ALEXANDER Blanco San Pedro is a training manager in a BPO (business process outsourcing) specializing in employee training development programs, and assessment of training and development needs of the organization. He is also the chief city organizer of PechaKucha Night Iloilo since 2018. In the critical essay that follows, he gives a reading of my story “Ang Milagro sa Ermita.”
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A Miracle to Remember
by Alexander Blanco San Pedro
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Several years back, I happened to read about the philosophical concept of dualism which suggests that the human mind is more than just the brain, and that the former is not the product of the latter, and they are not one and the same.
When I read and analyzed the 2017 Palanca award-winning short story “Ang Milagro sa Ermita” (available in English translation as “The Miracle at Ermita”) penned by Hall of Famer Peter Solis Nery, I was reminded of that theory.
For the sake of sympathizing with the story’s protagonist, I bought the ideas and beliefs of the dualists despite their contradiction against neuroscience and psychology, which are considered to be more credible in the modern convention.
“Ang Milagro sa Ermita”, a short story written in Hiligaynon, centers around the miracle experienced by Paolo Santillan, a theology student on his last year before being ordained as a deacon. He believes that God personally talked to him and chose him as “The One” atop the hill of Ermita during his two-week vacation in his friend’s hometown.
His dilemma is how to make the people around him believe in the miracle without giving them the impression that he has gone nuts. In the story, he attempts to convince Jeffrey, his best friend and fellow seminarian; and Father Edwin, their guidance counselor and spiritual adviser.
The story opens with the protagonist’s narration of the first few days of his vacation in Ermita. Reading the exposition, I felt like being transported to this seemingly festive barangay in Dumangas. Peter Solis Nery’s artistic gift to tell stories beyond words is very evident in this piece. The vivid images and sounds and the whole experience set a primer which signals that I should brace myself for a sense-provoking read.
A compelling conflict and riveting plot development are very critical in storytelling as these are effective strategies writers often use to capture their readers’ interest to follow the story until the end. In “Ang Milagro sa Ermita”, Nery used psychological realism, a literary technique which is primarily concerned with interior characterization and analysis. The author brings us all inside the narrator’s mind to tell us what is going on in there so we can understand, or at least sympathize with the character.
Other than his use of a thought-provoking storytelling method, it’s also interesting that Nery intricately explores the theme of the story against the backdrop of Roman Catholic traditions that provides the possibility of varying interpretations from readers depending on their religious beliefs. A devout Catholic reader may interpret the incidents in the story as a test of the protagonist’s faith in his God, but a more rational reader may infer that insanity influenced the character’s behavior and actions.
While the protagonist-narrator’s goal is to convince the readers that he is sane, readers are introduced to a character who has somehow lost his grip on reality. The author cites several instances in the story that point to the protagonist having a mental illness.
As a regular reader, I feel the need to sympathize with the protagonist’s plight though I may not totally believe that he indeed experienced a miracle. Having been struck by lightning in his youth may have caused irreparable damage to his brain that caused his delusions of hearing God. Or maybe he truly is the Chosen One, and the damage in his brain doesn’t have anything to do with this belief. I don’t know how, but that is something the dualists can explain. I can also believe that he totally survived the lightning without any damage to his system, and he really heard God’s voice that afternoon in Ermita.
This ambiguity, this duality, and its other possibilities speak of the beauty and craftsmanship of this piece written by a literary genius. Peter Solis Nery took his readers to a beautiful experience through his lucid storytelling techniques; and at the same time, left them with intuitive questions in the end. Love it or hate it, but a well-planned open ending lets the reader’s imagination run wild. All these challenge the readers’ forgetting curve and short memory, thus making this literary work — in a word — unforgettable./PN
