, William Evans, an English liberal, talked with the President
and told him that the people of England, as well as the people of the North and the South,
should be made to realize that the war was a struggle between democracy and aristocracy.
Hence, the potential audience was of more than one nation and of more than one time.
The most obvious organization of the speech makes it fall into three parts: the
propriety of the dedicatory ceremonies, the inability of the living to dedicate this ground,
and the dedication of the living to the unfinished task. This organization, however, is
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probably less important, for the evocation of emotion, than more subtle “poetic” appeals
which run through the speech. Paragraphs show a division of time: “Fourscore and seven
years ago…” (the past); “Now we are engaged in a great civil war...” (the present); and
“…this nation… shall have a new birth of freedom…” (the future). This time order,
however, is figuratively linked with the elemental events of human life: “brought
forth…conceived” (birth); “final resting place… given their lives” (death) and “new birth
of freedom” (rebirth). Such a linking with the universal eras of life is full of emotional
implications. There is a religious suggestiveness, too, doubtless effective for the pious
American of 1863 and of later periods.
At the same time, throughout the address, Lincoln is employing words which connote
the insignificance of the dedicatory ceremonies as contrasted with the high resolve to
preserve democracy. Hence, he mentions the continent, then the nation, then the
battlefield, then the portion of the battlefield – the birth of the nation, then the great war,
then a battle in the war – all preparatory to the indication of the unimportance of the futile
ceremonies. Having thus ‘narrowed” his consideration, in the remainder of the speech,
from another view, he “enlarges” the true meaning of the occasion by noting the vast
future accomplishment of the living, first, for this nation, and eventually, for all the earth.
Despite rich interlinking of all the parts of the whole address, the language at the
beginning offers something of a contrast with the language at the conclusion. The first
two paragraphs use diction which is relatively matter-of-fact; the last paragraph is
increasingly eloquent. Furthermore, by and large, though the rhythms of all the sentences
are seemly and impressive, the sentences which make the great use of balance and of
climax are chiefly reserved to communicate the mounting fervor of the final paragraph.
The first sentence in this division uses a period structure to end climactically. The second
and third sentences employ balance to contrast the futile words of the living with the
deeds of the soldiers living and dead. The next sentence links the future deeds of the
living with the past deeds of the soldiers, mentioning the latter at its climactic conclusion
but subordinating them. The final sentence – the longest in the address – arranges its
parallel clauses so as to prepare for the climax of the end – “and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Now in judging this
famous address, not as poetic structure but as an utterance of truth, one must examine its
implications and meanings. Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, after reading it carefully, finds these
do not represent his assumptions and beliefs. Says Mr. Masters.
It was untrue that our fathers in 1776 had brought forth a new nation; for in that year
our fathers brought forth thirteen new nations, each of which was a sovereign state.
Therefore the war was not testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, could long endure. The war was testing whether sovereign states which had
ratified a Constitution and formed a Union, could repeal their ratification… Thus, we
have in the Gettysburg Address that refusal of the truth which is written all over the
American character and its expressions. The war then being waged was not glorious, it
was brutal and hateful and mean-minded. It had been initiated by radicals and fanatics, by
Boston and Chicago, by men like Garrison and Medill…. That was the trouble with
Gettysburg; consciously or otherwise the Northern soldiers who died there died for gain,
not honor, not liberty….
Those who agree with Mr. Masters will find its judgment sound. Those who disagree
with Mr. Masters will be able to refute his attacks to their satisfaction; will be able
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 furthermore, to offer reasons supporting a more favorable commentary upon the address.
Such readers will be more sympathetic with Mr. Carl Sandburg when he says:
He had stood that day, the world’s foremost spokesman of popular government,
saying that democracy was yet worth fighting for…. He incarcerated the assurances and
pretenses of popular government, implied that it could and might perish from the earth…
He did not assume that the drafted soldiers, substitutes, and county-paid privates had died
willingly under Lee’s shot and shell, in deliberate consecration of themselves to the
Union cause. His cadence sang the ancient song that where there is freedom men have
fought and sacrificed for it, and that freedom is worth men’s dying for. For the first time
since he became president he had on a dramatic occasion declaimed, howsoever it might
be read. Jefferson’s proposition which had been the slogan of the Revolutionary war –
“All men are created equal” – leaving no other inference than that he regarded the Negro
slave as a man. His outwardly smooth sentences were inside of them gnarled and tough
with the enigmas of the American experiment.
- From College Writing and Reading. Tiempo and Tiempo, Rex Bookstore, Manila.

The occasion being celebrated by the Gettysburg Address was the ceremony
honoring the dead soldiers who died in the American Civil War, which transpired about
the middle of the 19th century. That war divided the country into the North and South
factions. The issue of that civil war was the abolition of slavery: Negro slavers from
Africa were being sold and bought mostly by the Southerners to work the rich cotton
plantations of the South. The North upheld the freeing of the Negro slave and giving him
the rights being enjoyed by every American citizen.

1. There are many instances where the Gettysburg Address makes use of the
device of “contrasted styles.”
a. What is the central idea that is contrasted into two viewpoints to bring about
its organized exposition?
b. Explain these two contrasting viewpoints of that idea.
2. The analysis mentions that the speech divides its contents into three significant
portions but that, more important than this organization of the content are certain
details selected and organized such that they touch the hearer (and the reader)
with their deep emotional appeal.
a. Mention these details, and
b. Explain why these particular kind of details carry a large emotional appeal.
3. According to the Analysis, this emotional appeal arises not only from the details
that evoke great emotional response, but also from the manner of articulating
these details; that is, from the use of certain literary devices for creating a
balanced or systematic ordering of the utterances, so that a great emotional
response is evoked.
a. Mention or quote the portions where this special balance or systematic
ordering of the phrases has been used.
b. Name these literary devices that have been used for balanced or systematic
articulation.

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 c. By inference, which of them, as used by the Address, is the most powerful in
its impact? Justify your choice.

C. “Requiem for Melchora and a Hometown” by Domini Torrevillas

IT FEELS GOOD coming upon a story in the papers about our hometown. We get a
thrill from reading about a girl – maybe the daughter of a classmate in high school – who
won a gold medal in an oratorical contest, or about our town being the site of an
important convention, or having been judged the cleanest, or as having the best
puericulture center in the country.
Hometowns, like mothers, are nice to come home to – even if only in our minds.
Many times we are filled with the memories of the great times back where our roots are;
where we were born, baptized, grew up, took our first communion; experienced the pangs
of first love, cried over the deaths of Lolo and Lola, won and lost contests in school.
Most of the time we read good things about our hometown. And we like to think of
our town as quiet and blissful. So we get the shock of our lives when we read at the
breakfast table of murders having been committed in our town. Certainly, that’s no way
to get our cherished place into the national dailies.
How sad that my own hometown, Gingoog City (pronounced Hi-ngo-og) in Misamis
Oriental, found its way into the front page of the Bulletin Today recently because the
PDP-Laban chairman there, Renato Bucag, his wife, Melchora, and their 11-year-old son,
Jun, were killed by elements whose identities have yet to be established to this day.
The murders seem to be the anti-climax to an image of a small town turned small city
that is no longer safe to live in. For some time the reports reaching us were that people
were locking up their homes when it got dark for fear of lawless elements breaking into
their homes or being shot by snipers. This fear – of losing one’s life – is said to have
earnestly begun on the farms some of which have now been abandoned by tenants.
I found it hard to believe that Dr. Helen Bucag Canoy, the sister of Renato, would
write Panorama to say, “I am appealing to your kind office to write about our city, its
reign of terror, its people. The presence of cults, fanatics and the ICHDF causing many
deaths of innocent people…”
What happened to the Gingoog that I loved in my childhood, that I loved to go home
to.
It was a town, in the ‘50’s, where everybody knew where to go to have a tooth pulled,
a photograph taken, and shoes shined. The streets were safe; the town went to sleep early
because there wasn’t anything to do after the moviehouse and the only bowling alley
closed for the night. I remembered how it was then.
The sweet smell of the cornfields followed us as we trudged to school. We would
hear rushing waters in the canals after a heavy rain. The clip-clop of hoofs of horses
pulling tartanillas matched the clacking of our wooden slippers.
Early mornings were beautiful; as a child I wondered about the magical sounds of
bells coming from the belfry of the Catholic Church. When the fiesta came, a band
marched down the streets at dawn, and we would rush out to see the musicians blowing
into giant horns and beating drums as they passed under arches of balimbing and star
apple trees. At night, the girls would sit on one side of the ‘basketball court in the plaza,
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 then the heavily pomaded boys would sidle up to them and they would dance with their
bodies hardly moving, until the cocks crowed and it was time to go home. Our maids
liked to go to these dances very much.
It was in this kind of town that I watched Melchora grow; she was the younger sister
of my best friend Rita. We went to the same church, the same school, and the same
parties. Melchora was fair and curly-haired, and like most small-town girls, could be
found, on weekends, swimming at the beach or in the river just below her house.
There were five girls in her family, and I wondered if their father felt uncomfortable
about being the only male member of his household and possibly being overruled on
matters that required a vote. He never was; his word was law. And Rita and Melchora,
poor girls, had not one chance to speak out their minds. That happens in most small
towns – the men, the father, are tyrants; the girls are seen, not heard. That was how it was
in Gingoog. But it didn’t matter then.
We went our separate ways after high school. Our lives were never the same after
graduation day. Melchora married ahead of us.
On our trips back to the town, we saw it change. Gingoog became a city. The
population had grown, and we were strange faces to strangers who had come to live
there. The roads were cemented, and the tambis, balimbing and star apple trees were
gone.
When I go home to my hometown, I don’t feel like it’s home anymore. The old
familiar faces are still there – the Mercados and the Lugods and the Lambatans, the Pam
bids, the Baols and the Villegases. But our visits are brief. We go home only to say hello
and goodbye to our neighbors and our mother’s friends.
We cannot of course hope for our hometowns to keep still for all time. Places change,
people change, values change, feelings change. Our very own lives, so content in
disarray, sometimes are besieged by nameless aberrations, and we let them swallow us
up, and we live dangerously, not heeding reason or convention.
I grieve over the death of Melchora and for her family.
And now I grieve that my hometown isn’t what it used to be.
How unhappy I am that I cannot do anything about it, as I sit behind my typewriter,
thinking about the town that I loved so well.
- From Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury by Domini Torrevillas.
New Day Publishers, Quezon City, Metro Manila.

The above essay mourns the violent death of a woman friend and her family, and
likewise laments the “death” of the old hometown.
1. In order to depict, and evoke, the feeling of sadness and loss, this essay
makes use of “contrasted styles.” Explain how this literary device is used in
this essay by citing the relevant portions to support your explanation of the
two contrasted viewpoints that bring about the sense of sadness and loss.
2. Explain the concluding word of wisdom that the essayist derived from this
experience of sadness and losses.

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English 3A
Module V
Lesson 2: IRONY AND SATIRE

Irony and satire are closely identified with each other as a style of writing that
generates a controlled tone of adverse criticism or negative reaction toward the subject
or subjects being written about. One could say that irony is the subtler of the two; satire
as a form of composition is specially meant to criticize in order to bring about a reformed
or modified attitude toward a certain issue or idea. It is important to recognize that with
irony and satire, the imperative ingredient is the style, the tone of the writing.

The characteristics of irony and satire are a mixed bag of tones and qualities
consisting in varying degrees of some or all of the following, depending upon the
attitude of the essayist toward the subject being discussed:

1. cynicism
2. humor of various kinds: farcical, wry, sardonic, dry, rollicking, tongue-in-
cheek, etc.
3. apparently taking the side of the wrong and objecting to the right or the truth.
4. criticism, either open or undercurrent.
5. exaggeration
6. understatement
7. pathos or bathos
8. The sense of a seriousness of purpose underneath the ironic or satiric tone. If
the tone becomes too scathing in its criticism, it degenerates into sarcasm.
9. A sense of the absurd or ridiculous.

A. “Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury” by Domini Torrevillas

LIKE MOST ordinary mortals, I fall ill when the sailing goes rough. But this is
rougher, this having to keep still, and trying not to think of preposterous questions such
as will our leaders ever resign, what happens when the Bataan nuclear power plant leaks,
will Foreign Affairs Minister Arturo Tolentino’s proposal sanitizing Amendment 6 be
acceptable to the President, and will there be an end to press censorship.
It has been just one night and half a day and already I miss the newsroom. I miss the
frenetic sights and sounds of typewriters and teletype machines churning out real-life
dramas, few joys, very little truths, more half-truths and a lot of outright lies; of people
coming and going with releases praising self and/or bosses; of incessantly ringing
telephones; of reporters rushing in and out of press conferences given by oppressed
persons and oppressors, of exercises in parrying law suits by nibbling around the edges of
truth.
So it is very strange, not hearing, or feeling part of that maddening world; strange to
hear now only the gentle flapping of curtains against the glass windows, blown by an
electric fan whose whirring and whining speak of life going on and on no matter what,
and without me; and the swishing of the maid’s feather duster against tables and chairs,
and later, the skittering of her broom in the yard outside my window.

8
 It is startling to hear laughter coming from the parking lot. It is that of Trisky, the cute
little girl next door; there is some yapping and yelping, too, so Trisky must be running
after her cute puppy. How long ago did I hear a child’s happiness?
There’s the twitter of birds outside the window, and a cock’s crowing (in the city,
some cockfighting aficionado must be keeping a pen of roosters in his garage.)
All of a sudden, there’s a honking of horns, and there is a great sense of hurry as
maids dash into kitchens and drag out waste cans towards the waiting garbage truck
outside our housing project’s gate. The commotion takes 15 minutes, and in the lull that
follows, come the mournful wailing of a pedicab out in the street, then the maddening
roar of a vehicle with a bad muffler.
A doorbell rings and it is answered by the baying of a dog. A conversation starts.
“Sino yan,” says a human voice – not the dogs. “Si Mrs. de los Reyes,” is the reply. A
door is opened and closed, and I don’t hear Mrs. de los Reyes’ voice anymore.
There is a splashing of water somewhere – someone is doing the laundry. Then come
the clanging of pots and pans; preparations for the noonday mean have begun. From the
kitchen float the strains of “White Horse,” and I can imagine the cook (whose precious
possession is her transistor radio) and the laundrywoman, swaying their hips and twisting
their shoulders as they measure rice and water into a pot and hang out the clothes to dry.
All of a sudden there’s the banging of a door. I do not hear the words, only angry
tones and breaking objects. And a woman is weeping. It is the couple in the building
across my window, fighting again. Not much later, the weeping stops. And I wonder, has
the husband left in a huff? Or has she driven him away for good? I would never know;
and it is tyrannical – the nameless fury of unanswered questions, of unspoken goodbyes,
of breaking hearts. But there is always an end to things; an end to pain and suffering even
as there is an end to stolen joy; there is an end to oppression and injustice, to madness for
power and distorted perceptions of greatness.
The silence that follows is all very soothing. I reach out for the paper, and the stories I
take with a grain of salt; but I believe the stories to be true when written by
correspondents not in the payroll of hacienderos and the government – the stories on the
typhoons and earthquakes and fires and the eruption of Mayon Volcano; and I can hear,
from where I lie, the fear, the panic, in people fleeing the scenes of disaster. I can hear
G.I. sheets being wrung out by fierce winds from the roofs and slamming against
buildings. I can hear a mother’s panic as she calls out to a child she has lost in Quiapo.
I put down the paper for the stories are very depressing. The radio is no help either.
The announcer is reporting the advance of demonstrators towards the Supreme Court.
From the din of thin voices comes that of a woman marcher, and it decries the absence of
safety measures in the Bataan nuclear plant. Then I remember the shrieking of people
scuttling in all directions as policemen hurled tear gas canisters at the rallyists who had
no permit to assemble at the Liwasang Bonifacio not too long ago. I can hear the
demonstrators, their voices raised in unison, demanding justice and freedom, for leaders
to resign. I can hear the groans of commuters with every fare hike; those of housewives
haggling over the prices of pork and fish and cooking oil; I can hear the anger in the
breast of the beggar knocking at the rolled-up window of a Mercedes Benz waiting at an
intersection for the red light to change.

9
 Why must the sounds of anger reach us even when we should keep still and forget the
ills of the world? And why are we jolted out of sleep by something that comes mostly in
the dead of night? It is our conscience speaking, telling us we are doing what we should
not be doing, and hurtling like thunder and lightning across the threshold of our imagined
peace.
Then I am well again and back at the office, invigorated by the sounds of running
machines, ringing telephones, and men and women creating fiction in a hurry. I see the
city desk editors going over press releases, and I can tell, from the shaking of their heads
and the clacking of their tongues, that they are about to decide whether or not to be
collaborators in the forging of history. I can hear their fury. And then the silence.
- From Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury by Domini Torrevillas.
New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1989.

To provide a guide to the study of irony and satire as common literary devices
used by essayists, you will find below some pointers singled out from the above essay
to give an idea of the use of the eight qualities listed above as characteristics of the two
literary devices of irony and satire.

1. The tone of cynicism is recognizable in such portions as the following.

a. “typewriters and teletype machines churning out real-life dramas, few joys,
very little truths, more half-truths and a lot of outright lies…”
b. “exercises in parrying lawsuits by nibbling around the edges of truth.”

Nos. 1a and 1b are cynical deplorations of the fact that under martial law or
any other government or societal constraints, a reporter cannot report the
truth for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit, or worse.

2. Some bits of mild and sardonic humor are also utilized by the essay, among
them:
a. “…. a cock’s crowing (in the city, some cockfighting aficionado must be
keeping a pen of roosters in his garage).”
b. “…comes the mournful wailing of a pedicab out in the street, then the
maddening roar of a vehicle with a bad muffler.”
c. “A doorbell rings and is answered by the baying of the dog.”
d. “And why are we jolted out of sleep by something that comes mostly in the
dead of the night?”
e. “…and I can imagine the cook (whose precious possession is her
transistor radio) and the laundrywoman swaying their hips and twisting
their shoulders as they measure rice and water into a pot and hang out the
clothes to dry.
3. Criticisms:
a. “From the din of thin voices comes that of a woman marcher, and it
decries the absence of safety measures in the Bataan nuclear plant.”
b. “I can hear the demonstrators, their voices raised in unison, demanding
justice and freedom, for leaders to resign.”

10
 c. “I can hear the groans of commuters with every fare hike…”
d. “…housewives haggling over the prices of pork and fish and cooking oil; I
can hear the anger in the breast of the beggar knocking at the rolled-up
window of a Mercedes Benz waiting at an intersection for the red light to
change.”
4. Exaggeration (justified as symbolic or metaphorical): “…and I can tell, from
the shaking of their heads and the clacking of their tongues, that they are
about to decide whether or not to be collaborators in the forging of history. I
can hear their fury. And then the silence.

B. “Lament for the Lost Brand” Alfred A. Yuson

It has been more than a month since I lost a longtime companion.

Now I can’t sleep nights, and my daydreams are full of static. I shake all over at odd
times of the day, stare into empty space, and say my prayers with a snarl. I growl at the
kids, scream at the maids, ignore my garden, kick all cans, dogs and pebbles that get in
the way.
The world has turned into a dark, hunchbacked phantom in a drag.
How could La Suerte Cigar and Cigarette Company do this to me?
For years I had kept the faith, unlike all those wishy-washy wafers and flip-floppers
who deserted the cause and turned into feminist non-smokers. I continued to smoke,
despite domestic flight bans and Cielito “Mahal” del Mundo’s local crusade. And what I
chose to smoke, in my above-board hours, that is, was Philip Morris browns, unfiltered.
Then, towards the end of sad January 1990, in a fit of madness and as a sudden stroke
of unmitigated cruelty, they decided to deprive me of my old pacifier. They phased out
my favored brand, in a most unilateral move, without as much as a by-your-leave, or
benefit of space/time for preliminary injunction.
I petitioned for a restraining order, given half the chance. Instead I became the victim
of undue process, of repression and persecution done in indecent haste, unfairly rendering
the rest of my smoking days moot and academic.
They say it was because Philip Morris browns, unfiltered, was slow in sales. What did
they expect? Hardly anyone but true keepers of the faith knew it even existed. No
promos, no advertisement, no nothing.
It used to be that this fresh-faced kid came out in a hotel lobby with a funny-looking
cap strapped on his head, cupped his mouth with a gloved hand and hollered: “California
Philip Mo-o-rrisss!”
Those were the days. Nick Joaquin was younger, and smoked those unfiltered like a
man possessed. So had Freddie Salanga, before he settled for Marlboros when Cory came
into power.
As for myself, I had smoked the brand (0 lost and lamented!) for more than a decade,
even before Ninoy went to Baylor for his triple bypass. I had settled on one honorable
brand – Philip Morris browns, unfiltered – because it became the only honorable cigarette
produced locally that didn’t have that wimpish concession to tar authorities that was a
filter.
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 The filter, from Kent’s pa-novelty charcoal to the common one that neurotics
occasionally shape into flowerheads during an intense conversation, was the one sad,
subversive spoilsport of the Sixties. The menthols had arrived as handmaidens to the
inglorious filter in the Fifties. But it was in the early Sixties when both took hold and
expanded our consciousness to welcome the word Salem – here to fore connoting
dramatic switches – in fresh reference to a cool cigarette taste.
I first smoked at age 15 and my first token was of a real cheapo called Spud. It had a
fake filter, meaning it was non-existent, merely the visual hint of one in the form of an
orange-brown strip at one end. Sometimes we lit up at that end precisely to thumb our
noses at the subtle manufacturers.
I first lit up while walking down Azcarraga from San Beda, and felt faint after a few
puffs. My knees felt like feather, and this time it wasn’t because I had caught sight of the
usual band of mambabakals from San Sebastian.
But I soon developed a taste for smoking. Besides, it allowed your opponent in the
billiard parlor enough time to gulp down his presentiment as you carefully lodged a lit
stick on the edge of a corner pocket, there to send curling streams of smoke as an omen
of ascension, before you took aim at the last, sure ball.
It was chesterfield for a while, because I liked the code – Come Home Every
Saturday To Eat Ripe Fruits In Every Lucky Day. My first brush with an extended
acronym.
I tried out Camels, walked a mile bravely towards Morayta, sticking my chest out so
the panhandlers would notice the proud pack and simply, wordlessly, pick out a stick or
two in lieu of coins.
Lucky Strike meant fine tobacco. That’s what “L/S/M/F/T” crowed about at the
pack’s red bottom. We learned to tell too if the pack and its content had been British-
made, thereby more superior than the American, when it said: “It’s toasted.”
Then there was Union at the peak of contraband days in Zamboanga, and we bought it
from Muslims selling “ismagold” on the sidewalks.
Pall Mall (“wherever particular people congregate”) was another favored import,
along with the Japanese pretenders, State Express 777 and the hard-hitting Peace. While
Singapore I discovered and stuck to Player’s, a more toasted version of what I had known
Philip Morris to be, back in the old RP.
But sometime between the declaration of Martial Law and the banning of Voltes 5, I
had stuck to my unfiltered browns. That is, of course, excluding Bataan Matamis and its
cheapo kindred favored by squatting washerwomen. The French Gauloise was something
like those, harsh and foul smelling.
Between washerwomen and the French, I decided to take a centrist course, and
latched on loyalty to Philip Morris browns, unfiltered. No, I didn’t mind the fact that it
was a veritable conversation piece. “Buhay pa pala yan. I thought that went out with
Magsaysay. Where do you get it?”
Oh, in at least three sari-sari stores I know. One in Ermita, right on A. Mabini a
couple of blocks off Magsaysay Building. One near Hammy Sotto’s old manse off Vito
Cruz. And in the heart of Quezon City, Malakas corner Matapang streets, that Chinese-
run store back of Adrian Cristobal’s old office at the SSS.
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 And of course there were the wet markets, the sides of which usually teemed with
tobacconists selling by the ream, that is, a long carton of 10 packs, at as much as a 10%
bulk discount.
Came the fortuitous season too when Granny-in-law who ran a Divisoria concern
would send a gofer in search, and he’d come back with five or ten reams of the
endangered brand.
Well, the endangered brand has been declared extinct. Pity naman poor folk like
myself and Boy Yuchengco up in Baguio City, where some Germans beat him to
Sunshine Grocery for the last three arms.
How do we cope? I’m tired of having to go all the way to InterCon to pick up some
of Lucky Strike and Pall Mall at hotel prices, 55 and 45 pesos a pack respectively. I know
there’s an imported cigarettes wholesaler somewhere in Chinatown, but kumpadre
Juaniyo Arcellana remains reticent as far as his secrets go.
And so I rely on Winston, or Marlboro or whatever, the whitebread of nicotine-and-
tar consumption, so grey and neutral in taste that after meal indulgences and post-love
reveries have lost that old, familiar pulse of extended gratification.
A ban is started on smoking on treetops.
Ahh. If there were sari-sari stores up in the stars, would they happen to sell Philip
Morris browns, unfiltered?
Goodbye, world.
- From Confessions of a Q.C. House-Husband by Alfred A. Yuson.
Anvil Publishing Inc., Manila 1991.

1. There is no mistaking the satiric tone of this essay. Do you have the impression that:
a. the persona is really an avid smoker desperately deprived of his favored brand?
b. the persona is a non smoker; if so, then what is the intention of this satiric essay?
c. The persona is a smoker but not as avid and desperately deprived as depicted; if
so, then what is the intention of this satiric essay?
2. Of the nine listed characteristics of irony and satire, which ones do you perceive in
this essay?

C. From “The Man of Forty Crowns” by Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, French
philosopher and author

The Disaster of the Man of Forty Crowns

I very readily make known to the universe, that I have a landed estate which
would yield me forty crowns a year, were it not for the tax laid on it. There came forth
several edicts from certain persons, who, having nothing better to do, govern that state at
their fireside. The preamble of these edicts was, “that the legislative and executive was
born, jure divino, the co-proprietor of my land;” and that I owe it at least the half of what I
possess. The enormity of this legislative and executive power made me bless myself. What
would it be if that power which presides over “the essential order of society,” were to take
the whole of my little estate? The one is still more divine than the other.

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 The comptroller general knows that I used to pay, in all, but twelve livres; that
even this was a heavy burden on me, and that I should have sunk under it, if God, had not
given me the talent of making wicker baskets, which helped to carry me through my trials.
But how should I, on a sudden, be able to give the king twenty crowns?
The new ministers also said in their preamble that it was not fit to tax anything
but the land, because every thing arises from the land, even rain itself, and consequently
that nothing was properly liable to taxation, but the fruits of the land.
During the last war, one of their collectors came to my house, and demanded
of me, for my quota, three measures of corn, and a sack of beans, the whole worth twenty
crowns, to maintain the war – of which I never knew the reason, having only heard it said
that there was nothing to be gotten by it for our country, and a great deal to lose. As I had
not at that time either corn, or beans, or money, the legislative and executive power had
me dragged to prison; and the war went on as well as it could.
On my release from the dungeon, being nothing but skin and bone, whom
should I meet but a jolly fresh colored man in a coach and six? He had six footmen to each
of whom he gave for his wages more than the double of my revenue. His head-steward,
who, by the way, looked in as good plight as himself, had of him a salary of two hundred
livres, and robbed him every year of twenty thousand more. His mistress had in six
months stood him in forty thousand crowns. I had formerly known him when he was less
well to pass than myself. He owned, way of comfort to me, that he enjoyed four hundred
thousand lives a year.
“I suppose, then,” said I, “that you pay out of this income two hundred
thousand to the state to help to support that advantageous war we are carrying on; since I,
who have but just a hundred and twenty lives a year, am obliged to pay half of them.”
“I,” said he, “I contribute to the wants of the state? You are surely jesting, my
friend. I have inherited from an uncle his fortune of eight million, which he got at Cadiz
and at Surat; I have not a foot of land: my estate lies in government contracts, and in the
funds. I owe the state nothing. It is for you to give half of your substance – you who are a
proprietor of land. Do you not see that if the minister of the revenue were to require
anything of me in aid of our country, he would be a blockhead, that could not calculate,
for every thing is the produce of the land? Money and the paper currency are nothing but
pledges of exchange. If, after having laid the sole tax, the tax that is to supply the place of
all others, on those commodities, the government were to ask money of me; do you not
see that this would be a double load? That it would be asking the same thing twice over?
My uncle sold at Cadiz to the amount of two million of you corn, and of two million of
stuff made of your wool; upon these two articles he gained cent, per cent. You must easily
think that this profit came out of lands already taxed. What my uncle bought for tenpence
of you, he sold again for above fifty livres at Mexico; and thus he made a shift to return to
his own country with eight millions clear.
“You must be sensible, then, that it would be a horrid injustice to re-demand
of him a few farthings on the tenpence he paid you. If twenty nephews like me, whose
uncles had gained each eight million at Buenos Aires, at Lima, at Surat, or at Pondicherry,
were in the urgent necessities of the state, each to lend to it only two hundred thousand
lives, that would produce four million. But what horror would that be! Pay then thou, my
friend, who enjoyest quietly the neat and clear revenue of forty crowns; serve thy country
well, and come now and then to dine with my servants in livery.”
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 This plausible discourse made me reflect a good deal, but I cannot say it much
comforted me.
- From College Writing and Reading by Tiempo and Tiempo. Rex Book Store, Manila.

Note: The gold coin known as a “crown” is so called because it carries the image, either
of the royal crown or the sovereign’s face itself.

1. The agency under criticism in this essay is the French government in the time of
Voltaire. What particular government action is being attacked? Explain the specific
objections to this action.
2. Of the nine listed characteristics of irony and satire, which ones do you perceive as
the most dominant in this essay?
3. Which of these nine characteristics is used in the last sentence-paragraph?
4. Putting this last sentence in a paragraph by itself produces emphasis and a certain
subtle effect that justifies its position as an isolated conclusion. Explain this particular
subtle effect.

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English 3A
Module V

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN THE LESSONS

Lesson 1
A and B – The Gettysburg Address and Its Analysis
1. a. The contrasted idea is about the correct way of perceiving the ceremony honoring the
dead soldiers who died in the U.S. Civil War in the latter part of the 19th century.
b. The two contrasting viewpoints
- Viewpoint A: “…to dedicate a portion of that [battle-] field as a final resting place for
those who gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.”
- Viewpoint B: “…we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far
above our poor power to add or detract…. It is for us, the living, rather to be here
dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced.”
Viewpoint A takes the conventional procedure of honoring the dead soldiers.
Viewpoint B takes the view that the dedication of the memorial burial ground for the dead
soldiers should actually be an act of the living to dedicate themselves to the cause for which
the soldiers died: the cause of equality and freedom for every person. The living should
dedicate themselves to the task of ensuring this equality and freedom for every person
2. These details that generate deep emotional appeal are:
a. - A division of time: past, present, future.
- The linkage (of the events of time mentioned by the speech) to the primal, basic events
of human life, thus: “conceived,” (birth); “final resting place,” (death); “new birth of
freedom” (rebirth).
b. These details carry a large emotional appeal because they are basic for all times and
places, they are primal and inevitable aspects of all living creatures; and particularly for
the human creatures, these universal aspects of life carry profound religious implications.
3. Some of these “balanced” details are:
a. “… we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground”
- “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, the living, rather, to be
dedicated here… It is rather for us to be here dedicated… “ -- “that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure
of devotion…” - “… and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.”
b. - The first quotation uses balanced structure by synthesis; it also uses the periodic
structure” – that is, the series of three synthesizing elements are arranged in a rising
order of importance, with the third and last one the most significant of the three.
- The second quotation uses anti-thesis, the signal word being but, which sets into
opposition these words: “will little note nor long remember” as against “can never forget”;
“we say” is also set up against “they did.”
- The third quotation makes use of anti-thesis, the signal word being “rather”
- The fourth quotation makes use of repeating the word, “devotion”
- This last quotation makes use of parallelism, emphasis by repetition, and climatic
order.

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 c. The most powerful in its impact is the last quotation because its literary devices as
mentioned above are in perfect consonance with the great ideas being articulated
through these devices.

C. “Requiem for Melchora and a Hometown” by Domini Torrevillas

1. The device of “contrasted styles” is utilized in the above essay in the following manner to
depict two images of the old hometown.
- Viewpoint A (among other details):
1. “The murders seem to be the anti-climax to an image of a small town turned small city
that is no longer safe to live in.”
2. “…people were locking up their homes when it got dark…”
3. “I am appealing to your kind office to write about our city, its reign of terror, its people.
The presence of cults, fanatics and the ICHDF causing many deaths of innocent
people…”
4. “…we saw it change. Gingoog became a city. The population had grown, and we were
strange faces to strangers who came to live there. The roads were cemented, and the
tambis, balimbing and the star apple trees were gone.”
5. “When I go home to my hometown, I don’t feel like it’s home anymore.”
- Viewpoint B:
1. “It was a town, in the ‘50s, where everybody knew where to go to have a tooth pulled, a
photograph taken, and shoes shined. The streets were safe; the town went to sleep
early…”
2. “The sweet smell of cornfields followed us as we trudged to school. We would hear
rushing waters in the canals after a heavy rain. The clip-clop of hoofs of horses pulling
tartanillas matched the clacking of our wooden slippers.”
3. “Early mornings were beautiful…the magical sounds of bells coming from the belfry of
the Catholic church.”
4. “When the fiesta came, a band marched down the streets at dawn…”
5. “At night, the girls would sit on the one side of the basketball court in the plaza then the
heavily pomaded boys would sidle up to them and they would dance.”
Although it is true that Viewpoint B is the preferred viewpoint of the image of the hometown,
the shaping of the feeling of sadness and loss is brought about by the juxtaposition of the
two viewpoints – the presentation of the two images side by side, as it were, creates the
nostalgia that triggers the feeling of sadness and loss.

2. The “word of wisdom” gleaned from this experience of sadness and loss is contained in
these statements acknowledging the mutability of all things, most especially on the personal
level:
a. humor of various kinds
b. apparently taking the side of the wrong and objecting to the right or the truth
c. exaggeration
d. understatement
e. bathos
f. a sense of the absurd or ridiculous
“We cannot of course hope for our hometown to keep still for all time. Places change,
people change, values change, feelings change.”

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 Our very own lives, so content in disarray, sometimes are besieged by nameless
aberrations, and we let them swallow up, and we live dangerously, not heeding reason or
convention (italics mine).

Lesson 2 - Irony and Satire

A. The essay, “Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury,” by the same author of the above essay,
is analyzed as a guide for the understanding of the expository device of irony and satire –
the better for the student to deal with the next selection, in letter B, below.

B. “Lament for the Lost Brand,” by Alfred A. Yuson

1. I choose letter c: This persona is knowledgeable about the different brands of cigarettes,
and his knowledge of them is bound up with personal connections and involvements with
certain friends and events, the evidence that he is indeed a smoker.
However, he cannot be an avid smoker (letter a) who is truly and earnestly lamenting the
loss of his favorite brand in the market” --- the tone of the essay is too jokingly
exaggerated to have the ring of truth.
He cannot be a non-smoker (letter b) who must have only researched on the brand
names and is thus pretending to be a smoker; such a persona would not have the
intimate connections and events related to the different brand names he mentions.
So opting for letter c, I believe the intention of the essay is to satirize the addicted and
confirmed smoker that we see pictured in letter a. the essayist satirizes by exaggerating
the persona’s reaction to his deprivation and thus making the exaggerated reaction
sound funny and ridiculous.
2. These are the qualities of irony and satire to be perceived in this essay.
a. humor of various kinds
b. Apparently taking the side of the wrong and objecting to the right or the truth.
c. exaggeration
d. understatement
e. bathos
f. a sense of the absurd or ridiculous

C. From “The Man of Forty Crowns” by Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

1. This satiric essay by Voltaire attacks the government practice concerning the heavy
taxation on the land property, no matter how small, so that nothing is left with the owner
who even has to borrow money to pay for the required government tax. On the other
hand, the government does not tax people with very lucrative contracts with the
government and who operate purely in money deals, like the fellow with eight million and
is not required to pay one cent in tax.
2. I would say that of the several listed characteristics of irony and satire, this essay makes
use of cynicism; a sense of the absurd or ridiculous; criticism that turns into sarcasm;
understatement; and the loathsome fellow in the essay is made to display the no. 3
characteristics: taking the side of the wrong and objecting to the right side or the truth.
3. The last sentence-paragraph uses understatement.
4. After the devastating and sarcastic effect of the presentation in the body of the essay,
the isolated sentence-paragraph stands out because of its understatement that carries
both pathos and subtle sarcasm.

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