Senior High School .

CREATIVE NONFICTION
Quarter 1- Module 4
 Analyze and interpret the theme and
techniques used in a particular text
(Part 2)
What I need to know
This learning material was designed to provide meaningful
independent learning experience while the challenges of
classroom face to face instruction exists. Handle this module with
extra care and fulfil the activities the best that you can.

What is in
This Module consists the literary criticism as a tool to
interpret a particular test. It will also test your relationship to the
article as you appreciate and feel the themes in the text itself.
Please devote time in reading and re reading the text.

What is it

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 This selection “Rice” is very relevant specially to us as
Filipinos. Pay attention to the rich details of the text and meaning of
each line. Please read and reread the text

Rice
by Manuel E. Arguilla

Slowly, Pablo unhitched the carabao from the empty sled. He

laid a horny palm on the back of the tired animal; the thick; coarse-
haired skin was warm and dry like sun heated earth. The carabao by
quietly, licking with its dark colored tongue and beads of moisture
that hung on the stiff hairs around its nostrils. Dropping the yoke
inside the sled, Pablo led the beast to a young tamarind tree almost
as high as nipa hut beside it. A bundle of fresh green zacate lay
under the tree and the carabao began to feed upon it hungrily. Pablo
watched the animal a moment, half listening to its snuffling as it
buried its mouth in the sweet-smelling zacate. A sudden weakness
came upon him and black spots whirled before his eyes. He felt so
hungry he could have gone down on his knees beside the carabao
and chewed the grass.
"Eat," he said in a thin, wheezy voice. "You can have all the
grass you want." He slapped the animal's smooth, fat rump, and
turned to the house, his hand falling limpy to his side.
"Sebia," he called, raising his voice until it broke shrilly,
"Sebia!"
No answering voice came from the hut. He bent low to pass
under a length of hard bamboo used as a storm prop, muttering to
himself how careless of his wife it was to leave the house with the
door open. Toward the side where the prop slanted upward against
the eaves, the hunt leaned sharply. The whole frail structure in fact
looked as though it might collapse at any moments. But this year it
has weathered four heavy storms without any greater damage than
the sharp inclined toward the west, and that has been taken care of
by the prop. As he looked at the house, Pablo did not see how
squalid it was. He saw the snapping nipa walls, the shutterless
windows, the rotting floor of the shaky batalan, the roofless shed
over the low ladder,but there were familiar sights that had ceased to
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arouse his interest.
He wiped his muddy feet on the grass that grew knee deep in the
yard. He could hear the sound of pounding in the neighboring hut
and, going to the broken-down fence that separated the two houses,
he called out weakly, "Osiang, do you where my wife and children
have gone?"
"Eh?" What is it Mang Pablo?" The loud voice of a woman
broke out the hut. You are home already? Where are your
companions? Did you see my husband? Did you not come together?
Where is he? Where is the shameless son-of-a-whore?"
"Andres is talking with some of the men at the house. Osiang,
do you know where Sebia and the children are?"
"Why doesn't he come home?" He knows I have been waiting
the whole day for the rice he is bringing home! I am so hungry I
cannot even drag my bones away from stove. What is he doing at
the house of Elis, the shameless, good for nothing son-of-a-whore?
"Pablo moved away from the fence, stumbling a little, for the
long blades of grass got in his way. "There is no rice, Osiang," he
called back wheezily over his shoulder, but evidently the woman did
not hear him, for she went on talking: "Mang Pablo, how many
cavanes of rice did you borrow? Sebia told me you are to cook the
rice as soon as you came home. She went with thechildren to the
creek for snails. I told them to be careful and throw away whatever
they gather if they see a watchman coming. God save our souls!
What kind of life is this when we cannot even get snails from the
fields? Pay a multa of five cavanes for a handful of snails!" Osiang
spat noisily through the slats of her floor. She had not once shown
her face. Pablo could hear her busily pounding in a little stone
mortar.
"There is no rice, Osiang," he whispered. He felt too tired and
weak to raise his voice.
He sat on the ladder and waited for his wife and children. He
removed his rain-stained hat of buri palm leaf, placing it atop one of
the upright pieces of bamboo supporting the steps of the ladder.
Before him, as far as his uncertain gaze could make out, stretched
the rice fields of the Hacienda Consuelo. The afternoon sun brought

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out the gold in the green of the young rice plants. Harvest time was
two months off and in the house of Pablo there was no rice to eat...
That morning he and several other tenants had driven over with their
sleds to the house of the Senora to borrow grain. The sleds had
been loaded with the cavanes of rice. Pablo remembered with what
willingness he had heaved the sacks to his sled-five sacks-the rice
grains bursting through the tiny holes of the juice covers. Then the
announcement:
"Five sacks of rice borrowed today become ten at harvest
time."
"We have always borrowed tersiohan - four cavanes become
six," the man had repeated over and over. Although they used to
find even this arrangement difficult and burdensome, they now
insisted upon it eagerly.
"Tersiohan!" they had begged.
"Not takipan - that is too much. What will be left to us?"
"The storms have destroyed half of my rice plants..."
"I have six children to feed...
"Five becomes ten," the encargado said, "Either that or you
get no rice."
They had gathered around Elis. In the end every man had silently
emptied his loaded sled and prepared to leave.
The senora had come out, her cane beating a rapid tattoo on
the polished floor of the porch; she was an old woman with a chin
that quivered as she spoke to them, lifeless false teeth clenched
tightly in her anger.
"Do you see those trucks?" she had finished, pointing to three
big red trucks under the mango tree in the yard. "If you do not take
the rice today, tonight the trucks will carry every sack in sight to the
city. Then I hope you all starve you ungrateful beasts!"
It was Elis who drove away first. The others followed. The
sacks of rice lay there in the yard in the sun, piled across each
other...
"Mang Pablo," loud voice of Osiang broke again, "are you
cooking rice yet? If you have no fire, come here under the window
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with some dry ice straw and I'll give you two of three coals from my
stove. I am boiling a pinchful of bran. It will do to check my hunger a
bit while I wait for that shameless Andres."
"Wait, Osiang," Pablo said, and finding this mouth had gone
dry, he stepped into the kitchen and from the red clay jar dipped
himself a glass of water. He came down with the sheaf of rice straw
in his fist. Passing the tamarind tree, he pulled down a lomb covered
with new leaves, light green and juicy. He filed his mouth with them
and walked on to Osiang's hut, munching the sourish leaves.
"here I am, Osiang," he said, but he had to strike the wall of
the hut before he could attract the attention of Osiang, who had
gone back to her pounding and could not hear Pablo's weak,
wheezy voice.
She came to the window talking loudly. Her face, when she
looked out, was a dark, earthy brown with high, sharp cheekbones
and small pig-like eyes. She had a wide mouth and large teeth
discolored from smoking tobacco. Short, graying hair fell straight on
either side of her face, escaping from the loose knot she had at the
back of her head. A square necked white cotton dress exposed half
of her flat, bony chest.
"Whoresone!" she exclaimed, as one of the pieces of coal she
was transferring from a coconut shell to the straw in Pablo's hand
rolled away.
Pablo looked up to her and wanted to tell her again that there
was no rice, but he could not bring himself to do it. Osiang went
back to her pounding after all. He spat out the greenish liquid. It
reminded him of crushed caterpillars.
Smoke began to issue forth from the twisted straw in his
hand. He was preparing to climb over the intervening fence when he
saw Andres coming down the path from the direction of Eli's house.
The man appeared excited. He gestured with his arm to Pablo to
wait for him.
Pablo drew back the leg he had over the fence. The smoking
sheaf of straw in his hand, he went slowly to meet Andres. Osiang
was still pounding in her little stone mortar. The sharp thudding of
the stone pestle against the mortar seemed to
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 Pablo unnaturally loud. Anders had stopped beneath the
clump of bamboo some distance from his hut. He stood beside his
carabao - a much younger man than Pablo - dark, broad, squat. He
wrote a printed camisa de chino, threadbare at the neck and
shoulders, the sleeves cut short above the elbows so that his arm
hung out, thick-muscled awkward.
"Are you coming with us?" he asked Pablo, his voice granting
in his throat as he strove a speak quietly. There was in his small
eyes a fierce, desperate look that Pablo found to meet.
"Don't be a fool, Andres," he said, coughing to clear his throat
and trying to appear calm.
Andres breathed hard. He glared at the older man. But Pablo
was looking down at the smoking straw in his hand. He could feel
the heat steadily increasing and he shifted his hold farther from the
burning end. Andres turned to his carabao with a curse. Pablo took a
step forward until he stood close to the younger man. "What can you
do Andres?" he said. "You say you will stop the trucks bearing the
rice to the city. That will be robbery.
"Five cavanes paid back double is robbery too, only the
robbers do not go to jail,"
"Perhaps there will be a killing..."
"We will take that chance."
"You will all be sent to bilibid."
"What will become of the wife and the children behind? Who
will feed them?"
"They are starving right now under our very eyes."
"But you are here with them."
"That is worse."
The smoke from the burning rice straw got into Pablo's mouth
and he was shaken a fit of coughing. "What do you hope to gain by
stealing a truck load of rice?" he asked when he recovered his
breath.
"Food," Andres said tersely.
"Is that all?"

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 "Food for our wives and children. Food for everybody. That is
enough!"
"What will happen if the stolen rice is gone? Will you go on
robbing?"
"It is not stealing. The rice is ours."
The straw in Pablo's hand burst into sudden flame. He threw
it away. It fell in path, the fire dying out as the straw scattered and
burning coals rolled in all directions.
"I must get some rice straws," Pablo said in his thin, wheezy
voice. "Osiang, your wife is waiting for you."
As he turned to leave, Andres whispered hoarsely to him,
"before the moon rises tonight, the first truck will pass around the
bend by the bridge..."
Pablo did not look back. He had seen his wife and three
children approaching the hut from the fields. They were
accompanied by a man. He hurried to meet them. A moment later
the loud voice of Osiang burst out of the hut of Andres, but Pablo
had no ear for other things just then. The man with his wife was the
field watchman.
"They were fishing in the fields," the watchman said stolidly,
He was a thickset, dull-faced fellow clad in khaki shirt and khaki
trousers. "You will pay a fine of five cavanes."
"We are only gathering snails," Sebia protested sobbing. She
was wet. Her skirt clung to her thin legs dripping water and slow
trickle of mud.
"Five cavanes," the watchman said. "I came to tell you so that
you will know--" speaking to Pablo. He turned and strode away.
Pablo watched the broad, khaki covered back of the
watchman. "I suppose he has to earn his rice too," he said in his
wheezy voice, feeling an immense weariness and hopelessness
settle upon him.
He looked at his wife, weeping noisily, and the children streak
with dark-blue mud, the two older boys thin like sticks, and the
youngest a girl of six. Five cavanes of rice for a handful of snails!
How much is five cavanes to five hungry people?
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 "Itay, I'm hungry," Sabel, the girl said. The two boys looked
up at him mutely. They were cold and shivering and full of the
knowledge of what had happened.
"I was just going to get fire from Osiang," Pablo heard himself
say.
"You have not cooked the rice?" Sebia asked, moving wearily
to the ladder.
"There is no rice."
Sebia listened in silence while he told her why there was no
rice.
"Then what were you going to cook with the fire?" she asked
finally.
"I don't know," he was forced to say. "I thought I would wait
for you and the children."
"Where shall we ever get the rice to pay the multa?" Sebia
asked irrelevantly. At their feet the children began to whimper.
"Itay, I'm hungry," Sabel repeated.
Pablo took her up his arms. He carried her to the carabao and
placed her on its broad, warm back. The child stopped whimpering
and began to kick with her legs. The carabao switched its tails, he
struck with its mud-encrusted tip across her face. She covered her
eyes with both hands and burst out crying. Pablo put her down, tried
to pry away her hands from her eyes, but she refused to uncover
them and cried as though in great pain.
"Sebia, Pablo called, and his wife hurried, he picked up a
stout piece of wood lying nearby and began to beat the carabao. He
gripped the piece of wood with both hands and struck the dumb
beast with all his strength. His breath came in gasps. The carabao
wheeled around the tamarind tree until its rope was wound about the
trunk and the animal could not make another turn. It stood there
snorting with pain and fear as the blows of Pablo rained down its
back.
The piece of wood at last broke and Pablo was left with a
short stub in his hands. He gazed at it, sobbing with rage and
weakness, then he ran to the hut, crying. "Give me my bolo, Sebia,
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give me my bolo. We shall have food tonight." But Sebia held him
and would not let him go until he quieted down and sat with back
against the wall of the hut. Sabel had stopped crying. The two boys
sat by the cold stove.
"God save me," Pablo said, brokenly. He brought up his
knees and, dropping his face between them, wept like a child.
Sebia lay down with Sabel and watched Pablo. She followed
his movements wordlessly as he got up and took his bolo from the
wall and belted it around his waist. She did not rise to stop him. She
lay there on the floor and watched his husband put his hat and go
down the low ladder. She listened and learned he had not gone near
the carabao.
Outside, the darkness had thickened. Pablo picked his way
through the tall grass in the yard. He stopped to look back in the
house. In the twilight the hut did not seem to lean so much. He
tightened the belt of the heavy bolo around his waist. Pulling the old
buri hat firmly over his head, he joined Andres, who stood waiting by
the broken down fence. In silence they walked together to the house
of Elis.

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Activity #1: Unlocking of the text:
A. List down unfamiliar words and find their meaning as used in the
selection. (10 or more)
e.g. coarse:______________
B. Answer the following questions
Who is Mang Pablo and Andress? Describe their wives as well.
___________________________________________________________
What is the role of Senora in the Selection?
___________________________________________________________
What do you mean by “tersiohan” and “takipan”? compare them.
___________________________________________________________
What made Sebia cry?
___________________________________________________________

What’s more
Activity #2. Draw a picture. Choose one remarkable scenario or setup
from the selection. Draw the chosen part. Tell something about your
drawing.

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Activity # 3. Critique. Decide an approach (as discussed in Module 2
part 1) to be used for critique of the selection “Rice”. Make a critique of
the selection. Indicate the approach you used. In the end tell the
significant realization or learning you got from the story. Reread the
story if needed.
(about 200 words)
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________

Activity #4. I’m the writer. The story ends this way “In silence they walked
together to the house of Elis.” This ending implies that their plan succeeded.
Now, you have the chance to create an ending of your own. How would
you like it to end. Tell your own ending of the story.

___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________

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References:
Books
Lapid, G.M and Serrano J. B. (2004) English Communication Arts and
Skills Through Filipino Literature. Phoenix Publishing House.
Quezon City.
Rees Cheney ,T. A. (2001), Writing Creative Nonfiction Fiction
Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction .Ten Speed Press.
Berkeley / Toronto

Online source

http://tccnotesphillit.blogspot.com/2007/07/critical-approaches-to-
literature.html (Retrieved last July 3, 2018)

Self Learning Module for

Creative Nonfiction
Writer: RANIEL ERWIN C. PIZAÑA
ABORLAN NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
October 2020

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