In the rich family’s case, they are abundant in food and a comfortable lifestyle but are still not content with what they have and push others-like the poor family- to pay for it. Like in the story, the narrator’s family is a poor family, and yet, because they are not so sensitive, they get to play outside and laugh. Well, we have a lot but how do we cope with every situation? By not taking it so hard, of course! In every problem, like poverty, even if they don’t get to eat much for the day, they are still smiling and laughing together and the family is still intact. We don’t usually wear much burden on our shoulders. Maybe the author wanted to show the issue the other way around, thus, using a reverse psychology.įilipinos are known to be light people. While it is not really true in this day and age because the poor has no fair fight against the rich, the idea behind it is not quite simple. It is supported by the part at the end of the story where after the father gave back the “spirit of wealth” through the jingling of the coins in the straw hat, the judge immediately dismissed the case.

In the Filipino context, this story favors the underprivileged families over affluent ones. This story shows the culture, traits and way of the Filipinos. It was said that this work is a protest against the economic progress of his time. He wrote this story based from folklore in the Philippines and it has an underlying social commentary. My Father Goes to Court is just one of the many short stories in Carlos Bulosan’s “The Laughter of My Father” which was published in the 1940’s in the United States.

The laughter of my father