In my other class, Ethnic Literature we are currently reading Filipino Stories – Scent of Apples by Bienvenido N. Santos.
The story is about a Filipino speaker who travels as a guest speaker during the war, and a farmer who comes to one of his talks just to hear him speak. The farmer himself is Filipino and has traveled miles just to see this other Filipino because he has not met another Filipino in 20 years. He invites the guest speaker over to his home for dinner so that he can meet his wife and son. There aren’t too many things that happen in this story just by reading it, to sum things up: farmer goes to hear Filipino speaker talk, invites him over to dinner, Filipino speaker accepts, meets the family has dinner and leaves.
It is the minor details that need to be paid attention to, the one thing that confused me was why would this story be called Scent of Apples if this is all that happens. But rereading the story and opening up my mind to the minor details I learn that the Scent of Apples is a symbol of the American dream/life.
“Where could he be now this month when leaves were turning into gold and the fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind?” and “the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds, and promise of winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold!” – these two lines associate apples with America, when it is revealed the farmer has an apple orchard and the constant smell of apples – Scent of Apples is the smell of the American dream. Which is exactly what the Filipino speaker experienced upon meeting the farmer, an immigrant from the Philippines who has adapted to the american way of life by marrying a blond white lady, and becoming an apple farmer with his orchard.
