PHILIPPINE LITERATURE: A Multi-Critical Essay on the Symbol of Death in 3 Poems by Dr. Anthony Tan

Hello this is my academic paper which is a Multi critical essay evaluating the symbol of deaths in 3 poems. In this article i will be showing background my the study, the poems selected, the statement of the problem and the results and discussion. I made this research for 4 months and i am glad to share this to you.

The poems were selected on the basis that the poems deal with death. The poems are: Crossing the River, Meeting with a Medium and Apostrophe. I purposely selected the poems since images of death are strongly evident eventually leading to the symbols of death. I chose three poems specifically Crossing the River, Meeting with a Medium, and Apostrophe to be analyzed and to found out how death is being conveyed in these poems and to the whole selected poems.

Literature doesn't always have happy endings; sometimes the stories end in death or in some other loss. It's the literature of leave-taking, writing about death when the moment has not even come yet. Some of the most sentimental lines have been written in the memory, or anticipation of death (Lombardi, 2012).

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Death elicits such deep and varied emotions from individuals across the globe. It is no wonder, then, that poets through the ages — no matter the time or place — have sought to address death through poetry. Poetry enables any poet to meditate upon and emotionally and lyrically respond to death, whether the death of a stranger, a loved one, oneself, or just the fact of death itself. Poems about death, however, vary greatly both in terms of their tone and form.

Symbolism in Literature

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Symbol is one of the literary devices where an object, person, or a thing is used to represent an idea. In addition, a symbol is anything that stands for something beyond its literal meaning. Symbol is a useful literary device, very helpful in conveying the very meaning or core of the poem since it uses words that are not ordinary words. Many poets both here and abroad have discussed death in various forms.

Dr. Anthony Tan and his Masterpiece

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One of contemporary Philippine writers who deals with death in their works is Dr. Anthony L. Tan, a well-known Mindanaoan poet and a Palanca- awardee.Dr. Tan discusses death through remembering the dead, longing, leaving, and the tragedy of someone. His experiences about death influenced his works in a general way but he is not really conscious that the experience he has was put into his writings. Dr. Anthony Tan shows how he views death in a major way. Death for him as something to be taken seriously and it is something to be feared by many. The poet used different symbols in writing his poems to have different purposes.

However, he did not mean to use them as symbols rather they were only used to emphasize the setting and the symbols used are said to be images only according to the poet. The poet then is unaware that the images he used can also be functioned as symbols.

Theoretical Diction
The following key terms are defined operationally, as they are used in this article.

Symbol- In this study, a symbol suggests meaning different in kind from its literal context. It has a deeper meaning as compared to that of representative of a class or type where it carries more than one meaning.

Symbolism- In this study, this term refers to a word, a phrase, a scene, or an episode that directly refers to one thing but suggest another thing as well. It designates something real, something we can touch, and it also stands for something else that is real even if tangible. It is the applied use of symbols: iconic representations that carry particular conventional meanings (Galia and Villanea, 2004).

Death- In this study, it is the act of dying, an irreversible state of human kind, it can be a good/bad feeling where a man cannot escape from it. It is also the loss of someone you love both physically and mentally.
Poetry- In this study it is a form of literature widely uses imagery and symbols to evoke meanings.

Reader-Response Criticism

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In this study, it is the approach in reading a literary texts based on how the reader interprets and analyze a particular literary texts based on his understanding.



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Death as a symbol has different meaning. It may depend on the reader’s understanding and the poet’s use of a particular symbol. Moreover, the idea of death has really affected the people throughout the course of time as evident in some works by presenting death as a fearful and terrible thing.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

What are the symbols of death and its respective meaning found in the three selected poems of Dr. Anthony L. Tan?

The other bank

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A line from the poem, Crossing the River,
“The boat moved toward the other bank”
Illustrates the crossing of the boat to the other bank in which the boat symbolizes the transportation of death and the other bank symbolizes for the place of the dead.

Apparition

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Other than that is the image of apparition. In the poem Crossing the River,
“On the edge of the feeble call
An apparition darkened the thick mist.”

The surrounding is already gloomy because of the thick mist that gives the feeling of uneasiness but it was become darker when an apparition appeared in front of the speaker. One always alludes to apparition to a ghost, a person who already died. Seeing an apparition is really a big representation of death because it represents a dead person it might be a part of your family who already die. An apparition also would mean someone will die. In the poem Crossing the River, the speaker saw the apparition of the boatman which is death wherein the speaker will going to die.

Wind

Dr. Tan personified death as a wind. This is evident in the lines taken from his poem, Meeting with the Medium:
“The ancient wind that still holds
The spirits of the departed”

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Such personification is still true in the poem, Ways of Dying. The lines from the poem illustrate as such:
“Whichever way the wind blows
They fall with the flowers"
The lines are very good descriptions of Death’s inevitability that wherever the person goes, they cannot escape Death. Death here again is personified as a wind; just like wind, Death is everywhere. We all must feel death just as we feel the wind. The poet also represented Death as something good. Such representation is present in the lines:
“For Death is a passionate wind
That stirs the abandoned lyre.”
Death here which is symbolized by wind is described as a passionate thing and a good thing for those who accept death as their final destination. With the lines presented above, wind can be considered as a symbol of death as it personifies death itself.

Oldness

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Other also is the illustration of oldness in the poem, Meeting with the Medium,
“The secrets in the furrows of your brow,
In your eyes, heavy and dim with years”

It is by nature that every living thing in this world will get old eventually died. Once a person gets old, his skin will get wrinkled peeling out the younger you. The line states that the priestess has all the knowledge that the speaker is trying to know or to understand because she has all the experience.

Boatman

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As death comes in many shapes and forms, death itself in the poem, Apostrophe is compared to a boatman,
“For always I feel the boatman
Paddling in the water of my bones”

The speaker of the poem likened death to a boatman giving chill to the speaker as one can imagine in the last line, paddling in the water of my bones. The speaker always feels that death is coming for him making his bones weak and making him scared on whatever happens if death comes for him. Another is in the poem, Crossing the river, where the poem clearly state that it is death in a boat who will come for him when his time comes who will be with him when he crosses the river.
“It belonged to the boatman of the river”

Since people do not have any idea on what death really looks like or what it really feels like, people tend to compare death in many ways

CONCLUSION



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This article and study theorize from the above findings that death conveys both a positive and negative message. We can never know when and where will death come. People fear death because death stops all their ambitions, hopes and wishes on life. However, the positive thing about the awareness of death is that we must value life, capture every moment; that every minute counts because there’s no going back unless there’s another life to offer or there’s a place where you can live a new life.

Furthermore, death is represented in different ways as shown in the three selected poems of Dr. Anthony Tan. It is a like a wind that exists everywhere. It can be the social problems in the society such as drunkenness, poverty, ignorance, the misuse of intelligence, etc.

Death also is irreversible just like a river that is continuously flowing towards the river bank and there’s no turning back. Other symbols of death are oldness and boatman.

The symbols as mentioned above represent death in the selected poems of Dr. Anthony Tan. These symbols according are just images but in reading the poems they also serves as symbols. Thus the function of the symbol which is wind is that it tells us that we can never escape death no matter what happen. We cannot see death but we can always feel death. Wind is everywhere just like death is everywhere.

References

• Brooker, P. and et. al (1997). A Reader’s guide to Contemporary Literary Theory fourth edition. Great Britain. Hatnolls Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall.
• Galia, G. C. B. & Villanea, M. R. S. (2004). The Sea as a Symbol: In the Five Selected Short Stories of Artur Peñaserada. Undergraduate Thesis: Iligan City, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.
• Devnani, S. G. C. (2001). Death: Its Guises and Consequences in Selected Stories by Susan Lara. Undergraduate Thesis: Iligan City, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.
• Mamacang, K. A. & Montecalvo, P. M. V. (2009). An Analysis of the Animal Symbols in the Book of Revelation. Undergraduate Thesis: Iligan City, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.
• Lombardi, E. (n.d.) Taking Leave... in Literature. Retrieved on March 17, 2018. http://classiclit.about.com/od/dyingdeath/a/aa_literatureloss.htm
• Shukla, I. C. (2010) What is Symbolism? Retrieved on February 13, 2018. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-is-symbolism.html
• Lorcher, T. (2012) Short Stories for Teaching Symbolism. Retrieved on February 17, 2018. http://www.brighthubeducation.com/high-school-english-lessons/42142-short-stories-to-teach-symbolism/