Footnote to Youth

“Footnote to Youth” is a 1932 short story set in the Philippines and centered on Dodong, a farmer's son who marries young. When a seventeen-year-old Dodong decides to marry his sweetheart, Teang, his father feels that Dodong is too young to marry but is unable to stop him. He thinks they are old enough to take on this responsibility, but after they have several children they both bemoan the dissolution of their youth and the dreams that came along with it. Teang wonders how things could have been if she'd married another of her suitors. The two go on to have many more children together, and both are often unhappy. At the end, Dodong's son Blas approaches his father wanting to marry at about the same age, even though Dodong doesn't want Blas to make the same mistake he did. However, history ends up repeating itself and Dodong knows he can do nothing to change Blas’s mind.