Online Journal 4: Pagsusuri sa ‘Walang Kalabawsa Cubao’ ni Acosta at ‘The Gods We Worship

The reoccurring metaphor seen in the first poem was the use of the carabao to show that Cubao is far off from being a rural settlement. I think this metaphor used by the author pairs well to what message he was trying to send. That message being that most urban areas are brimmed with poverty and are generally not a healthy place for anyone to live in, specially for people that came from the province looking for opportunities to take in an urban community. The parasitic relationship between the flies and the carabao was used in the poem as to portray that the citizens of Cubao are just there to feed off the city and nothing more.

The second poem uses gods as it’s metaphor to describe normal and average people, in this poem’s case Filipino people. For me the stereotypical description of gods that are put out to be perfect, transcendent beings contradict to that of the features of a normal human being, it also contradicts the definition of gods being immortal with the line saying they catch cold easily. The message the author was trying to put out was that people specially in urbanized societies are divided by social classes. The poem is about class struggle and how the poor stays poor for the rest of their lives while the wealthy class or in this case the “gods” stay rich although die easily are quickly replaced by the next generation.

Both of the poems’ goals and messages were aligned to class struggle and sheds light on how cruel the “real world” is. People from provinces dreaming of acquiring a job in a huge city leaving their homes in hopes of doing good for their family back at home end up not making that much at all and are subjected to oppression.