I just want to warn everyone that this post has no thesis. I just want to bring up some things that have been on my mind about the texts we’ve been reading for class that I have not yet been able to voice, so follow along if you can, but if it’s difficult to understand, I want to apologize in advance.

I wanted to add a couple more points to Vivian’s post on the authors incorporation of non-English languages in their respectives texts. Vivian already addressed the authors’ potential purpose of excluding their readers of the language’s meaning with the intent that their audience may experience the living frustration of a foreigner unable to keep up with or understand dominant society. I would also like to add the authors’ desire to convey a “multicultural” society as an additional possible motive in integrating Japanese, Tagalog, French, etc… in a piece of American literature.

A lack of understanding invokes a sense of confusion that, I argue, can be metaphorically extended to the state of society’s culture. Particularly in Dogeaters, I think this technique reflects the country’s contradicting experiences in undergoing sociological and cultural shifts that are inevitable with the imposition of an imperial society on/interation with native society, or I suppose in this case, a country formerly influenced by Spanish hegemonic powers. I detected a sense of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled desire in each character and their experience despite the fact that some are able to fulfill their dreams. Pucha achieves her material conquest that comes attached with the status of marrying an Alacran, yet winds up divorcing this dream. Romeo Rosales wants to make it as a famous celebrity, yet it is obvious that that juxtopsed lifestyle, embodied by Lolita Luna, is not satisfying. This sentiment of incompleteness can be physically felt by the reader precisely through the inability to comprehend the full body of the text during its non-English portions.

I want to make a shift here and address Manila as possible protagonist of this novel. The overaching sensation of dissatisfation, I believe, speaks to a foundational problem in Filipino society. I think the author is trying to express something fundamentally wrong with a society forced to change by outside imperial influences.

Someone mentioned in class that Hagedorn’s purpose of Pucha’s letter to Rio, which essentially undermines the truthfulness of Rio’s first person narratives may be to remind her readers that the text is a work of fiction. And in doing so, perhaps implies that rather than the details, what’s important is the experience of each character and the demographic identities each represent. Reminding readers to question the trustability of multiple protagonists, perhaps encourages the reader to focus, not on the historical specifics such as who died and when, which events occurred before/after others, but rather the collective experience, the makeup of the greater society that define Manila. Thus a reminder of falsehood becomes a reflector of a truth when applied to the greater city. Additionally, certain themematic markers remain consistent throughout the novel despite the diversity of its stories. The repetition of themes through the various lives of different characters speak to a description of the city, such as obsession with material and consumption, internalization of racial stratification, american dream, inevitabily of suffering, reinforcement of patriarchical society that tends to mark Asian/Asian America in reaction to hyposexualization of men and hypersexualization of women.

Thoughts?