CNF Online Journal 2: Wilfredo Pascual’s Animalia

Humans are the highest form of animals and there are times that we look down on them but this essay gives us a message that we could learn a lot from these animals.

I find it interesting on how the author, Wilfredo Pascual told his experiences and adventures in life through connecting it with animals. Every story has an animal present in it and each animal has a corresponding lesson and message that we could apply in our life.

First person point of view is used. I got to learn more about the author’s thoughts and feelings. I was able to connect more with the story. The first person point of view helped me to visualize or imagine the settings and the events in the story. The way each setting is described vividly also helped a lot. The approach is objective, there was no emotive words in the essay. It seemed ,like the emotional scenes were written without any emotion. Although the flow of the story is not in chronological order; I did not have a hard time following and understanding it. The order of the stories gave me an impression that the author was reminiscing the events in his life and when we remember events in our life, it usually does not appear in a chronological order; it just pops out.

There were some parts that I really liked and stood out for me. First is the story about bats. “Stories will never be silenced”, that sentence is really powerful and significant for me. That line can be applied today wherein some issues and stories are being covered up but they will never be silenced.

The transgender tilapia is a coming age story. He found his identity and who he was. I was amazed by how the animal in this story connected to his own identity.

The fourth story ,that was about dog, was challenging for me to read not because it was confusing and I did not understand it but because it was about dogs. I love dogs and while reading this paragraph my dog was beside me. I was holding up my emotions well until Bracky made “lambing” to the author. I cried because just like humans, dogs have emotions too and they also need love and care. I like how the author compared Bracky the dog he was afraid since he was young and has a tendency to attack him to his father who he was distant to. He was more comfortable to approach Bracky then his father. I cried again when I read the last line.

I’d like to connect the ending to sea turtles. The essay started with him on Nueva Ecija when he was a child and it ended by going to back to Nueva Ecija again as a kid just like the sea turtles that fascinated him because they would always come back to their origin. He relieved one memory that he had with his father. He was distant and maybe hated his father but he is just like a baby bird who is hungry for his father’s love.

I was not really a fan of non-fiction stories. I remember when I was elementary I would always pick the fiction stories in our SRA because I thought that non-fiction stories are boring and I would not have fun reading it. I was also confused while watching the first video lesson about creative non-fiction because I did not know how to make it creative and fun without adding twists. After reading Animalia, it became clearer how does creative non-fiction work. I am amazed on how the author made it enjoyable. I am looking forward to read more works about creative non-fiction to fully understand it.