Reaction to "Midsummer"

After reading the text, I was somehow confused as to what the message of the narrative was. I guess this story was somehow open-ended. I didn’t know what to conclude since it simply narrated the mundane events of one afternoon, wherein its plot peaks at the arrival of a girl and ends as the two characters walk away.

The text has quite a detailed description of the setting, though it was not explicitly mentioned. One could imagine the characters’ surroundings as one reads through the paragraphs.

When the man first saw the girl, I immediately thought that it was a mirage of some sort. It is quite easy to immediately conclude such a thing when the description of the man’s surroundings seemed so lifeless. When the author describes what the man caught sight of when he sees the girl by the well, the thought that she was a figment of his imagination was intensified. The description of the girl’s bosom was quite strange for me, and I did not really understand its importance in the story.

When the girl came back and had an actual conversation with the man, I accepted that the girl was a real person. I did not really grasp the point of the events that followed. I did not understand what was going on between the two characters and if sexual tension was implied by the author or if it was just in my head. In the end, I was confused whether her asking him to go home with her was the Filipino trait of hospitality or something else. Also, when the girl said, “I have told mother about you,” I thought about how she knew of him before their conversation, which would mean that she knew the man was watching while she poured water over her head. The narrative is honestly just a blur in my head.