Without Seeing the Dawn

It was only a few months ago that I finished reading JaveHana’s now classic novel published in
1947, a year after the inauguration of the Second Philippine Republic. My not having read it all
these years testifies to either an individual failure on my part to seize the opportunity for this
pleasure-charged learning experience (since I actually intended to lecture on Lazaro Francisco’s
novel when I was invited last year), or a failure of the educational-cultural apparatuses to
enlighten Filipinos like me about their society and history—nay, their own identities as Filipinos
—which up to now is in the process of being constructed by the ongoing practices and what
Raymond Williams calls “structures of feelings” of everyday life.

For, indeed, Javellana’s novel is virtually the parabolic rendering in fictional form of about half-
a-century of our existence as a people, but not yet as a nation, as I will argue in a moment. Had
this novel not been reissued by Alemar’s in the ’70s, I would assume—and maybe this is not
altogether a wild surmise—that there is a continuing conspiracy to silence this novel, ignore it,
hide it, suppress and make it a “disappeared’ object or event, not by force of military or legal
censorship, but rather by the mere accumulation of commodities and other cultural goods
produced by print/media industry, not the least of which are those financed by the Toyota
Foundation and assorted Japanese-patronized businesses among which one should not forget the
flourishing hospitality sector in Cebu, Manila, and elsewhere. It seems that we don’t need to read
Renato Constantino to be assured of the persisting success of the Second Japanese invasion of
the Philippines, a fact which makes suspect the collective silence over Javellana’s epic of
Filipino resistance against Japanese barbarism in World War II

Now while all these may signal the need to read, or even re-read this novel, I would be the first
to caution you not to anxiously read it as a simple historical document of the years before and
during the Japanese occupation—goodness knows how many countless M.A. and Ph.D.
dissertations have reduced this work to a guerilla account of dated, antiquarian value and
therefore of no urgent significance to contemporary readers. Of course no one is forbidden to
read it that way, but I suggest that we can more profitably use a strategy of reading the text to
unlock and harness its emancipatory potential in hitherto unsuspected ways, to mobilize its
power of making us critically aware or conscienticized about the network of social relations and
discourses that constitute our identity. The strategy I am proposing derives from the lesson of
structuralist and post-structuralist criticism evoked by the names of such thinkers as Levi-
Strauss, Derrida, Althusser, Lacan, and Foucault, which should be familiar to Filipino scholars,
or at least the more enterprising ones.

I might begin by foregoing any superfluous theoretical review of the principles of post-modern
criticism by quoting a passage in Book One, Chapter 8, since I think it is pedagogically wiser not
to frighten away the audience with French and German terminology. At this point of the
narrative, Carding—our fortuitously named protagonist Ricardo Suerte—has returned to Lucing,
his wife, after attacking the landlord’s son, Luis Castro, whom he has caught while running away
naked from his wife’s embrace. Carding uses force, not language, to “settle our differences,” as
the schoolteacher Manong Marcelo says, and adds: ‘The civilized way … makes men
effeminate.’ Carding himself is satisfied by Lucing’s lie which he wanted to hear, a self-
deception that is also wish-fulfillment. Carding affirms the power of speech 3ver the uselessness
of unarticulated thoughts, a distinction that spells moral and political difference in the novel:
“‘That is all I wish to know,’ [Carding] said. There was happiness in his voice like that of a man
of whose faith has been vindicated by his God” (p. 79). But that night, despite his attempt to
reinstate the comforting routine of the past, the repressed returns. I quote the text of his dream:

That night, sleeping beside his wife, he had a horrible nightmare. He dreamed that he was
plowing the riceland when he felt an earthquake so violent that even the sturdy Bag-o stumbled
and he himself fell forward upon his plow, and when he turned his head he saw Don Diego
rolling up the land from under his feet just as if it were a piece of paper. When he had finished
rolling up the land the rich man stuffed it into his pocket and walked away. Tlen, with the
startling reality of dreams, he dreamed that he was being arrested by two policemen in khaki
uniforms, and when he tried to struggle, the policemen merely laughed at him because he was so
thin and weak, as though there were a famine in the land and he had not eaten for a week. He
asked them why they were arresting him and they replied, “Don’t you know? Because you have
killed Luis Castro.” He was about to go peacefully with the policemen but he heard somebody
shouting for help and he saw his wife, who was as thin as he, crying because she could not get
away from the embrace of a naked man who was trying to abuse her, and the man had the face of
Luis Castro who the policemen said was dead. (p. 80)1

Here is the rebus of Carding’s psyche, as well as those of millions in his position. If we read this
text of the dream-work via a psychoanalytic hermeneutic as an elaborate allegory of a collective
wish-fulfillment, we can see the operation of two modes by which the unconscious (as well as
the narrative apparatus) produces the text, and these are none other than those of metonymy and
metaphor. The first part of the dream-work expresses the pattern of metonymic linkage by
proximity: land, plow and work-animal are all conflated with the owner whose property-right is
vested in a torrens title, a piece of paper which is substituted for the means of production. By a
metaphoric twist, the land-paper equation shifts to land-money which the owner can stuff in his
pocket: a portable commodity. Here, I would propose, is the symbolic reading of the vast
economic and political changes occurring in the first 40 years of our history encapsulated in the
ongoing conversion of land from use-value to exchange-value. I am thinking here of the
phenomenon of landlord absenteeism (exemplified in Chapter IX, “The Letter,” an apt rubric)
together with share-tenancy. These realities should be familiar to all Filipinos, especially in the
light of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Plan (CARP) and controversies surrounding all
government attempts at land reform since President Manuel L. Quezon’s time.

What I would emphasize here is the power of the landlord as invested not so much in the
inherited title to the land as in the right/power to convert his ownership of the means of
production to cash, or money, an abstract right to wrest and dispose of the surplus-value (unpaid
labor) of the peasant tiller, for his own use, chiefly for preserving his political ascendancy. We
can connect this with the disclosure of a cultural-moral truth which eludes the censor, the
Cartesian ego of the narrative, and which transpires here in the metaphoric displacement of the
earthquake by the landlord’s presence or advent. Note that the force of the earthquake shakes
man and animal down; supine, Carding witnesses Don Diego’s gesture of snatching away his
land, clearly a foreshadowing of the next episode. The moment of discovery “when he turned his
head,” however, doesn’t trigger a shock of recognition—in a dream, we know that everything
appears natural and moral, precisely what the concept of “ideology” signifies in that ideology is a
psychic and social practice in which all contradictions are smoothed and hidden, or reconciled by
mechanisms of displacement and substitution—such modes of normalizing and naturalizing are
what we are describing here.

Now consider here how the earthquake, a natural event, is displaced by the sudden intrusion of
the landlord so that what is natural becomes a catastrophe: the producer’s deprivation of his
means of production, his livelihood. This process of condensation reveals the nature of the
peasant mentality, an entire world-view and lifestyle which explains the persisting hegemonic
rule of the landlords. By “hegemonic rule” I mean (in Gramsci’s sense) domination by the active,
willing consent of the subaltern groups, not by coercion. As for the peasant problematic of life, I
am referring to the system of beliefs and feelings and practices, a heterogeneous mixture of
various contradictory elements, that conceive of private ownership of land (arable or agricultural
land) as natural, legitimate, sacred, and therefore unquestionable and unalterable. As long as this
belief and assumption prevails, as it does today in general, any attempt at agrarian reform by
reformist law is doomed without an accompanying radical transformation of consciousness and
practices. Thus, my reading of the double processes of metonymy (displacement) and metaphor
(condensation) as constitutive of a structure which provides social-cultural identity to the
dreamer, to characters in the narrative, is intended to unfold the class code or discourse
structuring the text. This class code or discourse manifests itself not directly but always and
chiefly in combination with another code or discourse, that of gender, and much more obliquely,
that of race.

Pursuing our hermeneutic labor of deciphering the dream-work, we encounter the next sequence
which foregrounds power relations. Carding is being arrested by two policemen in khaki
uniforms. Obviously the police represent the law, the coercive agency of the status quo in favor
of landlords, and by extension the military (civilians, like Carding, recruited to defend the
existing order against alien invaders). The subject is now twice reduced to an object, first by the
landlord and here by the representatives of the state. Where earlier Carding was plowing the
land, here he has become “thin and weak,” the effect of alienated labor and dispossession. The
earthquake-landlord metaphor is subsequently displaced by the two personifications of
patriarchal law whose laughter mocks the pathetic and feeble resistance of the peasant’s body.
Note the explanation for his weakness: by metonymic conjunction, his hunger is not just an
individual hardship but an index of the general scarcity afflicting the community. Here we
confront a premonition of that other “natural” catastrophe, the flood of Chapter XVIII which
wreaks havoc on whole towns, a “natural” event that acquires meaning as a disaster of the social
system—insofar as it attests to the inadequacy, or indifference, of the government of the elite to
protect all citizens. The famine can be tied to Don Diego’s confiscation of land; but now he has
been displaced by his son, the mythical Prince Charming of Lucing, whose death is attributed to
Carding. The discourse of this dream then identifies Carding as killer/destroyer, but what is the
motive given? We are told that Carding is about to submit “peacefully” but something interrupts:
his wife’s shouting. Carding notes, first, that she is also thin, a mark of the solidarity of peasant-
victims; and, second, she is trapped by “the embrace of a naked man” abusing her, his body
bearing the face of Luis Castro, who, though dead, is still very much alive. Now here is a rich
and manifold complex of numerous connotations which condenses the thematic issues of the
novel. Suffice it here for me to point to only one thread: the ambiguous figure of the landlord’s
son, who, though claimed by the authorities to be dead, still exercises a malevolent force—a
power of appropriating the wife of the tenant (the wife is a metonymic extension of the husband).
Part of the dreamer’s psychic energy supports this seduction, the other part undermines it.

In this scene of seduction or near-rape, if you want, it appears that the sanctity of the private
sphere of home/family is not spared by the landlord’s greed or lust. Economic wealth translates
into sexual power. But interwoven with this is the peasant’s desire to destroy the absentee
proprietor of land/body in his accepting the accusation; and second, the capacity of landlord
power to return from the dead—a foreshadowing of the agrarian unrest (the Huk uprising) that
surrounds the composition of this novel and contextualizes it. So we behold the ghost of the past
(the dead landlord’s son) return to rape Lucing (the body)—a metaphoric displacement of land—
even as we recall that in the preceding chapter we saw Lucing surrendering, yielding herself to a
promise of bliss and liberation from her plight. But in this dream she is resisting, an example of
metonymy evolving into metaphor, giving the illusion of resolving tensions. The wife’s
resistance expresses the husband’s revolt against a condition of rape. What cuts off this play of
the unconscious, the fulfillment of submerged impulses and wishes prohibited in waking life,
namely the wife’s intervention, may be taken as an emblematic figure of what will interrupt the
male fantasy, the patriarchal fantasy of conquest and self-validating possession, as evidenced in
Carding’s refusal to live permanently with Rosing the prostitute, and his attempt to strangle the
“third son” in opposition to Lucing’s will to assert her own reproductive right even in a context
of war where brute force prevails. Just like the first son, the third embodies the stillborn hopes
for emancipation from social necessity.

Before this episode where husband and wife are reunited, the narrative unfolded scenes and
events where sexuality and gender relations were established within a patriarchal system of
power, a system where class contradictions were muted or inflected until the Guest, Luis Castro,
entered the scene. In this milieu, sexuality obeys customary and traditional rituals: courtship,
marriage ceremonies, etc. The law of the peasant patriarch, which is effectively limited by the
precariousness of his livelihood, is soon undermined by, first, Carding’s individualistic defiance
of custom in building his house at the wrong time; and second, the stillborn monkey-child
considered as punishment for the first; and third, the usurpation of Carding’s dominance at home
by the Guest. All these up to Chapter IX, “The Letter,” demonstrate the futility of a decent
humane existence in the semi-feudal set-up of the Philippine countryside during the
Commonwealth period, the virtual emasculation of the male peasant by class subordination, and
the oppression of women by male supremacy and landlord privilege.

POST COLONIALISM

EXAMPLE OF LITERARY PIECE:

WITHOUT SEEING THE DAWN

The novel "Without Seeing the Dawn" first published in 1947, is set in a small farming
village called Manhayang, Sta. Barbara, somewhere in Negros. Like most rural
baranggays, the hardworking and closely-knit village folk there had simple needs,
simple wants, and simple dreams. They were living their own simple lives when the
violence of war reached their place and brought death to their village, their homes and
their hearts.
Here revolves the story of one Ricardo Suerte, also called Carding, son of Juan Suerte.
An industrious, strong and sometimes quick-tempered young man, he aspired to marry
sweet Lucia, the daughter of the teniente del barrio. Though his father thought he was
not yet prepared and had wished to send him to school, he gave his blessing to the
decision of his son. He consented to asking Lucia's hand from her parents in the
traditional pamamanhikan, accompanied by the village's best orator and the godmother
of the lass. After agreeing to the conditions of the village chief, the marriage was set.
Tatay Juan gathered up almost all of his hard-earned savings for the dowry and
expenses for the wedding feast. Meantime, Carding excitedly built their house despite
the advice of the elderly- that building one's house in May will bring misfortune to its
inhabitants.

And so it came to pass that after the grand wedding and the feast that followed- which
was even attended by their representate- the newlyweds lived happily on the land
entrusted to Tatay Juan by Don Diego, but not ever after. Misfortune struck early when
their first child was stillborn. A more difficult trial came when Lucing disgraced herself,
her family and her husband by the temptation of a houseguest-Luis, the son of their
landlord. Caught naked, he was beaten up by the strong, angry husband whose honor
and pride were hurt. The couple patched things up, but the land that Carding and Juan
Suerte had been tilling for a very long time was given to another tenant.

With no land to till, the pair tried their luck in the city. There, in Iloilo, Carding met
Rosing and Nestong. The latter was his fellow stevedore and union member, and the
former, a prostitute besotted with him, and also the reason why his wife left him and
returned to their barrio. Soon, Carding followed Lucing with news that the
representante entrusted them with land to till in Badlan. Lucing too, had news for her
husband: she was again pregnant.

They moved to Badlan and worked harder than ever. They were blessed not only by a
promise of a bountiful harvest, but also with a healthy son they named Crisostomo.
Sadly, their landlord sold the land, and they were given time to harvest what they sowed.
Misfortune was like a shadow though. A great flood destroyed everything that they had-
harvest and carabao as well.

Wanting to own their own piece of land, they were convinced to move to Mindanao, but
Carding was drafted for military service. When he returned, he was delighted to find his
wife heavy with another child. Misfortune welcomed him again as he was told that Tatay
Juan and Crisostomo died of some illness. Little did he know that the Japanese soldiers
who attacked their village killed his father and son and raped his wife. When he found
out the truth, he became like a fearsome madman that even his wife and mother-in-law
thought him to be bad. As his neighbors, relatives and friends in barrio Manhayang were
tortured, raped and massacred by the Japanese soldiers, Carding too became a
seemingly heartless executioner to his enemies, and not even his friend nor the brother
of his mother-in-law were spared. He also almost killed the child that his wife had just
delivered, were it not born dead. For that, Lucing was so enraged that she sent him away
and wished him dead.
The Japanese ordered everyone to enter a collective barrio or else be considered
guerrilla supporters and be shot. But the villagers of Manhayang also refused to be
considered enemies of their own sons, and so they decided to evacuate in barrios farther
away. However, Lucing was hesitant to go. She was waiting to see her husband despite
everything, knowing that he will be leading the suicide attack to the Japanese garrison.
When they did see each other, Carding asked for her forgiveness and left her what cash
he had as he bade her farewell. In the end, Lucing refused to flee for she knew that she
was still his wife, duty-bound to receive the corpse of her beloved husband.

CRITIC:
Stevan Javellana’s Without Seeing the Dawn was all about the village and the man who
lived on the farm but became a rebel when one of the land owners betrayed the farmers.
He tried the life on the city, but it was never easy for them.
As we go through the summary of the novel, one is able to see how Stevan Javellana
portrays the society of the Philippines many decades ago. Those periods were both
before and during the war. We all know that the Japanese occupation of the Philippines
remains as one of the darkest times in our history.
If we analyze the characters in this novel, one can see that most of them belong to the
lower class, particularly the working class and the peasantry and their experiences
definitely corresponds to the everyday realities of Filipino lower class life. For example,
Javellana skillfully portrays the oppression suffered by the Filipino peasants through the
characters of Tatay Juan and his son, Carding. As poor peasants, Tatay Juan and his
family own a piece of land but this is utterly negligible as they depend for their
livelihood mainly on their tenant status They generally have insufficient funds for both
their daily living and agricultural expenses and often use their crop to guarantee debts
from the landlords and money lenders. Another financial hardship is seen in Tatay
Juan’s initial reluctance to agree to Carding’s early wedding to Lucing, not only because
of Carding’s education but also because the wedding expenses were usually shouldered
by the groom’s family. Carding’s despair after the flood that destroyed his crops in
Badlan also reflects the peasant’s dependence upon the land for survival. The characters’
belief in luck and superstition reveals the backward nature of our educational system,
where the majority of the population did not have proper education that they led them
into thinking that the oppression that they are suffering are due to the bad luck.