The air within Celestina Fabia’s secluded home was perfumed with the foreign scent of apples. The immigrant had been living in Kalamazoo for more than 20 years when he met a speaker from his native land who had come to the US to lecture; he drove out to the city hear this man. The crowd’s questions during the open forum centered on Fabia’s home country. To this Fabia stands and asks if the women now were the same 20 years ago and the lecturer responds that they were. Thereafter Fabia invites the lecturer to dinner with his American wife, Ruth, and his son, Roger. The next day Fabia picks the speaker up from the hotel and drives him to a farm east of the city into a rugged road that led into an isolated farm. It held a crumbling and shanty …show more content…

The apple trees in the distance emphasize his being in a foreign place. The reader is reminded of this when Fabia comments on the beauty of autumn to which the narrator replies, “No such thing in our own country” and the narrator reflects on the unkind comment and how Fabia must have avoided this fact for fear of being reminded of his exile. Once they arrive at the house the narrator notices how the house was ready to crumble. The inside was barren and decked with second-hand furniture and, the scent of apples pervaded he air – describing how even in his own home there is the reminder that he is a foreigner. In contrast to his home in the Philippine, biggest one in the Visayan town, which shunned him. Santos also uses autumn to influence the tone of the story. He opens the first paragraph with the old couple; he uses the description of icy winds, ghostly feet of fallen leaves and coming of down of the cold to nuance the theme of loneliness and abandonment. The autumn, being a season of fallen leaves and cold weather imposes transitory feeling brought by being away from someone. He also this when Fabia brings the narrator home for dinner the setting is described to be ineffectual and not too cold, which implicates a more positive