The short story May Day Eve is all about acting upon youthful impulses, but also contains a certain element of a person desperately wanting what they cannot have when they realize that it is out of their reach. The moral of this part of the story would be to seize the moment whilst you have it, and don't waste a single moment of your life. This can be shown by the main character Badoy realizing how much he loved Agueda, despite his promiscuous lifestyle.
The author of the short story May Day Eve is Nick Joaquin, who was a Filipino National Artist. He wrote the story after the Second World War, published it in and it went on to become a classic of Philippine literature written in the English language.
May Day Eve was actually one of the first books to use the theme of magic realism along with many of Joaquin's other novels such as Candido's Apocalypse and The Mass of St. Sylvester. However this was a long time before the theme became extremely popular amongst novels from Latin America. The audience of this story was originally adults only, but over time it has become extremely popular as set reading material for students in Filipino schools.
- Characters in May Day Eve.
There are five main characters in May Day Eve, these are: Badoy, Agueda, Anatacia, Agueda's daughter and Badoy's grandson, Voltare. Badoy and Agueda are the two main protagonists and couple of the story, although they are described as having completely opposite personalities. Agueda is a young, bold and liberated woman whose views were considered ahead of her time, whereas Badoy is apparently quite a promiscuous young man who wished to prove that he was manly, but soon realized that he loved Agueda.
