Readings in Philippine History

Module No. 5

Chapter 2- Examination of the Author’s Main Argument and Point of View

LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon completion of the lessons, the student will be able to:

1. Discuss the author’s main argument and point of view

LEARNING CONTENT

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTHOR’S MAIN ARGUMENT AND POINT OF VIEW

Evaluating an Author's Point of View

Two authors have differing opinions on the same topic. Which one should you believe? This
lesson details several things to look for when evaluating points of view and forming your own informed
decisions.

Evaluation of Writing
Do you always, without question, believe everything you read? I hope not! For any sort of article,
paper, or essay, you must be able to evaluate the author's point of view, which is the attitude or opinion on
the topic. Evaluate means to assess the value of something. In this sense, when reading an opinion piece,
you must decide if you agree or disagree with the writer by making an informed judgment. Many times,
you will find two pieces of writing on the same topic. In this case, you must evaluate both points of view
in order to judge which is stronger. Let us look at the process you should use to carefully analyze each
side of the issue.

Compare the Writers

The first thing to do when you come across two pieces of writing with differing points of view is
to compare the writers. This means analyzing the people who have written the arguments. Imagine you
are reading two articles, both on the topic of oil drilling. One article argues that drilling for oil should be
stopped because it is dangerous and harmful to the environment. The other article has the opposite point
of view: it declares drilling should be increased because it is the only reliable source for energy.
 In order to evaluate these two points of view, look at the writers themselves. First, analyze
the background, which is the personal and professional history of each writer. What sort of education has
each had? Has either worked in a profession dealing with the oil industry in any way? Imagine one of
these writers has a PhD in petroleum engineering, whereas the other has worked as a mechanic all his life.
Which one has the educational background more likely to support his point of view on oil drilling? The
first one, of course!

The second thing to consider is each writer's potential bias, which is a prejudiced or preconceived
notion about something. Using the previous example, if the petroleum engineer were working for a large
oil company, wouldn't he be biased in favor of oil drilling? On the same token, if the writer has lost a
family member due to an oil rig accident, he or she would be biased against oil drilling. Personal biases
are important when evaluating a writer's opinion.
Like biases, you also want to consider personal influences, or any personal experiences that may
affect a writer's opinion. Influences differ from biases as most influences are openly disclosed, whereas
biases are usually not. For instance, if one writer went to an actual oil rig to report on the operation, this
most certainly influences his point of view. However, he will likely openly admit to this fact in order to
use his first-hand knowledge as proof of his point of view. We are all influenced by events in life, but this
does not mean our point of view is tarnished. Biases usually taint the argument of the writer in a negative
way, whereas influences work in favor of the writer.

Compare the Arguments

Once you have analyzed the writers, you can now get to the heart of the matter: the actual
argument or point of view. When you are assessing the arguments of two pieces of writing, consider three
main questions:

• Is the point of view logical?

• Is the point of view supported?
• Does the argument have appropriate sources?

The first question asks if the argument is logical, or if it makes sense in the context or situation.
For the oil drilling example, it is not logical for a writer to argue that drilling for oil never harms the
environment. Besides being an outright lie, it is illogical to assert that interfering with any natural habitat
will not affect that habitat. Instead, it would be more logical to admit that oil drilling has some harmful
effects, but the benefits greatly outweigh the negative consequences.
In this module, we are going to look into at a number of primary sources from different
historical periods and evaluate these documents content in terms of historical value, and examine the
context of their productions. The primary sources that we are going to examine are Antonio Pigafetta’s
“First Voyage around the World”, Emilio Jacinto’s “Kartilya ng Katipunan”, the 1898 Declaration of
Philippine Independence, Political Cartoon’s Alfred McCoys, Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of
the American Era (1900-1941), and Corazon Aquino’s Speech before the US Congress before the U.
S Congress.

These primary sources range from chronicles, official documents, speeches and cartoons to visual
arts. These types of sources require different kinds of analysis and contain different levels of importance.
The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan led the first voyage around the world, beginning in
1519. Sailing southward along the coast of South America, Magellan discovered the strait that today bears
his name became the first European to enter the Pacific Ocean from the east. Magellan died while
exploring the Philippines, but his ships continued west to complete the circumnavigation of the globe.

The following account of the difficult passage through the Strait of Magellan was written by a
member of the crew, Antonio Pigafetta.

Antonio Pigafetta's First Voyage around the World: A Travelogue

Figure 1: Victoria Ship

On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off Seville, Spain,
having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On board was Antonio Pigafetta, a young
Italian nobleman who had joined the expedition three years before and served as an assistant to Ferdinand
Magellan en route to the Moluccas Islands. Magellan was dead.

The rest of the fleet was gone: the Santiago shipwrecked, the San Antonio overtaken, the
Concepcion burned and the Trinidad abandoned. Of the 237 sailors who departed from Seville, eighteen
returned on the Victoria. Pigafetta had managed to survive, along with his journal—notes that detailed the
discovery of the western route to the Moluccas. And along the way, new land, new peoples: on the far
side of the Pacific, the fleet had stumbled across the Marianas archipelago, and some three hundred
leagues further west, the Philippines.

Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the
World. According to scholar Theodore Cachey Jr., the travelogue represented “the literary epitome of its
genre” and achieved an international reputation. One of Pigafetta’s patrons, Francesco Chiericati, called
the journal “a divine thing” and Shakespeare himself seems to have been inspired by work: Setebos, a
deity invoked in Pigafetta’s text by men of Patagonia, makes an appearance in The Tempest.
 First Voyage, points out, is intent on marveling at what it encounters—and therein lies much of
its appeal. It is a work that is intent on wonder. In travel writing, one often must recreate the first moment
of newness, that fresh sense of awe, on the page for the reader; Pigafetta does it again and again, by
reveling in odd and odder bits of detail. We watch Pigafetta wonder at trees in Borneo whose leaves
appear to walk around once shed, leaves that "have no blood, but if one touches them, they run away. I
kept one of them for nine days in a box. When I opened the box, that leaf went round and round it. I
believe those leaves live on nothing but air.” We marvel, in the Philippines, at sea snails capable of felling
whales, by feeding on their hearts once ingested. On a stop in Brazil, we see an infinite number of parrots,
monkeys that look like lions, and "swine that have their navels on their backs, and large birds with
beaks like spoons and no tongues".

And yet, the very newness that can give travel writing so much of its power creates problems of
its own. For the travel writer there is, on the one hand, the authority of his or her observational eye, and
on the other, the call for humility in confronting the unknown. Pigafetta, encountering a new people, tries
to earn his authority through a barrage of detail. He attempts to reconstruct their world for us--what they
look like, where they live, what they eat, what they say--he gives us pages and pages of words, from
Patagonia, from Cebu, from Tidore. But there is little humility, and one can hardly expect there to be so,
not early in sixteenth century, a few decades after the Pope had divided the unchartered world between
Spain and Portugal, and certainly not on this expedition, where Magellan and his partners have been
promised, in a contract agreement with the Spanish monarchy, the titles of Lieutenants and Governors
over the lands they discover, for themselves and their heirs, in perpetuity. And cash sums and 1/20th of
the profits from those lands.

In First Voyage is great gulf between what Pigafetta sees and what Pigafetta knows. I grew up, in
the Marianas, hearing about this gulf. It is part of why travel writing can be so fraught for me now. On
reaching the Marianas after nearly four months at sea with no new provisions,” The captain-general
wished to stop at the large island and get some fresh food, but he was unable to do so because the
inhabitants of that island entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on, in such a
manner that we could not defend ourselves.". The sailors did not understand that this was custom, that for
the islanders, property was communal and visitors were expected to share what they had.

So, in that first moment of contact, Magellan and his starving crew retaliated. They went ashore
and burned, by Pigafetta's account, forty to fifty houses. They killed seven men. Mutual astonishment at
the new and the wondrous took a dark turn: “When we wounded any of those people with our crossbow
shafts, which passed completely through their loins from one side to the other, they, looking at it, pulled
on the shaft now on this and now on that side, and then drew it out, with great astonishment, and so died;
others who were wounded in the breast did the same, which moved us to great compassion.

We saw some women in their boats who were crying out and tearing their hair, for love, I
believe, of their dead.” Magellan named the archipelago Islas de los Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves.
The name would stick for the next three hundred years, long after the islands were absorbed into the
Spanish empire. The name, the bold, condemnatory stroke of it, has long been anchored to my past, to
those old history lessons. There is no feeling in it but rage. So, I was surprised to see, in Pigafetta's text,
the sailors moved to compassion. They seem to understand, in that moment of astonishment, that
the islanders are defenseless against the unknown.
 From the Marianas, the fleet moved on to the Philippines. They linger there, exploring the land,
exchanging gifts with the chiefs, observing the people. And I know what is coming for the people; I know
that we're seeing, through Pigafetta, the hush of a world just before it changes, wholly and entirely. And
there is Pigafetta, marveling, at the coconuts and the bananas and the naked, beautiful people. It is
happening even now in the text, as the Filipino pilots are captured to direct the way to the Moluccas, the
way to the spices.

There is Pigafetta, roaming and cataloging and recording, caught up in the first flush of a new
world, and as I read I can start to hear my father describing his country, wondering at it, my father
traveling as a young man up and down Luzon, across the sea to the Visayas, across the sea to Mindanao.
I can hear the ardor and the sadness and the terror and the delight. I can hear the wonder. I can
feel the pulse to move. I suppose this is what great travel writing gives us: a way to wholly enter a
moment, a feeling, and a body.

A way to be changed I can be my father, marveling at his country, our country, transformed by its
vast expanse. I can be Pigafetta, on the deck of the Trinidad, moved to write from shock and wonder. And
I can be the woman on a boat in the Marianas, crying out of love for the dead. This was taken from the
chronicles of contemporary voyagers and navigators of the sixteenth century. One of them was
Italian nobleman Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan in his fateful
circumnavigation of the world. Pigafetta’s work instantly became a classic that prominent literary men in
the west like William Shakespeare, interpretation of the new world.

Source:
https://www.essaydaily.org/2013/11/antonio-pigafettas-first-voyage-around
https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/ama-computer-university/life-and-works-of-rizal/lecture-notes/3-
content-and-contextual-analysis-for-selected-primary-resources-ii/5213485/view

READINGS

Ariola, M.(2018). The life and works of Rizal Manila: Unlimited Books Library Services & Publishing,
Inc.https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/322613.

ACTIVITY/IES

Mechanics:

a. Form a group with four person

b. Assign each of them to discuss the component below.
 • Evaluating an author's point of view
• Evaluation of writing
• Compare the writers
• Compare the arguments
c. Check the topic using this link: https://rappler.com/nation/cainta-metro-manila-lockdown
d. You may use your mobile phone to record video while you're discussing your answers.
e. Present it in front of your teacher and classmates

ASSIGNMENT

Assignment

Directions: This is an individual work; choose a topic from the internet; the issue to be tackled should be
at Cainta area only. Below are the guidelines on how to examine the author’s main argument and point of
view.

a. Evaluating an author's point of view c. Compare the writers

b. Evaluation of writing d. Compare the arguments

ASSESSMENT

I. Reflection Essay

Directions: Write a reflection essay on any one of the following topics

REFERENCES

Ariola, Mariano. (2018). The life and works of Rizal. Manila: Unlimited Books Library Services &
Publishing, Inc.

https.//bshmjoserizal.weebly.com/jose- rizals-videos.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVKim4 SqPV8&feature=share