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Candido’s Apocalypse

Nick Joaquin’s first published The Candido’s Apocalypse on 1972. The book is Eighty-Three pages. Nick Joaquin is a Filipino writer, journalist, novelist and a historian. He is one of the famous Filipino writers in English and also a national artist in literature. The story of Candido’s Apocalypse is all about a teenager man who searched for his self or his identity.

The book is nice and has a unique story. The main character Bobby Heredia a teenager who is crazy and always hallucinate. He sees naked people everywhere. He also thinks that he knows everything. He believes that everything should be done the way he thinks and Candido is the alter ego of Bobby Heredia or his dual personality. The generation of Bobby Heredia in the story is so chaotic, troubled. The teenagers of their generations are just like our present generation, teen’s wants attention, wants to be cool, but to be uncool in their generation is called overacting or “OA”. Bobby Heredia always tell person overacting if the person reacts in certain thing just like for example by saying mommy, daddy instead of nay, tay, sideburns, driving motorcycles rather than scooters and many more… I noticed about the main character’s split-personality has just surface and he adopted the name Candido, the name he saw in the almanac for him. From Bobby/Candido’s eyes everyone is naked. The  absence of clothes in a person also made him think  of its role in the society, aside from satisfying the basic need, it gives a false sense of security in the outside while inside it does not change how one feel as a person.

The word Apocalypse, from the greek word ‘apokalypsis” meaning lifting of the veil or revelation, in an era full of falsehood and misconception. Before the freak incident of Bobby’s seeing people naked, he used to feel superior and judgemental about people, about them being over-reacting, after that incident he now longed to be around people. It was revealed to him that people...