Summary:
This is sad story of a man, Awiyao, who in spite of being in love with his wife, Lumnay, feels the need to marryanother in order to have a son. According to the story if a man does not have a son he is considered to be inferior to others intheir community. It is not a case of not loving Lumnay, which he does, but of his perceived necessity of a son to beconsidered a man. He is however, insensitive believing the answer to Lumnay's sorrow would be to join the other women at the wedding dance.Little regard for her feelings and the willingness to abandon her seem to be the predominate thoughts in the author's mind.She seems to obsess over the necklace of his grandmother which he had given her. Towards the end of the story I had …show more content…

«I spent them literally in poverty, extreme loneliness, andadolescent pains …In my loneliness, I began to compose verses in earnest.”8 He was in third year high when he broke into print in a national weekly, The Sunday Tribune Magazine (11 July 1926), with a poem, “She Came to Me.” He was going to be valedictorian or salutatorian, but his teacher in “utter lack of justice …put down my marks in history—my favoritesubject. That just about broke my heart because then I would have had free tuition at the U.P.”9Thus out of school for the first semester in 1928, he earned his tuition (P60.00) by serving as houseboy, waiter, and caddy toofficers at Fort McKinley. He enrolled for the second semester with only P2.50 left for books and other expenses. Hecommuted between the Fort and Padre Faura, Manila, walking about two kilometers from Paco station twice daily. He wouldeat his lunch alone on Dewey Blvd. and arrive at the Fort about 9 o’clock in the evening. This continued for three years. Thenan uncle arrived from Honolulu who paid his tuition during his third year; before this, he worked Saturday and Sunday as printer’s devil at the U.P. and served as Philippine Collegian reporter. During all this time, he learned the craft of writing fromTom Inglis Moore, an Australian professor at U.P., and was especially grateful to A.V.H. Hartendorp of Philippine Magazine.His stories and poems appeared in