The novel "Killing Time on Warm Places" by Noel Ilustre Bulaong follows the main character Noel through four phases of his life. As a child in a quiet province, Noel lives innocently until encountering Ferdinand Marcos. In university, Noel loses innocence while struggling against Marcos's tyranny as an activist. The novel describes activist life under Martial Law and Noel's imprisonment as a political detainee. As an adult, Noel incorporates into the system he once fought, feeling lost, but finds the struggle remains in his heart.
The novel "Killing Time on Warm Places" by Noel Ilustre Bulaong follows the main character Noel through four phases of his life. As a child in a quiet province, Noel lives innocently until encountering Ferdinand Marcos. In university, Noel loses innocence while struggling against Marcos's tyranny as an activist. The novel describes activist life under Martial Law and Noel's imprisonment as a political detainee. As an adult, Noel incorporates into the system he once fought, feeling lost, but finds the struggle remains in his heart.
The novel "Killing Time on Warm Places" by Noel Ilustre Bulaong follows the main character Noel through four phases of his life. As a child in a quiet province, Noel lives innocently until encountering Ferdinand Marcos. In university, Noel loses innocence while struggling against Marcos's tyranny as an activist. The novel describes activist life under Martial Law and Noel's imprisonment as a political detainee. As an adult, Noel incorporates into the system he once fought, feeling lost, but finds the struggle remains in his heart.
The novel "Killing Time on Warm Places" by Noel Ilustre Bulaong follows the main character Noel through four phases of his life. As a child in a quiet province, Noel lives innocently until encountering Ferdinand Marcos. In university, Noel loses innocence while struggling against Marcos's tyranny as an activist. The novel describes activist life under Martial Law and Noel's imprisonment as a political detainee. As an adult, Noel incorporates into the system he once fought, feeling lost, but finds the struggle remains in his heart.
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 1
REFLECTIONS ON THE NOVEL
KILLING TIME ON WARM PLACES
BY NOEL ILUSTRE BULAONG The novel has four parts which coincide with the four phases in the life of a man. The main character is Noel Ilustre Bulaong, a Visayan. The first part of the novel is dominated by images of his childhood in the quiet and simple province. The sense of innocence and simple happiness with being in tune with the rest of the world is prevalent until Noel's first encounter with the stillon-the-rise Ferdinand Marcos. The second part of the novel moves to adolescence and being a student in the university. At this point, Noel loses the sense of order and innocence as he and his comrade-activists struggle against the tyranny and cruelty of the already-President Ferdinand Marcos. This section paints a picture of how activist life was during Martial Law, describing the practices and routines--like secret huddles and singing of revolutionary songs with professors-- and the landscape of UP that sheltered activists and served as stage for the Diliman Commune. Noel, as he reminisces those times, reveals the future of his comrades as white-collar employees--a contrast to their fiery young selves. Noel proceeds to tell the story of his imprisonment as a political detainee. The predominant image that follows is Noel as an adult already incorporated into the capitalist-bureaucratic system he once fought. It is the sense of being lost to the cause after giving up his activism for a comfortable, ordinary life. At the end, however, Noel finds that in his heart, the struggle remains. In these events written in the book I felt the struggle of Noel when he was still young on what he was fighting for, his beliefs and dreams. There was a part wherein it was said that Prison was frightening, but freedom even more so. Prison could be a warm and restful place, and all you had to do in it was to kill some time. This explains the title that when he was still young he was free to express himself of his beliefs and as he grows older he laid low and exchanges his life before to a simple and peaceful life.