Why is Bienvenido N. Santos' story titled "Scent of Apples"?
“Scent of Apples” by Bienvenido Santos is a short story in the book of the same name. Santos writes stories about the lives of Filipino immigrants. In “Scent of Apples,” the protagonist , Celestino Fabia, lives in the Midwestern United States on a small piece of land that includes an apple orchard. The smell of that apple orchard is prominent in his home. Although it is not a scent that is familiar in the Philippines, it makes Fabia long for home and reinforces his feelings of living as an outcast. Even though he has been in America for many years, he never lost his longing for home. He feeds the apples to the pigs which is symbolic of throwing away the abundance of the harvest. He feels that he threw away his familiar life in his homeland even though he has a strong wife and home life. The author titles the...
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story after its most prominent symbol.
What question does Bienvenido Santos pose in "Scent of Apples"?
In “Scent of Apples,” Celestino Fabia is a poor farmer who works just outside Kalamazoo. During a lecture that Bienvenido Santos is delivering to an audience largely consisting of college-aged women, Fabia asks him if the women back home in the Philippines have changed. Like Santos, Fabia is a Filipino expat and is understandably interested to know what changes have taken place back in the old country since he left.
Santos replies that Filipino women have indeed changed, but only on the outside. On the inside, where it really matters, they haven’t changed at all. Before giving his answer, Santos thinks very carefully about what to say. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to give Fabia a misleading impression. On the other hand, however, he doesn’t want to disillusion the expat farmer; he doesn’t want to paint too negative a picture of their common homeland.
Fabia appears satisfied by Santos’s diplomatic response. This is perhaps because, deep down, he wants to believe that what Santos is saying is true. Such hope is derived from his own negative experiences of being driven from his home country by an authoritarian patriarch who was supported in his actions by Fabia’s mother and sisters.