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Six from Downtown: The Wet Market by Dean Francis Alfar. A Critique by John Jeric Silverio

      Have you ever tasted mermaids? If so, how do you want it to be cooked as? Grilled? Fried? Steamed? Or boiled down with Tamarind?  (commonly known locally in the Philippines as Sampaloc.)  It’s absurd to ask such a thing, but on the realm of speculative fiction makes that seem normal. The concept of making extra ordinary be ordinary or make it seem that way in fictional writings, establishing a world of your own, altering reality, and make it all appear to be sort of “realistic” on its own. This idea is what I observed on “The Wet Market”, one of the six chapters of Dean Francis Alfar’s  short fiction, which titled as  “Six from Downtown”. It was published on June, 2006, and later it won the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards of 2007. Now, how does the narrative make use of the said concept?

      The Wet Market is a story that starts off as the protagonist arrives in the city and lurked around the wet market. As the protagonist wanders, eyeing around and buying seafood that was familiar from her memories as a child. -Yes , her gender is hinted at the start of two-thirds of the story- Then not soon enough after the setting, which make it seem that the story is something of our reality, the narrative starts mentioning sirena, a local term for mermaids in the Philippines.  And on top of that, the protagonist refers to mermaids as if it was just some ordinary seafood she ate and caught as a child alongside her grandfather. The latter part of the story is just a very descriptive narrative of how they caught mermaids and it ended as the protagonist finishes her flashback and decides to buy some of the fresh mermaid from the apparent stall.  

     The idea of how mermaids traded like some commodity and food source is absurd in our reality. In fact, just the existence mermaid is still unreal. But the way it is presented makes it “convincingly real”, and those were the exact words that popped in my head when I asked myself to describe the main plot of the story. It’s so convincing that I actually imagined and pondered on how mermaid meat would taste like as I was reading the text. I also started raising questions towards the “reality”, or rather the appropriate word is “fictional reality”, that the story presented. Questions that were later answered by the text itself, and some that were left unanswered and is intended to remain that way, such as serious ones like “Do they consider mermaids as sentient creatures?”, “Are there mermans as well?”, and narrow questions like “Do they keep some in captive and treat it like pets?”, or “Do they marry mermaids?”. But that latter question would probably be like Ariel or Dyesebel, but a little bit macabre since they do eat mermaids. It is equivalent to saying that someone could marry a cow.

     This defies the meaning of fiction, and its similarities and differences to the word fantasy, although they are two completely separate words. But let’s first find the commonly known definition of the two words. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica;

  “Fiction, literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation.” and; “Fantasy, also spelled phantasy, imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural beings).”

       So to speak, it is safe to say that fiction is something made up but it can be real or not real, while fantasy is can be a type of fiction. In which if I may add, fantasy is always unreal, especially it contains beings that are not existent to begin with.  But literary pieces, that can be considered fantasy, could be and can in fact be presented in a way that it seems true to life. The Wet Market proves this fact.

       Overall, it seems that the idea of not only mermaids being real, but also that it is a treated as a food source and commodity just like fishes, could be delivered realistically albeit it being fantasy. Fictions have come a long way ever since mankind had learned and developed the concept of writing. And therefore, the concept of making extra ordinary be ordinary or make it seem that way in fictional writings, establishing a world of your own, altering reality, and make it all appear to be sort of “realistic” on its own, is possible to be executed in a fictional writing as long it is delivered using the right words and timing. That concept is one of the amazing marvels we have developed in our modern literature. Now, I��m really curious how a mermaid burger tastes like.

  My name is John Jeric Silverio of ICT3 11 -2, and this is my assignment.

(Posted on: 2017 February 16)

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