Philippine E-Journals

The Myth and the Matrix in Bienvenido n. Santos' "Scent of Apples": Searching for Harmony Among Incongruities

Ma. Stella S. Valdez

Discipline: Literature

 

Abstract:

The text in Bienvenido N. Santos' Scent of Apples abounds with echoes of dissonance. The encounter between a young man and Celestino Fabia unfurls a rich tapestry of human frailty and the sublime, of the unconscious and conscious, of the hidden and the revealed. Between the young man and Celestino Fabia is a dichotomy and a testament of non-reciprocation made stirring and vibrant by the subverted core of the text. There is the surface and the essence, the ripple and the undercurrent, depending on the guises assumed by the young man as he weaves and creates the mythic Fabia. As in most texts there is the melody and the undertone, the two voices of one consuming pain.