Footnote to Youth

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Background
- Footnote to Youth talks about the youth as of today. It was written by Jose Garcia Villa in
1933. It is the basic story of marrying very young and questioning the wisdom of making
life choices at a young age that must be lived with. It also shows that a fathers wisdom is
not always something you can base your life on. If you make a decision, even at a young
age, sometimes you must live with the consequences.
About the Author
- National Artist for Literature. He won a prize of 1000 from the Philippines Free Press in
1929 for his story Mir-i-nisa.
- He introduced the reversed consonance rime scheme, including the comma poems that
made full use of the punctuation mark in an innovative, poetric way.
- Villas works have been collected into the following books: Footnote to Youth, Many
Voices, Poems by Doveglion and Have Come Am Here which brought him fame, honors
and fellowships.
- Villa received the American academy of arts and Letters Poetry Award, the Shelley
Memorial Award, the Guggenheim, Bollingen, and Rockfeller fellowships for poetry.
Summary
- It is all about a 17 year old man named Dodong who cant wait to marry Teang. He was
hesitant to tell it to his parents. But he ask permission to his father and then he allowed
him. Then theyve got married and lived together. Teang gave birth to Blas. Blas was not
Dodongs only child. More children came to them. Teang looks like shapeless and thin
after all the responsibilities of a mother. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not
married. Sometimes, she thinks that what if she marry Lucio, who is until now childless.
Then one night the eighteen year old Blas also wants to marry Tona. Like what Dodong
did when he was 17 was the one that Blas also did. Dodong allowed Blas to marry Tona
but deep down inside he felt sad and sorry.
Analysis
- Characters:
1. Dodong
2. Teang
3. Lucio
4. Blas
5. Tona
- Setting:
a. Place- In a province FARM
b. Time- It is the time of planting season almost June to August.
- Plot Structure
1. Exposition- Dodong wants to marry Teang and ask his fathers permission.
2. Rising Action- Thinking that they are still young, and their love would be short,
Dodongs father allowed them to be married.
3. Climax- Dodong saw her wife in the papag with his firstborn child. He hear his
babys cry named Blas that pierced him queerly. He could not control the swelling
happiness in him and also felt embarrassed because he is not still ready to support a
family. Then Dodong wanted to touch the baby and give him a sense of fathers
touch.

4. Falling Action- Teang secretly regretted being married at an early age, she wondered
if she would have the same life if she marry Lucio. Dodong finally realized the
hardships of marrying such an early age.
5. Conclusion- Blas at age of 18 wanted to marry Tona, Dodong did not object, but tried
to make Blas think twice before rushing to marriage, because Dodong doesnt want
Blas to end up like him.
Conflict:
Man vs Himself
1. Dodong married at the age of 17.
2. Teang regrets marrying Dodong.
3. Lucio, after getting married to another girl, their still childless.
4. Their son Blas followed their footsteps, marrying his object of affection at a very
young age of 18.
5. Tona, the girl that Blas wants to marry.
Symbols:
a. The sun was salmon and hazy in the west
b. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodongs foot
Flashback:
a. In the cool sundown, Dodong thought wild young dreams of himself and Teang.
Teang his girl. She had a small brown face and black eyes and straight glossy hair.
How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.
b. Teang wondered about Lucio, her other suitor before, whom she had not chosen
because he is older than Dodong by nine years. She wondered if she had married
Lucio.
Foreshadowing:
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would
tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao
from the plow, and led it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it but he
wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious import, as it would
mark a climacteric in his life.
This phrase gives a hint that there is something fishy going on with Dodong and
Teang. It was really something serious because he is problematic over how he
intends to talk to his father about Teang, and going over the possible responses
his father would give. What he might confess can break his fathers heart.
Point of View: Third Person Omniscient
Theme:
a. Being Responsible
b. The Concept of Life
Conclusion: History Repeats Itself

In 1929, Jos Garca Villa (VEE-yah) edited the first comprehensive anthology of Filipino short
stories in English, for the Philippines Free Press. The earliest published volume of his own work was also
a collection of stories, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, released by Scribners in
1933. Many of these tales had appeared earlier in Clay, the mimeographed literary magazine which he
founded at the University of New Mexico and which first drew the attention of Edward OBrien. The Best
American Short Stories of 1932, in fact, was dedicated to Villa by OBrien, whose introduction included
Villa among the half-dozen short story writers in America who count and compared him with one of
OBriens earlier discoveries, Sherwood Anderson. Even as OBrien was prophesying a career for Villa as
novelist, however, the young writer had already turned his attention exclusively to poetry. The stories,
therefore, retain their interest chiefly as preliminaries to attitudes and techniques associated with Villas
poems.
A third of the twenty-one stories in Footnote to Youth are semiautobiographical portraits of a
hermit protagonist suffering self-imposed isolation in the Philippines, New Mexico, and New York City.
There is a repetitive pattern of rejected illegitimate children, either unwanted or inadequately cared for; of
antagonism between fathers and grown sons; of the protagonists alienation from those with whom he is,
only temporarily, most intimate; of a love-hate identification with Jos Rizal, martyred hero of the 1896
Revolution, as a father-image whose own paternity is clouded; of rejection in courtship and marriage; and
of self-importance recovered through sentimentalized identification with the suffering Christ, the god
mocked and misunderstood.
This sense of recoil from hurt was conveyed in Villas stories principally through antinarrative
devices. In some cases, the paragraphs are numbered and condensed, so that typographically they
resemble stanzas in a poem. Also, incident is not allowed to flow into incident. OBrien wrote of Villas
combining a native sensuousness of perception and impression with the traditionally Spanish
expression of passionate feeling in classical reticence of form. More likely, however, the
compartmentalization of the narrative indicates the aftermath of a series of unhappy encounters between a
sensitive personality and an insensitive world unprepared to give him the recognition he deserves. The
stories dazzle with color, their principal emotion being intensely lyrical.
Achievement:
As a self-exile from the Philippines for decades, Jos Garca Villa earned awards and a reputation
in both the Western and Asian worlds. In the United States, he was the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, an Academy Award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1946, a
Bollingen Fellowship, and a Rockefeller grant. In Greenwich Village during the 1940s and 1950s, he
was considered a regular, as a member of the New Directions avant-garde. In Great Britain, his
reputation also flourished, as a result of Edith Sitwells high praise of his great and perfectly original
work. Gradually such distinction, coming from overseas, influenced his countrymen at home. Although
there were complaints that he did not write about subjects identifiably Filipino, and that he did not write
with the folk simplicity of Carlos Bulosans New Yorker tales of sweet-sour satire, an entire generation of
college-educated Filipinos began not only to envy his success but also to emulate his sophistication and
inventiveness. The prominence given him by this growing cult assisted in securing for him a Pro Patria
Award, in 1961, and a Cultural Heritage Award in 1962. In 1973, he became the first Filipino writer in
English to be declared a National Artist, with a government pension for life.

A review of the story:

its about the situation of the present life of teenagers today.Where in an event was happened 3 times or
more in different times. It shows that what our parents keep us out from, was the same things their parents
also do...
sometimes life can be cruel...but the cruelness of it gives us lessons where in we can reflect on and learn
on..
we may be the one making our path in life but the is always someone above guiding us and look over
us....
choices are in our hand yet we are only given a chance to pick one from them...
lets be rational enough yet with the help of our hearts....
making a choice with the use of the heart alone is useless as well as with the mind....we can have so much
regrets over it..
but if we use our mind plus our heart its a perfect decision..
parents always thinks the best way for their children ....when can we appreciate them?

"But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph now. Love must triumph now.
Afterwards it will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong and then Life." From "Footnote to Youth"
Interest in pre-WW II short stories by authors from the Philippines is very high. The most viewed
of nearly 2000 posts on The Reading Life are about such stories. The stories are a delight to read and
help keep alive memories of a way of life most now know little about. They are also a great resource for
anyone interested in learning more about Filipino history. Jose Villa lived for sixty- seven of his eightynine years in the United States but he always maintained his Filipino citizenship and his work focused on
life in the Phillipines. In 1973 he was named A National Artist of the Phillipines, the countries highest
literary award given for a lifetime of great achievement.
"A Footnote to Youth" is a very wise deeply felt work of great sadness set in rural Philippines in
the 1930s. The truth contained it would be acknowledged by everyone from Yiddish masters, to Chaucer
and Cervantes and a host of Irish writers.
As the story opens a young man of seventeen is trying to work up the nerve to ask his father for
permission to marry his sweet heart. He tells his father he is a man now and can marry if he wishes but
he is giving his father the respect of asking him. The young man cannot stop thinking about how
beautiful his love is and he is determined to marry even though his father tells him he is too young. The
story is replete with beautiful images of rural life, especially of the beloved carabao.
Many years are covered in the five pages of "Footnote to Youth". Years have gone by and the
once beautiful girl has lost all her looks from hard work and too many children. There is nothing in the
life of the no longer young man but working in the fields. He has become his father. When his seventeen
year old son asks for permission to marry, declaring his love for his sweetheart you can feel the pain in
the silence of the father.

Villa was born on August 5, 1908, in Manila's Singalong district. His parents were Simeon Villa
(a personal physician of Emilio Aguinaldo, the founding President of the First Philippine Republic) and
Guia Garcia (a wealthy landowner).He graduated from University of the Philippines Integrated School|
University of the Philippines High School in 1925. Villa enrolled on a pre Medical school medicine
course in University of the Philippines UP, but then switched to pre Law school|law. However, he realized
that his true passion was in the arts. Villa first tried painting, but then turned into creative writing after
reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.
In 1929 he published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, which the administrators in UP found
too bold and was even fined Philippine peso for obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance. In that
same year, Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine for Mir-I-Nisa. He also
received P1,000,000 prize money, which he used to migrate for the United States.
He enrolled at the University of New Mexico, wherein he was one of the founders of Clay, a
mimeograph literary magazine.He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and pursued post-graduate
work at Columbia University.Villa had gradually caught the attention of the country's literary circles, one
of the few Asians to do so at that time.
After the publication of Footnote to Youth in 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to poetry,
and published only a handful of works until 1942.
Villa worked as an associate editor for New Directions Publishing in New York City between
1949 to 1951, and then became director of poetry workshop at City College of New York from 1952 to
1960. He then left the literary scene and concentrated on teaching, first lecturing in The New School|The
New School for Social Research from 1964 to 1973, as well as conducting poetry workshops in his
apartment. Villa was also a cultural attach to the Philippine Mission to the United Nations from 1952 to
1963, and an adviser on cultural affairs to the President of the Philippines beginning 1968.
On February 5, 1997, at the age of 88, Jose was found on a coma in his New York apartment and
was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in the Greenwich area. His death two days later was attributed to
"cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia".
Personal In 1946 Villa married Rosemarie Lamb, with whom he has two sons, Randy and Lance.
They divorced ten years later. He also has three grandchildren.

*The main conflict in the poem "Footnote to Youth" by Jose Garcia Villa is the difficulty that the two
young lovers face by marrying so early in life.
EVALUATION
Karangalan o pagmamahal
Responsibilidad o
Sariling kasiyahan o
Pamilya o Ka-ibigan

PRE-DISCUSSION