Clyde R. Jarmin Ms.

Martinez

12-STEM 1

The Mats

The Mats” doesn’t contain a clear description of the characters, however, it allows the
readers to imagine the characters’ portraits and attitudes, and feel their emotions as
they read the dialogues and discover unexpected facts in the story. Arcellana handles
the characterization of each of his characters through their dialogues, supported by the
symbolism/illustration of the mats and the use of the third person point of view.

“The Mats” contains several dialogues which helps the readers to figure out the
behaviors and the emotions of the characters. Similar to this, there were also readings
of the letters sent by Mr. Angeles, the main protagonist of the story, to his wife, Nana
Emilia, during his homecoming. It read, “I have just met a marvelous matweaver—a real
artist—and I shall have a surprise for you… I am sure that the children will be very
pleased. I know you will be. I can hardly wait to show them to you” The author doesn’t
mention any description about Mr. Angeles’ characteristics in the story, but in this letter
readers know that he is a very loving and caring father to his family.

The story revolves around Mr. Angeles. He is the one who opens up the topic about his
3 dead children. He is also the one having the conflict with himself, and he is the center
of the climax. The climax of the story is when he demands, “Do you think I’d forgotten?
Do you think I had forgotten them? Do you think I could forget them?” and calls the
names of the dead children after hearing his wife saying, “You know, Jaime, you didn’t
have to” In this dialogue, readers know that he was so emotional that the issue must
not be talked about. Here, also, readers could find the theme of the story: “No matter
how painful it is, we should not forget the people who passed away because they had
been a part of our lives, and we should respect them by commemorating them.” The
story reveals a lot of important things through this single dialogue between the two
characters. As we can see in the text, the way the author described the mats was so
detailed as if he was describing the owner of a particular mat. In the case of Nana
Emilia’s mat, “The letters were large, done in green. Flowers—cadena-de-amor—were
woven in and out among the letters. The border was long winding twig of cadena-de-
amor”. This allows the readers to imagine how beautiful her mat was. It represents her
happiness and how special she was to Mr. Angeles. It wasn’t only her mat which was
beautiful, but so as the children’s, which had different colors and unique symbols which
represented each one of them. On the other hand, the 3 dead kids’ mats were not
beautiful or unique at all. In this way, the mats symbolize their current states. The
siblings who are alive received colorful mats which represent their happy existence
whereas the dead siblings received not that colorful mats which represents their deaths.
In contrary to all of these, Mr. Angeles’ mat was neither unique nor simple. This
represents his state of staying somewhere between happy and sad, because he is
happy for his alive kids while sad for his dead kids. Arcellana also employs the third
person point of view as a method of revealing the conflict and the sudden change of
mood. Everything seems okay and peaceful for the family until the point where Nana
notices 3 remaining mats to unfold which the readers already know that these belong to
the 3 dead kids. “Only Mr. Angeles seemed to have heard Nana Emilia’s words. He
suddenly stopped talking, as if he had been jerked away from a pleasant fantasy… and
when he spoke his voice was different” . Here, the readers can notice that it is the
conflict of the story wherein Mr. Angeles has to decide whether to open up the topic
about the 3 kids or not. Readers can also notice a sudden change of mood from happy
to being serious. Like this, conflict happens all of a sudden which we can’t notice in our
actual lives. That is why the author used the third person point of view to help the
readers imagine more clearly the mood, emotion, behavior, and everything that
happens to the character/s at that particular moment. Because of Arcellana’s use of
dialogues, the detailed description of mats and the use of the third person point of view,
he provides the readers a more thrilling way of knowing the characters one by one
throughout the whole story. By not stating the descriptions of the characters ahead, the
readers become more curious and pay more attention to the narrations and dialogues.
In this way, he offers the readers a more creative and exciting way of discovering the
characters together with the theme and plot of the story.