The Mats by Francisco Arcellana Point of View Essay Example

Do you think I had forgotten them? Do you think I could forget them? ” (4), and calls the names of the dead children after hearing his wife saying, “You know, Jaime, you didn’t have to” (4).

In this dialogue, readers know that he was so emotional that the issue must not be talked about. Here, also, readers could find the theme of the story: “No matter how painful it is, we should not forget the people who passed away because they had been a part of our lives, and we should respect them by commemorating them. ” The story reveals a lot of important things through this single dialogue between the two characters. In addition to the dialogues, Arcellana also uses the mats to illustrate further the emotions or the states of the characters.

As we can see in the text, the way the author described the mats was so detailed as if he was describing the owner of a particular mat. In the case of Nana Emilia’s mat, “The letters were large, done in green. Flowers—cadena-de-amor—were woven in and out among the letters. The border was long winding twig of cadena-de-amor” (3). This allows the readers to imagine how beautiful her mat was. It represents her happiness and how special she was to Mr. Angeles. It wasn’t only her mat which was beautiful, but so as the children’s, which had different colors and unique symbols which represented each one of them.

On the other hand, the 3 dead kids’ mats were not beautiful or unique at all. In this way, the mats symbolize their current states. The siblings who are

alive received colorful mats which represent their happy existence whereas the dead siblings received not that colorful mats which represents their deaths. In contrary to all of these, Mr. Angeles’ mat was neither unique nor simple. This represents his state of staying somewhere between happy and sad, because he is happy for his alive kids while sad for his dead kids.

Arcellana also employs the third person point of view as a method of revealing the conflict and the sudden change of mood. Everything seems okay and peaceful for the family until the point where Nana notices 3 remaining mats to unfold which the readers already know that these belong to the 3 dead kids. “Only Mr. Angeles seemed to have heard Nana Emilia’s words. He suddenly stopped talking, as if he had been jerked away from a pleasant fantasy and when he spoke his voice was different” (4).

Here, the readers can notice that it is the conflict of the story wherein Mr. Angeles has to decide whether to open up the topic about the 3 kids or not. Readers can also notice a sudden change of mood from happy to being serious. Like this, conflict happens all of a sudden which we can’t notice in our actual lives. That is why the author used the third person point of view to help the readers imagine more clearly the mood, emotion, behavior, and everything that happens to the character/s at that particular moment.

Because of Arcellana’s use of dialogues, the detailed description of mats and the use of the third person point of view, he provides the readers a more thrilling

way of knowing the characters one by one throughout the whole story. By not stating the descriptions of the characters ahead, the readers become more curious and pay more attention to the narrations and dialogues. In this way, he offers the readers a more creative and exciting way of discovering the characters together with the theme and plot of the story.