FINAL PAPER: On N.V.

M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

Biography: Nestor Vincente Madali Gonzalez

Nestor Vincente Madali Gonzalez developed his love of nature and saw the heroic struggles of
the unlettered peasant for a livelihood. He saw the pioneers struggling against the forces of
nature, against a rugged land and wild beast, against a rugged drought and deceases, and against
socio economic political evils. All this were stored in his mind and he used them in his writings.

After finishing high school, he enrolled in a law course but he gave it up for journalism. He
continues drifted into creative writing, which he teaches for a living. He has practically ceased
writing poetry but keeps writing fiction although less and less in quantity now about the less
fortune people. His knowledge of other people and places is less intimate, less intense, than the
peasant in the hinter land of Mindoro.

Methods:
He studied and traveled to keep his literary tools sharp to replenish and enrich his reservoir of
experience. In every struggling against the forces of nature it's stored in his mind and he was able
to use them as materials for the stories he would write.

Critic Leaning or Persuasion:

There is truth and integrity in his stories. The delineation of character and setting is clear,
convincing, and realistic because he writes about people, place and things he has known
personally and well. His earlier stories have slight plots but they delight. His poems are simple
and uncluttered with involved and complicated structural patterns or anemic figure of speech.

Significant Findigs:
If Jose P. Rizal is considered the "first Filipino", I consider Nestor Vicente Madali the "first Filipino
who understood the Filipino". He created clearing in every field of literature, genre, and themes
by creating fictional habitats in the character of the land always struggling, joyful of its rewards
and hopeful.

N.V.M Gonzales occupies a special place the history of Philippine Literature in English; the stages
in the development as a writer coincide with the stages in the development of this Literature
itself. Hence, to trace his growth as an artist is in a sense, to trace the growth of Philippine
Literature in English. He started writing as a member of the Veronicans, a group of writers who
were young during the pre-war years when Philippine Literature English were young.

Contribution to the Field:

A. Notable Novels
His most notable works include the novels The Winds of April, The Bamboo Dancers and A Season
of Grace, short story collections Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and The Bread of Salt and
other stories and essay collections work on the mountain and The Novel of Justice.
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

B. Work's Publication
Gonzalez works have appeared in practically all the leading magazines, pre-WWII and after, in
Manila and numerous journals abroad. Some have been translated into various foreign
languages.

C. Philippine Literary Awards

The Republic Award in 1954 for outstanding contribution toward the advancement of Filipino
culture in the field of English literature and, in 1960, the first cultural Heritage Award.

Gaps Filled and Left Untouched:

Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzales, better known as N.V.M. Gonzales, fictionist, essayist, poet, and
teacher, articulated the Filipino spirit in rural, urban landscapes. He was the 1997 National Artist
for Literature of the Republic of the Philippines. Almost everyone knows the literary genius of
NVM. His novels, short stories, and poems have touched millions of readers worldwide and have
been published in several languages.

Summary of the Story

A. Story
Children of the Ash-Covered Loam is a story of a boy named Tarang who want to help his father.
Tarang was seven years old. He is a great boy for his parents even sometimes his mother getting
mad. There's a part in the story that even his parents are too busy they never forget their child.
There's a sequence in the story that like the other family, they are also having a fight but in the
end they are being strong. Tarang parents are working in the farm, but one night while Tarang
was awaken because of the heavy rain, on that night when Tarang fallow his father he saw the
farm and its gone.

B. Significant Learning
This story represent how family became strong even there's a struggle that happened in their
lives. In every family there's a time that they are not understand each other but its part in any
relationship the important is they still stick together and help each other whatever happen. The
family doesn't always talk about being together but it talks about how they share they love for
each other unconditionally. Like what happened in the story there's a struggle in their family but
they always find a way to resolve it.
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

A Literary Analysis of N.V.M. Gonzalez’s “Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories”
Second Prize: "Children of the Ash-covered Loam" by N.V.M. Gonzales (1952)

N.V.M. Gonzalez’s “Children of the Ash-Covered Loam is a humble and comely short story that
plunges deep into “the private and the public lives” of Filipino women and children bound to see
life in a new light as events unfold. The world of the story is, as Francisco Arcellana puts it, is “the
world of Mindoro and Manila: the world of the paraya and the anting-anting and anito-
worshiping as well as the world of public lectures and TV and Cinemascope. The theme of the
collection is the clash between the city and the farm, the impact of the sophisticate upon the
primitive, the collision between reality and the unreal city. The subject is man and the life of
man…” (Arcellana). The stories are rich, deep and massive in their delineation of the aspects of
rural and urban living and especially the depiction the private and public lives of the main
characters that are basically women and children.

“No other Filipino writer has written prose more clear and clean and straight and direct and hard
and pure as N.V.M. Gonzalez” writes Arcellana. His prose is a perfect vehicle of thought. A prose
where texture has been added to structure and subtlety to strength. A collection of prose with
an inner calmness, subtly and warmth but the effect is startling and powerful. Indeed, N.V.M.
Gonzalez’s “Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and other stories” is one of the few Filipino stories
of real power.

Evident in “Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and other stories” is Gonzalez’s economy with
words and focus on surface description. There is also a certain striking restraint in his prose style,
sparseness of story, and flatness of narrative tone. However, the sparseness in place, descriptive
detail and characterization of Gonzalez’s stories are balanced by his emphasis on dialogue and
dispassionate approach of his narrators to consequential experiences. Indeed, N.V.M. Gonzalez’s
prose style belongs to the minimalist school of writing.

In this literary analysis, I will only choose two out the seven short stories included in the collection
to focus on. This decision stems from my belief that although each stories in the collection is
distinctly N.V.M. Gonzalez’s, a closer reading of just a few of his stories would be enough to
illuminate the point the author is driving at in this brief literary analysis of N.V.M. Gonzalez’s
book. Moreover, the other five stories not covered in this analysis, although not critical
commented on, will still be briefly mentioned along the way. This is to prove that I really read the
entire stories in the collection and not just tinker on specific stories to deal upon.

Gonzalez' stories smell of ginger root and oils to appease the spirits and of a boy's hunger and
curiosity. She commends Gonzalez’s remarkable use of Filipino words so perfectly woven into the
English that his stories become colorful paintings of Philippine characters and sensibility.

Many of Gonzalez‘s stories are nostalgic looks, through a boy's eyes, of rural life. In "The Morning
Star," Gonzalez creates a quietly powerful woman who gives birth to an American soldier's baby.
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

In "Children of the Ash-Covered Loam," the boy, Tarang, runs from his hut to see the pig's new
litter. He strikes a tree trunk with his big toe, but the hurt is ‘not half as sharp as his hunger for
knowing.’ This hunger is in all these stories. Also included are stories that have themes of
migration, inter-island travel, and the perils of the sea. “The Sea Beyond” features a dying
stevedore who has fallen off the reconverted minesweeper Adela. In “A Warm Hand,” the
passengers of the Ligaya went ashore to seek refuge is a fisherman’s hut during a violent storm.

“Children of the Ash-Covered Loam,” seems straightforwardly realistic in approach. There are no
distorting tricks of language. The presentation is essentially objective—that is, Gonzalez supplies
very little interpretation. Gonzalez tells the reader the scene using brief and simple words. He
almost always makes it sure that the scene would come out vivid and alive, as they were, in the
imagination of the attentive reader. However, there are also certain scenes where the reader is
to infer its larger meaning. I am particularly referring to the last scene in the story where while
hurrying down the hut, on rainy evening, Tarang thought:

“he could hear something else besides—may be the sow in the pen, under
the dao tree. He listened more carefully. He could hear the grunting. There
were little noises, too. A squirming litter, protesting against the cold.
Surely, with wet snouts tugging at its teats, a sow could be annoyed…” (21).

At that moment, Tarang;

“got up quietly and slipped out the door into the rain. It seemed that at this
very hour the rice grains, too, would be pressing forward, up the ash-
covered loam, thrusting forth their tender stalks through the sodden dirt. he
thought he caught the sound that the seeds also made. The ground was not
too wet. In his haste, Tarang struck a tree stump with his big toe; and the
hurt was not half as keen as it might have been, not half as sharp as his
hunger for knowing, for seeing with his own eyes how life emerged from his
dark womb of the land and this time of the night” (21).

The reader is left to infer which is gave new life—the pig or the seeds planted on the ground. It
could be something symbolic. However, it could also be something representational of the cycle
of life and death. Whatever it is, the reader is to ponder it on.

The story is in third-person narration. The story is about a seven-year-old boy named Tarang and
his family living in the hinterlands of Mindoro, as they take on kaingin system to prepare the
earth for the coming planting season. Slash and burn is a specific functional element of certain
farming practices among Filipino farmers (and of course, in many civilizations all over the world).

It is Tarang’s first time to go with his parents to the ash-covered field where they will soon plant
seeds. His father brought with him a chicken. His father bartered his mother’s camisa in exchange
of the chicken to be offered to the spirits. As the other farmers gather around the clearing, Tarang
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

watches with awe and wonder as his father “laid the pullet’s neck upon the flat of the tree stump,
and without a word cut the head off” (Gonzales). He watches closely as his father “held the
headless pullet up with one hand, to let the blood spurt well and make a long leap” (10). The
following day, everyone gathered on the same spot where Tarang’s father killed the chicken.
Tarang witness his Tio Longinos setting up a small cross made of banban reeds and mumbling,
“let citronella grass give fragrance… let ginger appease the Evil Ones… let iron give weight to the
heads of rice on this clearing” (12). As Tarang edges closer, he sees bits of ginger and the three
two-inch nails that his Tio Longinos placed at the foot of the red Cross. The ritual is practiced by
farmers in Mindoro before planting because it is believed that by offering the blood of an animal
and other objects to the spirits of the earth, will yield them rich crops and abundant harvest.

The infusion of animistic and ritualistic elements with the agricultural lives of people in Mindoro
is evident in the story. Normally, Filipinos are superstitious. They believe in whatever stories that
are not of this world. It fascinates them. Their great respect for nature and those that thrives in
it is celebrated in Gonzalez’s “Children of the Ash-Covered Loam”. For instance, the night when
Tia Orang, the midwife, came over their hut. She talked a great deal about Evil Ones and Spirits
that made Tarang “remember the kaingin and his Tio Longinos and the citronella and the nails
and the ginger root” (19).

The story is straightforwardly realistic in approach but the presentation is not particularly
objective. In the story, the omniscient narrator expounds the details and generalities of the
character’s thoughts, and milieu. The ironic, melancholy tone rises chiefly, perhaps, from the
surprises of the plot, but is enhanced by some of the rueful observations contributed by the
narrator.

To fully appreciate N.V.M. Gonzalez’s work, the only requirement is the reader’s full attention to
the text. Gonzalez’s story are not just a triumph of skill and craft. Neither are they just examples
of the growth and ripening that is art. The reader of the story must attend to it, must read it
attentively, must read it with attention. For that is the least that they ask of him [the reader].
Then he shall not fail to see that it is a work of art and that it is drawn from a world attentively
and lovingly observed.

Indeed, N.V.M. Gonzalez is one true Filipino writer worth emulating and remembering. There is
no other Filipino writer like him. No other Filipino writer has written prose more comely and
homely than him. He is definitely worth the read.
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam

Works Cited

Arcellana, Francisco. "The Art of N.V.M. Gonzalez." Gonzalez, N.V.M. Children of the Ash-Covered
Loam. Makati City: Bookmark, Inc, 1992.

Farish, Terry. Bread of Salt and Other Stories. n.d. 29 September 2011
<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DTU8OozhonEJ:www.barnesandno
ble.com/w/bread-of-salt-and-other-stories-n-v-m-
gonzalez/1002265454+N.V.M+Gonzalez'sthe+morning+star&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ph>.

"Children of the Ash-Covered Loam ." Gonzales, N.V.M. Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and
Other Stories. makati City: Bookmark.Inc, 1992. 10.

"Children of the Ash-Covered Loam." Gonzalez, N.V.M. Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and
Other Stories. Makati City: Bookmark, Inc., 1992. 19.

"Children of the Ash-Covered Loam." Gonzalez, N.V.M. Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and
Other Stories. Makati City: Bookmark, Inc., 1992. 21.

"Children of the Ash-Covered Loam." Gonzalez, N.V.M. Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and
Other Stories. Makati City: Bookmark, Inc., 1992. 88.

Sui, Wadi. Politeness, Perlocution and the Panopticon: a Pragmatic Stylistic Analysis of NVM
Gonzalez’s “The Blue Skull and the Dark Palms”. n.d. 29 September 2011
<http://wadisui.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/politeness-perlocution-and-the-panopticon-a-
pragmatic-stylistic-analysis-of-nvm-gonzalezs-the-blue-skull-and-the-dark-palms/>.
FINAL PAPER: On N.V.M Gonzalez's Children of the Ash-Covered Loam