When He Walks Into The Room (1969)

Gloria Garchitorena Goloy

When he walks into the room

the corners of my eyes feed
upon the edges of his image.
The printed page
is orphaned and stranger breed
a riot in my mind.
Then he walks out. And my doom
begins to grow with speed
of his departure. The mark of age
spreads upon my visage.
There is nothing more to read.
My soul is blind.

About the author

She graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a degree in journalism, cum laude in
1950. During her college days, she worked at UST’s Varsitarian with F. Sionil Jose as the editor-
in-chief, from 1948-1949. She has been widowed since 1963, lost her father in 1978, her mother
in 1981, her sister in 1988, and eventually her epileptic son in 2001 and only her three daughters
remained with her.

About the poem

Structure:
Basically a free verse type of a poem because it has no regular rhyme, no
regularity in line length, and no regular rhyme and stanza.

Figures of speech used:

1. “The printed page is orphaned and stranger breed” - personification
2. “My soul is blind.“ – hyperbole

3. At first, the persona felt teary, then she felt unease, until she completely lost hope. –
climactic poem

Persona: hopeless person

Connotation:
When the persona sees the man walks into the room, she felt emotional, as if the man’s facial
expression delivers bad news to her. Perhaps the printed paper that the man was holding
contained unfortunate information. The poem did not focus on whatever’s on the printed page
because perhaps it’s written in a particular form not for layman. But rather, the poem described
what the persona felt on that printed paper: anxious. She immediately felt tragic when the man
left the room, perhaps because his departure without any word already says everything that is
written on the printed page. And that realization drained her soul.

Summary of New Yorker in Tondo

 NEW YORKER IN TONDO

By: Marcelino Agana, Jr.

          New Yorker in Tondo is a story of a girl named Kikay who went to New York to study
Hair Culture and Beauty Science. Upon going home after a year, she acquires all the New
Yorkish things like style, language, looks and manner. She even influenced her mother with her
way of living.
          One day, Tony visited her for he heard that Kikay has already arrived. Tony was Kikay’s
sweetheart and they got secretly engaged before Kikay left. While waiting for Kikay to wake up,
Totoy and Nena also came. Totoy and Nena were also Kikay’s and Tony’s childhood friend.   
   
Upon waking up, Kikay immediately entertained her friends. They are all shock of what they’ve
seen. Kikay was transformed into a different girl. She doesn’t want to be called as Kikay instead
she wants everybody to call her Francesca. She tells them everything she experienced in New
York and she even keep on comparing New York from Tondo. 

          When Kikay and Tony had the chance to be alone, Tony was trying to open the issue of
them being engaged before she left. But Kikay didn’t want to listen; instead she keeps on
ignoring Tony and even told him that being engaged to him is just a childish act. She even
degraded Tony by telling him, “Imagine a New Yorker marrying a Tondo boy!” Tony gets
irritated of what Kikay acted, so he confronts her, reprimands her and tell her that New York
didn’t bring her any good.

          Kikay realizes everything that Tony said. She asks for forgiveness and promises him that
she will go back to her original self. She even said that Francesca is dead and who’s standing in
front of him is Kikay. Tony forgave her and they went back to each other’s arms.

As Don Badoy Montiya comes home to his old home at Intramuros, Manila late at night he finds
his grandson chanting an old spell orayt in front of a mirror, memories of his youth came back.
He recalled how he fell in love with Agueda, a young woman who resisted his advances. Agueda
learned that she would be able to know her future husband by reciting an incantation in front of a
mirror. As she recited the words: “Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be,”
Agueda saw Badoy. Badoy and Agueda got married. However, Don Badoy learned from his
grandson that he was described by Doña Agueda (through their daughter) as a "devil". In return,
Don Badoy told his grandson that every time he looks at the mirror, he only sees a "witch"
(Agueda). Don Badoy ponders on love that had dissipated.[5] The truth was revealed, Badoy and
Agueda had a “bitter marriage”, which began in the past, during one evening in the month of
May in 1847. The tragedy of the story is Badoy’s heart forgot how he loved Agueda in the past.
They were not able to mend their broken marriage because their love was a “raging passion and
nothing more”.[

THEME:

Life is always full of regret, for we always realize what we have when it is gone.
Love was blinded and it turned into hatred
Love cannot be based on passion alone.
CONFLICT:
External conflict, Man vs. Man.

We can see that Agueda and Badoy after having a bad married life with each other, used to regret
the past that they’ve been together and it is revealed with their hatred for each other and how
Agueda used to describe the devil to her granddaughter as if it was Badoy and same way as
Badoy describing the witch in the mirror to his grandson as if it was Agueda.

LITERARY MOVEMENT:

GOTHIC FICTION with REALISM

The story happened in the year of 1847 and it has a little blend of horror and fiction because of
the superstitious belief of fortune telling as well as the devil and witch that will come out in the
mirror if everything in the ritual will go wrong.

ANALYSIS:

Agueda and Badoy’s bitter marriage all began on that May night. Agueda and Badoy are two,
completely different people. Agueda is a girl ahead of her time. She is bold and liberated unlike
most girls her age. She stands out from the broad range of followers of her era. The tragedy is
when Badoy’s heart forgets how much he felt for Agueda. The tragedy is how both were not
careful enough to mend their drifting marriage. Both Badoy and Agueda perceived their marriage
to be a taste of hell. Instead of admitting that they saw their spouses in the mirror, they claimed
that it was the witch/devil they saw for that was probably how each of them was to each other
during their life together. Their contrasting attributes perhaps were what brought them together.
But it could also have been the root of the bitterness that concluded their time together. Badoy
harked back to the time ´of the girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day
midnight, long, long ago and refreshed his memory of how she had bitten his hand and fled
which surprised his heart in the instant of falling in love with Agueda. But it has been a while
and time has healed the wounds of their relationship. The old love that was blinded by hatred
which brought pain has now resurfaced. The tragedy is that it is too late. It is good that Badoy
can live in the sweet past he and Agueda had but it is sad that Agueda never found out how much
she really meant to Badoy all this time. She died not knowing that what she and Badoy had was
real. The love didn’t go away. It was just covered up in the dust of time.

GENERALIZATION:

Life is always full of regret, for we always realize what we have when it is gone. For Badoy and
Agueda Montiya, they both lived and loved with hate, resentment, regret, but as the story ends,
Badoy realized how he wasted his time with Agueda, how he could have loved her, so much
more than he did. He realized that he became the devil in Agueda’s life, as she became the witch
in his life as well. In the end, they both blamed the superstition of May Day Eve.
We must not put our lives in the conviction of fortune tellers and superstitious beliefs because I
believe that half of our fate depends on how we do things and how we value them. Because some
beliefs are not been proven and it may lead our lives into something that we are not supposed to
be in.
Fate is defined in the dictionary as an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end.
The story is set under the assumption that the main characters in the story both believe in
superstition, as well as fate. They believed that for they saw each other in the mirror that fated
night, which they are bound to be with each other.
They chose to see the worst, but in the end, it can be seen that they were in love. The worst in
each other only came out when they chose to see it that way, because we all know that happiness
comes out whenever we choose to be happy.