On Having Two Houses: A Formalist Analysis of Patindol’s Children’s Story Entitled Papa’s House, Mama’s House

A child’s ability to accept social realities is often a subject of debate. Children in our society lead sheltered lives because we view them as needing protection from the grimmer aspects of life. In the process of protecting our children we tend to overlook a child’s ability to feel and observe things that occur around him or her. Children are undoubtedly perceptive, and as parents or guardians, we are often surprised at the things they can understand, things that they can accept as real.

Single parenting and separated parents are common occurrences nowadays. It is no longer something to be embarrassed about; in fact there is a sense of empowerment felt by parents who choose to raise children on their own. However, people continue to avoid such topics in front of children because for them, it may be embarrassing. Adults perceive themselves as being models of behavior for children, and any indication of a deviation in moral behavior may trigger moral deviation on children themselves.

Children’s literature generally does not discuss such taboo topics. On a table compiled by www.wikipedia.org from the works of Hunt (1991), Lesnik-Oberstein (1996), and Huck (2001), children’s literature should not contain adult themes. The problem with this criterion is that a lot of topics that affect children, such as rape, eating disorders, prison, and war are considered appropriate by default. Several books do not meet this criterion, but are nonetheless considered children’s literature. For foreign examples we have Junk by Melvin Burgess, a story that tackles drug use, and No Laughter Here by Rita Williams-Garcia, which talks about female genital cutting. There are also locally published books that deal with such “taboo” topics. Sandosenang Sapatos by Luis Gatmaitan talks about being handicapped and Mama’s House, Papa’s House by Jean Lee Patindol talks about broken homes.

Patindol’s story is told by a child from a broken home, one who has to live with both parents in separate houses on different days of the week. The child is unnamed in the text, and the child’s gender is known only through the artwork and not through linguistic clues. The topic, which is broken homes, is not discussed too seriously. The causes for the separation of the parents is not stated either. This becomes a jumping board for several questions. In cases of separation caused by infidelity, one would expect that the child’s sympathy will lie with the offended party. However, in cases of separation caused by irreconcilable differences, the feelings of the child may be not so readily decided. How does the child feel about either parent? Or is there even a difference between what the child feels for her mother and what she feels for the father. The basic contention of this paper is that the child decidedly feels the same for both of her parents. That is to say, the child has no preference over either of the parents and that infidelity was not the cause of separation. These assertions will be proven by analyzing the form and content of the story, using Formalist Stylistics as the framework for study, and Roman Jakobson’s discussion on marked parallelism in his famous essay “Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics” (1958). Jakobson states that “…equivalence in sound, projected into the sequence as its constitutive principle, inevitably involves semantic equivalence…” Determining the truth value of the statement may determine the slant and objectivity of the story, since the author is a mother separated from her husband and is raising a child by herself.

The story contains a lot of parallel forms. In fact the title and the majority of the story is told in parallel; something is told by the child about Papa’s house, then something is told about Mama’s house in a sentence pattern similar to the description of Papa’s house.

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays we live in Mama’s house.

Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays we live in Papa’s house.

I like it when I live in Papa’s house.

I play my toy trains with him and he plays my toy planes with me.

We eat pizza, hotdogs, ice cream, and noodles.

Then, we help him eat his rice and pork chops, too.

I like it when I live in Mama’s house.

I draw flowers with her and she paints rainbows with me.

We also eat pizza, hotdogs, ice cream, and noodles.

Then, help her eat her salad and pasta, too.

In Papa’s house we have a time for everything-

In Mama’s house we have a time for everything too.

I have clothes and toys in our home with Papa.

I have clothes and toys in our home with Mama.

In all these examples, only once did the child describe Mama’s house first. This was done in the first example, where the child talks about where they live at a particular day of the week. This contradiction to the pattern points out that the child’s sense of the passage of days is defined by school. Monday is the start of the week for the child because that’s when she goes to school. It would only be natural for the child to start there.

This pattern of repetition of parallel forms point out two very important things. One is that the child sees both parents as equivalents, showing that the child has no preference, that each parent is fun to be with in their own right. The second important point is the effect the text has on the reader. The reader is made to compare both parents, but because of the organization of the text, the description goes from Papa to Mama, and then back to Papa and back again to Mama. The effect is not unlike watching a tennis game, where the focus passed back and forth. In this case, what is being passed back and forth is the child. So conversely, the focus of the story is the child.

Although the parallel forms stand out, it should be noted that the lack of parallel forms where expected would also mean something.

With Papa’s help, I cut my birthday cake and Mama served it

This is one of only two lines where the words Mama and Papa lie on the same line. This is the only line where you can reasonably expect the author to use parallel forms. The fact that the author did not is another form of foregrounding. It is at this point that the parent’s agree on something. The celebration of the child’s birthday party shows the love that both parents feel for the children.

The pattern of repetition of parallel forms does not only apply to Papa’s house and Mama’s house.

Yuck! We got the color of Bianca’s poo-poo!

Next, we mixed black and green together.

Even yuckier! We got the color of Ana’s poo-poo!

And so I said, “Some colors aren’t pretty together, huh, Mama?”

Mama hugged me tightly.

One by one, my cousins started coming over.

One by one, my friends started coming over.

The first example above is an abrupt change. The “Yuck!” catches the attention of the reader and foregrounds the following paragraph, pointing out that what follows is important. And it is. This paragraph is the clearest indication of why the parent’s separated. The reference to black and green paint and how “some colors aren’t pretty together” reinforces the assertion that the parents separated more probably because of differences rather than of infidelity. The “some colors aren’t pretty together” is an allusion to the paint and the mixing of it. The colored paints are metonymic, they represent the parents, and the mixing is their relationship. The artwork supports this comparison; Papa’s house is accented black while Mama’s house is accented green. The last line of the paragraph adds emphasis and further foregrounds the paragraph. The reference to her siblings’ “poo-poo” shows that she is the oldest child, since it is usually the older sibling who gets to see the younger siblings’ diapers being changed. Being the oldest child she is the one who would be the most vocal and most affected by her parents’ separation.

In the entire text, there is no sentence that does not have a word that points out the child. Almost all the lines have either “I”, “my”, “me”, “we”, or “our”. This reinforces the idea that the child is the center of the narration, which in turn supports the idea that the child does not prefer either parent over the other. If there was any hostility felt by the child towards one of the parents, the story would shift its focus on that feeling. Instead, all images are positive; all the descriptions of both houses indicate that the child and her siblings are enjoying themselves.

The word choice also adds a different level to the text. As shown in the following example, the difference between a house and a home is clear for the child.

I have clothes and toys in our home with Papa.

I have clothes and toys in our home with Mama.

This is the most distinct occurrence of the word “home” in the entire story. The word “home” also only occurs on the same line as “our”. This indicates that the individual places that the parents own are houses, but when the children begin to identify with the place and begin to consider it as their own, then it becomes a home. Since both of the houses are considered homes, then the child feels equally welcome in both houses.

Another good example of word choice occurs on the same paragraph s the previous example.

But sometimes it makes me tired going back and forth.

It makes me confused too.

Tired and confused. But not angry. Not mad. The child feels tired and confused, perfectly natural in a case such as this, but the child also does not hold a grudge against her parents because of their setup. Instead the child is confused and tired about the fact that they go back and forth between their parents’ houses. There is no line in the entire story where the child says or even indicates that she wants her parents to get back together. There is acceptance for the child and this is best shown by the first and also the last paragraph.

Ana, Bianca, and I

live in two houses.

There is Papa’s house.

And there is Mama’s house.

The story comes full circle in the end. Nothing is resolved because nothing is wrong for the child. Everything is in its proper place, and everyone is happy. The child accepts this form of normalcy because she feels the same for the parents together as they are apart. That equal love for the parents characterizes children as accepting and tolerant beings, and serves as a good guide for children undergoing such changes in their own lives. This teaches them to love their parents equally, because a parent’s love for a child is incomparable to anything else.

References:

Weber, Jean Jacques. The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. London: Arnold, 1996

“Children’s literature.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Mar 2007, 15:36 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 18 Mar 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Children%27s_literature&oldid=115075343>.