Five brothers,One mother

 Essense of home
In this story, the writer exhibited the experience of being an outsider by moving
from one culture to another. The story is all about family and home.

A mother will do all these things with absolute love, that she can leave all her
personal needs behind so their children can have entirely they need. She will not
sleep, eat and even wait you until you arrived home and know you’re safe and
sound.

BACKGROUND
Authorial information:
Exie Abola
Bicol Region (Region V), Albay
Teacher at the English Department at the English Department of Ateneo Manila
University Master Degree in English Study
Has 2 Palanca Awards (Short Story in English 2000 and a NVM Gonzales Award)
Best Short Story of the Year 2000
Ateneo authors Exie Abola and or Maria Llaneza Ramos both received Gintong
Aklat Awards during the Manila
Textual information:
Exie abola published the literary text of Five Brothers, One Mother on year 2004  
           COPY OF THE LITERARY TEXT

Five Brothers, One Mother 

 Taurus St., Cinco Hermanos, Marikina
The Marikina house wasn’t finished yet, but with an ultimatum hanging over our
heads, we had no choice but to move in. Just how unfinished the house became
bruisingly clear on our first night. There was no electricity yet, and the windows
didn’t have screens. There were mosquitoes. I couldn’t sleep the whole night. My
sister slept on a cot out in the upstairs hall instead of her room downstairs, maybe
because it was cooler here. Every so often she would toss and turn, waving bugs
away with half-asleep hands. I sat beside her and fanned her. She had work the
next day. In the morning someone went out and bought boxes and boxes of Katol.
Work on the house would continue, but it remains unfinished eight years later. All
the interiors, after a few years of intermittent work, are done. But the exterior
remains unpainted, still the same cement gray as the day we moved in, though
grimier now. Marikina’s factories aren’t too far away. The garden remains
ungreened; earth, stones, weeds, and leaves are where I suppose bermuda grass
will be put down someday.
In my eyes the Marikina house is an attempt to return to the successful
Greenmeadows plan, but with more modest means at one’s disposal. The living
room of the Cinco Hermanos house features much of the same furniture, a similar
look. The sofa and wing chairs seem at ease again. My mother’s growing
collection of angel figurines is the new twist. But there is less space in this room,
as in most of the rooms in the Marikina house, since it is a smaller house on a
smaller lot.
The kitchen is carefully planned, as was the earlier one, the cooking and eating
areas clearly demarcated. There is again a formal dining room, and the new one
seems to have been designed for the long narra dining table, a lovely Designs
Ligna item, perhaps the one most beautiful piece of furniture we have, bought on
the cheap from relatives leaving the country in a hurry when we still were on
Heron Street.
Upstairs are the boys’ rooms. The beds were the ones custom-made for the
Greenmeadows house, the same ones we’d slept in since then. It was a loft or an
attic, my mother insisted, which is why the stairs had such narrow steps. But this
"attic," curiously enough, had two big bedrooms as well as a wide hall. To those of
us who actually inhabited these rooms, the curiosity was an annoyance. There was
no bathroom, so if you had to go to the toilet in the middle of the night you had to
go down the stairs and come back up again, by which time you were at least half
awake.
Perhaps there was no difference between the two houses more basic, and more
dramatic, than their location. This part of Marikina is not quite the same as the
swanky part of Ortigas we inhabited for five years. Cinco Hermanos is split by a
road, cutting it into two phases, that leads on one end to Major Santos Dizon,
which connects Marcos Highway with Katipunan Avenue. The other end of the
road stops at Olandes, a dense community of pedicabs, narrow streets, and
poverty. The noise – from the tricycles, the chattering on the street, the trucks
hurtling down Marcos Highway in the distance, the blaring of the loudspeaker at
our street corner put there by eager-beaver baranggay officials – dispels any
illusions one might harbor of having returned to a state of bliss.
                                                                             * * *
The first floor is designed to create a clear separation between the family and guest
areas, so one can entertain outsiders without disturbing the house’s inhabitants.
This principle owes probably more to my mother than my father. After all, she is
the entertainer, the host. The living room, patio, and dining room – the places
where guests might be entertained – must be clean and neat, things in their places.
She keeps the kitchen achingly well-organized, which is why there are lots of
cabinets and a deep cupboard.
And she put them to good use. According to Titus, the fourth, who accompanied
her recently while grocery shopping, she buys groceries as if all of us still lived
there. I don’t recall the cupboard ever being empty.
That became her way of mothering. As we grew older and drifted farther and
farther away from her grasp, defining our own lives outside of the house, my
mother must have felt that she was losing us to friends, jobs, loves – forces beyond
her control. Perhaps she figured that food, and a clean place to stay, was what we
still needed from her. So over the last ten years or so she has become more
involved in her cooking, more attentive, better. She also became fussier about
meals, asking if you’ll be there for lunch or dinner so she knows how much to
cook, reprimanding the one who didn’t call to say he wasn’t coming home for
dinner after all, or the person who brought guests home without warning. There
was more to it than just knowing how much rice to cook.
I know it gives her joy to have relatives
ANALYSIS
Literary Genre
Fiction
The story is a type of fiction because it is not real and therefore, authors can use
complex figurative language to touch readers’ imaginations.
The story is all about the family and home. The story about the Five Brothers, One
Mother the Marikina house wasn’t finished yet, but with ultimatum hanging over
our heads, we had no choice but to move in and there house there was no
electricity and together with there mother they leave happily.

Analysis Guides

Reader Response
After reading the story, for me as a family-oriented person. I really love this story
because it opens our mind that we should value and love our family because
they're the one who's always there for us in good times or in bad. Never forget to
prioritize them, never ignore them, and never disobey them because they always
know whats best for us.

Plot and Structure

The plot of the story are Man vs Nature because they cant sleep without electricity
and it the mosquito was biting them. And also Man vs Self because their mother
start to gey lonely as they grow up. The solution of the conflict is after a couple
years their house was furnished but not fully furnished, because it doesn't have
paint yet. And the mother used her boredom in house organizing and buying some
stuff.

Setting
This part of Marikina is not quite the swanky part of Ortigas we inhabited for five
years. Cinco Hermanos ia split by a road cutting into two phases, that leads on one
end to Major Santos Dizon, which connect Marcos Highway with Katipunan
Avenue.

Tone
Exie Abola, in Five Brothers, One Mother ,unfolds his personality through the
tone he adopts throughout the novel. Exie Abola is bitterly sarcastic as he
criticizes the nature of things in real life. His character may reveal the attitude of
the writer towards life, as it is common for writers to use their characters as their
mouthpieces.

Character
The character of the story are the Sister, Five Brothers, Father, Mother, Titus
Fourth.

Point of View
The point of view used in the story is the first person, because the writer use the
word "our" and "we" in the first paragraph of the story,the writer's name is exie
abola, he also became part of the story because he expressed his feelings in other
way.

Diction and Style

      Informal diction. Informal diction is more conversational and often used in
narrative literature. This casual vernacular is representative of how people
communicate in real life, which gives an author freedom to depict more realistic
characters. Most short stories and novels use informal diction.Images and Symbols
Although roses are typically considered to represent more romantic feelings of
love, they can also representative of motherly love.Flowers like rose are general
symbol of a mother's undying love and devotion to her family.In literature , roses
often symbolize love and beauty; therefore, they also represent ladies.  Roses have
thorns which represent the pain or hurt hidden in the beauty, as in" love hurts.

Theme
          The theme in the story are Mother's Love because mother's known best and
one day if she's no longer doing that well going to miss her.And prioritize them
because never ignore and never disobey them because they always known best for
us

Contextual Analysis
Biographical Context 
The inspiration of the author upon writing this literature is, it is not about the
house or permanent house, it is about psychological experience of the author. And
I think that Exie Abola did a great job by sharing its own experience through
writing an essay and share it to the readers what is the true essence of home with
family.

SUMMARY
The mother of the author fears and has become anxious about her children
growing up. It was described as an exodus when they start leaving. The mother
tries to maintain the home through her cooking which she believes holds everyone
together.

REFERENCES
This is the sources from where we have taken the information that we included
here in our paper.
Book/s

AUTHOR/S
TITLE OF THE BOOK/WEBSITE
TITLE OF THE ARTICLE/TEXT
PUBLISHER & PLACE OF PUBLICATION
WEBSITE LINK

1
Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Heights Campu
2006-2012
Abola, Alexis Augusto L./ Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108, Philippines
Abola, Alexis Augusto L.

2
Nelson Versoza 
2017
Blogspot Five Brothers,One Mother By Exie Abola 
 Cauayan Isabel
 Five Brothers, One Mother

3
Nelson Versoza 
2020
Five Brothers, One Mother by Exie Abola ----- Many Mansions
 Cauayan Isabel
 Five Brothers, One Mother by EXIE ABOLA -----Many Mansions

4
Galgo Loraine
2018

Antipolo City, Philippines

Five Brothers, One Mother