Critical Analysis
Footnote to Youth
By
TRIESHANE S. ORSILADA
Background of the Novel
The story is about a 17-year-old boy named Dodong wanted to marry the love of his life,
Teang. Dodong told his father about the decision that they have made and was asked if
he should really marry. His father told him that he was too young to marry but he
insisted on it. Dodong was really eager of how he wanted to marry Teang get the
consent of his father and immediately got it. Later on, they had some children and one
was named as Blas. They have both experienced and realized how hard it is to be a
parent and live a real life. Teang, on the other hand, wondered what will happen if she
had not married Dodong and married her other suitor in the past instead. But she
remembered the reason why she had married Dodong, whom made life ugly, was
because she loved him. Dodong had lots of questions in his mind about why such things
happen to him. Then when Blas turned eighteen, he told his father that he wanted to
marry some girl. It was just like how things happened in the past. He also said to Blas
about the same thing that his own father told him before. He couldn’t do anything but to
allow Blas on what he wanted to do. In the end, Dodong felt very sad and sorry for his
son.
Biography of the Author
José Garcia Villa was born in Manila in 1908. He attended the University of the
Philippines, but he was suspended in 1929 after publishing a series of erotic poems, titled
“Man-Songs,” in the Philippines Herald Magazine. That same year, he won a short story
contest through the Philippines Free Press and used the prize money to travel to the
United States, where he studied at the University of New Mexico.
From New Mexico, Villa moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, he became
the only Asian poet in a community that also consisted of E. E. Cummings, W. H. Auden,
and other modernist poets. In 1933 his Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and
Others (Charles Scribner’s Sons) became the first book of fiction by a Filipino author
published by a major United States-based press.
Villa also continued to publish in the Philippines, and his poetry collections Many
Voices (Philippine Book Guild) and Poems (The Philippine Writers’ League) appeared in
1939 and 1941, respectively. In 1942 he published his first poetry collection in the United
States, Have Come, Am Here (Viking Press), which was a finalist for the 1943 Pulitzer
Prize. He went on to publish several more poetry collections in the Philippines,
including Poems in Praise of Love (A. S. Florentino, 1962), and two in the United
States, Selected Poems and New (McDowell Obolensky, 1958) and Volume Two (New
Directions, 1949).
Villa was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a Philippines Heritage Award, a Poetry Award from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Shelley Memorial Award.
In 1973 he was named a National Artist of the Philippines, and he also served as a cultural
advisor to the Philippine government. He died in New York City on February 7, 1997.
Characters
Dodong is the main character of the story, a seventeen years old, and very insistent on
marrying Teang at a very young age even with his father’s contradiction. He is
described by the author as a boy who is growing into a man, an insolent and big
although he was by nature low in statue.
Teang a very young lady who is also Dodong’s girlfriend and became his wife at teang
of seventeen. The author described her as having a small brown face, small black eyes
and straight gloss hair that made her so desirable to Dodong’s eyes.
Blas Dodong and Teang’s son who just like his father, wanted to marry at a veryyoung
age.
Tona Blas’s girlfriend whom he wanted to marry.
The Father and Mother of Dodong Though the author described his father as a silent
hardworking farmer and his mother as a devoted and diligent mother, they are being
pictured out as parents who cannot impose full authority to their son, Dodong. They
could not stop Dodong from getting what he wanted even if his future was at stake.
Summary
Dodong blindly marched into marriage, expecting his life to become better. However,
that is not what happened. Instead, after nine months Teang was pregnant with his
child, and he felt incredibly unprepared: In a few moments he would be a father. ‘Father,
Father,’ he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness.He was young, he realized
now, contradicting himself nine months ago. He was very young.
.. He felt queer, troubled, uncomfortable…
. In addition to that, for six successive years, Dodong and Teang kept having children.
At this point, Teang began to feel unhappy in their marriage. She cried sometimes,
wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her.
Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong whom she loved. It is interesting
to note here that Teang still claims to love Dodong despite the hardships they have
gone through.It should also be noted that Yet she wished she had not married, is a
sentence that is separated from Not even Dodong whom she loved, meaning it is the
act of marrying at a young age that she regrets, not the fact that it is Dodong whom she
married. Not marrying Dodong was only an after-thought. The story goes on, however,
to describe another suitor Teang had, Lucio, who was older than Dodong by nine years.
Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he and his wife were
childless until now.
If she had married Lucion, she wondered, would she have borne him children?Maybe
not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong…. Here we are given a clearer
picture about her unhappiness and disappointment. It is particularly regarding childbearing at a young age that Teang is unhappy with.
… would she have borne him children? Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. The
regret she feels about the marriage, then, is regarding the fact that they had children
very early on in their lives.
Just as Dodong’s thoughts raced when his first child was born: He was young, he
realized now… He was very young.The responsibility of having children was something
they could not bear at such a young age, and yet it was a responsibility that they were
left with and had to deal with. This, particularly, is why Dodong’s father was reluctant to
give Dodong his blessing to marry.
Must you marry, Dodong? his father asked. You are very young, Dodong. Despite his
father’s effort to dissuade him into marrying, Dodong persisted and went through with it,
much to his father’s dismay. In this, we can safely conclude, then, that Dodong is just
like the worm that blindly crawled onto his foot.The worm is a note that is intended for
Dodong, and for readers as well, not to go charging blindly into the fray. For what
happened to the worm? Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into
the air. To stress this blindness even further we can look at Dodong’s reaction right after
flinging the worm: Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age,
seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young anymore.
From the very beginning Dodong’s character is revealed as someone self-obsessed to
the point that he doesn’t bother to look at the consequences of his actions.This is the
footnote to youth: not to charge blindly into adulthood. And so, just like his father before
him, Dodong was suddenly faced with the dilemma when his eighteen-year-old son
comes up to him and asks to marry. ‘You want to marry Tona,’ Dodong said. He did not
want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would
be hard.
…
And yet, like his father before him, Dodong did not prevent his son from experiencing
those hardships as well. In this, the story’s theme becomes more universal in the sense
that it is a footnote not only to the youth, but to parents as well.The theme, then, is clear
in the sense that the quality of one’s life is likened to that of a worm when marriage and
adulthood is rushed into at a very young age. Dodong had a question in his mind when
he stepped out one night and reflected on the life he was living: One of them was why
Life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken.
.. after Love..
. Dodong could not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It
must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet.
Dreamfully sweet.Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted
to know a little wisdom but was denied it. Here, it is expressed that after the stage of
love (marriage), one’s dreams would have to be forsaken. It is expressed that only the
youth get to dream about how grand life could be, and that come a certain age, life
becomes difficult, full of hardships, impossible even. To that thought, however, I would
have to disagree. As is said in the narration, Dodong was denied a little wisdom,
therefore suggesting that this train of thought is something that should be changed.
Critical Analysis
In Jose Garica Villa’s Footnote to Youth, he tackles the responsibilities and realities that
come with marriage and the family life. In it, he narrates the story of Dodong, wherein
we are introduced to Dodong when he is seventeen and seeking to marry his love
Teang. He is problematic over how he intends to talk to his father about marrying
Teang, going over the possible responses his father would give, and at the same time
convincing himself that he is old enough to handle the responsibility. On his way home,
he makes a stop to relieve himself. The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds
and fragrant with a sweetish, earthy smell.Many slender soft worms emerged from the
furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. The appearance of the worms
and the occurrence of one worm crawling over Dodong’s foot is of great importance to
the story, as it serves as a revealing of Dodong’s character and future.
A short colorless worm marched blindly towards Dodong’s foot and crawled clammily
over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Several
characteristics attributed to the worm can also be reflected back onto Dodong’s story,
particularly the fact that the short worm was crawling blindly.It would be interesting to
note, as well, the connection this worm crawling over Dodong’s foot has with Jose
Garcia Villa’s title.
A footnote is simply defined as a note at the foot of the page. It is often used to give
additional information to the reader regarding certain words or phrases in the text. And
yet the author includes no actual footnotes in the story. As such, Jose Garcia Villa is
obviously trying to put forth certain themes and messages regarding youth and life
through the use of a short story. The message that comes forth to the reader through
the reading of the story, then, is what we may refer to as his footnote.However, an
interesting alternative suggestion may lie within the story itself, particularly with the
worm depicted in the story. The worm is described as blindly marching towards
Dodong’s foot, which is exactly how we could also describe Dodong and his choices in
this story.
Conclusion