Five brothers,One mother

 Essense of home

In this story, the writer exhibited the experience of being an outsider by moving from one culture to another. The story is all about family and home.

A mother will do all these things with absolute love, that she can leave all her personal needs behind so their children can have entirely they need. She will not sleep, eat and even wait you until you arrived home and know you’re safe and sound.

BACKGROUND

Authorial information:

Exie Abola

Bicol Region (Region V), Albay

Teacher at the English Department at the English Department of Ateneo Manila University Master Degree in English Study

Has 2 Palanca Awards (Short Story in English 2000 and a NVM Gonzales Award)

Best Short Story of the Year 2000

Ateneo authors Exie Abola and or Maria Llaneza Ramos both received Gintong Aklat Awards during the Manila

Textual information:

Exie abola published the literary text of Five Brothers, One Mother on year 2004  

           COPY OF THE LITERARY TEXT

Five Brothers, One Mother 

 Taurus St., Cinco Hermanos, Marikina

The Marikina house wasn’t finished yet, but with an ultimatum hanging over our heads, we had no choice but to move in. Just how unfinished the house became bruisingly clear on our first night. There was no electricity yet, and the windows didn’t have screens. There were mosquitoes. I couldn’t sleep the whole night. My sister slept on a cot out in the upstairs hall instead of her room downstairs, maybe because it was cooler here. Every so often she would toss and turn, waving bugs away with half-asleep hands. I sat beside her and fanned her. She had work the next day. In the morning someone went out and bought boxes and boxes of Katol.

Work on the house would continue, but it remains unfinished eight years later. All the interiors, after a few years of intermittent work, are done. But the exterior remains unpainted, still the same cement gray as the day we moved in, though grimier now. Marikina’s factories aren’t too far away. The garden remains ungreened; earth, stones, weeds, and leaves are where I suppose bermuda grass will be put down someday.

In my eyes the Marikina house is an attempt to return to the successful Greenmeadows plan, but with more modest means at one’s disposal. The living room of the Cinco Hermanos house features much of the same furniture, a similar look. The sofa and wing chairs seem at ease again. My mother’s growing collection of angel figurines is the new twist. But there is less space in this room, as in most of the rooms in the Marikina house, since it is a smaller house on a smaller lot.

The kitchen is carefully planned, as was the earlier one, the cooking and eating areas clearly demarcated. There is again a formal dining room, and the new one seems to have been designed for the long narra dining table, a lovely Designs Ligna item, perhaps the one most beautiful piece of furniture we have, bought on the cheap from relatives leaving the country in a hurry when we still were on Heron Street.

Upstairs are the boys’ rooms. The beds were the ones custom-made for the Greenmeadows house, the same ones we’d slept in since then. It was a loft or an attic, my mother insisted, which is why the stairs had such narrow steps. But this "attic," curiously enough, had two big bedrooms as well as a wide hall. To those of us who actually inhabited these rooms, the curiosity was an annoyance. There was no bathroom, so if you had to go to the toilet in the middle of the night you had to go down the stairs and come back up again, by which time you were at least half awake.

Perhaps there was no difference between the two houses more basic, and more dramatic, than their location. This part of Marikina is not quite the same as the swanky part of Ortigas we inhabited for five years. Cinco Hermanos is split by a road, cutting it into two phases, that leads on one end to Major Santos Dizon, which connects Marcos Highway with Katipunan Avenue. The other end of the road stops at Olandes, a dense community of pedicabs, narrow streets, and poverty. The noise – from the tricycles, the chattering on the street, the trucks hurtling down Marcos Highway in the distance, the blaring of the loudspeaker at our street corner put there by eager-beaver baranggay officials – dispels any illusions one might harbor of having returned to a state of bliss.

                                                                             * * *

The first floor is designed to create a clear separation between the family and guest areas, so one can entertain outsiders without disturbing the house’s inhabitants. This principle owes probably more to my mother than my father. After all, she is the entertainer, the host. The living room, patio, and dining room – the places where guests might be entertained – must be clean and neat, things in their places. She keeps the kitchen achingly well-organized, which is why there are lots of cabinets and a deep cupboard.

And she put them to good use. According to Titus, the fourth, who accompanied her recently while grocery shopping, she buys groceries as if all of us still lived there. I don’t recall the cupboard ever being empty.

That became her way of mothering. As we grew older and drifted farther and farther away from her grasp, defining our own lives outside of the house, my mother must have felt that she was losing us to friends, jobs, loves – forces beyond her control. Perhaps she figured that food, and a clean place to stay, was what we still needed from her. So over the last ten years or so she has become more involved in her cooking, more attentive, better. She also became fussier about meals, asking if you’ll be there for lunch or dinner so she knows how much to cook, reprimanding the one who didn’t call to say he wasn’t coming home for dinner after all, or the person who brought guests home without warning. There was more to it than just knowing how much rice to cook.

I know it gives her joy to have relatives

ANALYSIS

Literary Genre

Fiction

The story is a type of fiction because it is not real and therefore, authors can use complex figurative language to touch readers’ imaginations.

The story is all about the family and home. The story about the Five Brothers, One Mother the Marikina house wasn’t finished yet, but with ultimatum hanging over our heads, we had no choice but to move in and there house there was no electricity and together with there mother they leave happily.

Analysis Guides

Reader Response

After reading the story, for me as a family-oriented person. I really love this story because it opens our mind that we should value and love our family because they're the one who's always there for us in good times or in bad. Never forget to prioritize them, never ignore them, and never disobey them because they always know whats best for us.

Plot and Structure

The plot of the story are Man vs Nature because they cant sleep without electricity and it the mosquito was biting them. And also Man vs Self because their mother start to gey lonely as they grow up. The solution of the conflict is after a couple years their house was furnished but not fully furnished, because it doesn't have paint yet. And the mother used her boredom in house organizing and buying some stuff.

Setting

This part of Marikina is not quite the swanky part of Ortigas we inhabited for five years. Cinco Hermanos ia split by a road cutting into two phases, that leads on one end to Major Santos Dizon, which connect Marcos Highway with Katipunan Avenue.

Tone

Exie Abola, in Five Brothers, One Mother ,unfolds his personality through the tone he adopts throughout the novel. Exie Abola is bitterly sarcastic as he criticizes the nature of things in real life. His character may reveal the attitude of the writer towards life, as it is common for writers to use their characters as their mouthpieces.

Character

The character of the story are the Sister, Five Brothers, Father, Mother, Titus Fourth.

Point of View

The point of view used in the story is the first person, because the writer use the word "our" and "we" in the first paragraph of the story,the writer's name is exie abola, he also became part of the story because he expressed his feelings in other way.

Diction and Style

      Informal diction. Informal diction is more conversational and often used in narrative literature. This casual vernacular is representative of how people communicate in real life, which gives an author freedom to depict more realistic characters. Most short stories and novels use informal diction.Images and Symbols

Although roses are typically considered to represent more romantic feelings of love, they can also representative of motherly love.Flowers like rose are general symbol of a mother's undying love and devotion to her family.In literature , roses often symbolize love and beauty; therefore, they also represent ladies.  Roses have thorns which represent the pain or hurt hidden in the beauty, as in" love hurts.

Theme

          The theme in the story are Mother's Love because mother's known best and one day if she's no longer doing that well going to miss her.And prioritize them because never ignore and never disobey them because they always known best for us

Contextual Analysis

Biographical Context 

The inspiration of the author upon writing this literature is, it is not about the house or permanent house, it is about psychological experience of the author. And I think that Exie Abola did a great job by sharing its own experience through writing an essay and share it to the readers what is the true essence of home with family.

SUMMARY

The mother of the author fears and has become anxious about her children growing up. It was described as an exodus when they start leaving. The mother tries to maintain the home through her cooking which she believes holds everyone together.

REFERENCES

This is the sources from where we have taken the information that we included here in our paper.

Book/s

AUTHOR/S

TITLE OF THE BOOK/WEBSITE

TITLE OF THE ARTICLE/TEXT

PUBLISHER & PLACE OF PUBLICATION

WEBSITE LINK

1

Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Heights Campu

2006-2012

Abola, Alexis Augusto L./ Ateneo de Manila University

Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108, Philippines

Abola, Alexis Augusto L.

2

Nelson Versoza 

2017

Blogspot Five Brothers,One Mother By Exie Abola 

 Cauayan Isabel

 Five Brothers, One Mother

3

Nelson Versoza 

2020

Five Brothers, One Mother by Exie Abola ----- Many Mansions

 Cauayan Isabel

 Five Brothers, One Mother by EXIE ABOLA -----Many Mansions

4

Galgo Loraine

2018

Antipolo City, Philippines

Five Brothers, One Mother