Jofie D.

Saligan

ANALYSIS

2GMT

To The Man I Married

Angela Manalang Gloria

A. INTRODUCTION
The author, Angela Manalang Gloria, was a Filipina poet born on August 23, 1907 in
Guagua, Pampanga. At the University of the Philippines where she took up liberal arts, she
discovered her passion for poetry and painting on the sides. A fastidious and hardworking
student, she graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in philosophy in March 1929. She first
appeared on the literary scene in Manila in 1925 and was immediately hailed with extravagant
praise as the only Filipina poetess worthy of the name. By the 1930s her reputation had grown
such that Jose Garcia Villa felt sufficiently threatened to launch an attack. It was at UP where she
became literary editor of the UP Collegian and met her future husband, Celedonio P. Gloria who
was then editor in chief of the same school publication. After college, she became editor of the
Herald Mid-Week Magazine but had to resign six months later because of poor health. Her poem
To The Man I Married portrays her love for her husband by comparing her need for him to her
need of the earth the earth.
B. STRUCTURE ANALYSIS
Part I:
Part I of Angela Manalang Glorias To the Man I Married is a combination
English/Italian sonnet: it consists of an octave with the rime scheme ABABCDCD and in the
sestet EFEFGG. The overall rhyme-scheme is that of the English sonnet, but instead of three
quatrains and a couplet, it features the octave and sestet.
Octave:
In the octave, the speaker makes the bold claim addressing the man she married: You are
my earth and all that earth implies. The speakers claim alerts the reader to a metaphorical
comparison: the addressee is her earth. The speakers final point of comparison is both startling
yet quite logical: her husband is like the earth, in that he is the final, elemental clay / the driven
heart must turn to for its rest.
Sestet:
As most octaves in Italian sonnets do, this octave has offered a thought that will receive a
twist in the sestet. While the octave implies a very close and sustaining relationship between the
speaker and her husband, the sestet asserts that that closeness does not completely satisfy all of
the needs of the speaker as an individual: If in your arms that hold me now so near / I lift my
keening thoughts to another one.

Part II:
Part II of To the Man I Married consists of two quatrains with the rime scheme ABAB,
ACDC, in which the speaker asserts that she does not want to overstate her case about her love
for her husband, and she even backtracks somewhat. Although he is metaphorically her earth, she
really cannot compare her love for him to the ocean, because no such love / and no such ocean
can ever be. But she can love him in a finite way, like the waves that keep crashing against the
shore; after all, those waves do reflect The blue of everlasting skies.
Figures of Speech
"As finite as the wave that dies= SIMILE
The land that stills my cries = PERSONIFICATION

C. IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
*Central Theme In my own comprehension the persona portrays the man that she
married as someone that is so essential to her very existence. In the poem it all goes
around to the fact that his husband is the one that completes her and someone that she
cant lose. But even though at the second stanza she stated that her love cannot out
compare the boundless sea but doesnt really depicts that her love for him is lesser but
because only the creator our God is the one who can love beyond measure.
*Conflict- man vs man = because of her limits being just a human she cant love her
husband infinitely that encompasses the boundaries of the ocean like a divine being like
God.
D. CONCLUSION
Psychoanalytic Theory - this poem can be best describe in this theory because in
this poem it is consist of a lot of symbols that portrays his tremendous love for the
man that she married and it is based on her humane responses to the world which
she lives in which we can clearly see in the poem by how she treated the earth
which is something that gives the essential things that she need in order for her to
live. Like the psychoanalytic theory, this poem also lets you gaze upon the more
underneath meaning of the written texts and is based by egos.
SOURCES
http://ithmlit102.blogspot.com/2008/06/to-man-i-married-by-angelamanalang.html
http://english--pt.tumblr.com/post/69689385592/literary-analysis
https://imbelle18.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/literary-analysis/
http://khadijahmitmug21.blogspot.com/

http://tothemanimarried.weebly.com/about.html\
http://to-man-i-msrried.blogspot.com/2013/12/to-man-i-married-poem.html