In the short story “The Blossoming of Bongbong”, the main character, Bongbong, moves to America with high hopes of reshaping his life and achieving success. This vague notion of the American dream leads Bongbong to desire the quintessential, yet seemingly paradoxical, American life: a career as a movie star and a simple, non-contradictory lifestyle – all of which he cannot achieve in the Philippines. Yet for some reason he seems unable to obtain them and gets lost in the process. Through the analysis of Bongbong's callous attitude towards defining a cultural identity, as well as his pursuit of different recreational activities and more generally his interest in the arts, we can trace the degeneration of Bongbong's identity and how he transforms into the exact person he doesn't want to be. His skewed and idealized image of the American dream makes him passive, occupying his free time with cooking, books, music and astrology, waiting for success to finally strike him. Combined with his lack of commitment to a unique cultural identity and his withdrawal from interpersonal relationships, Bongbong becomes an isolated, hypocritical, and delusional hermit. At the end of the story, Bongbong can no longer identify with the world because he can no longer identify with himself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Bongbong's conflicting allegiances to the Philippines and America are manifested through his perception of others versus himself and lead to the abandonment of his American dream. Although Bongbong originally says that he "[wishes] he was a movie star", a quintessentially American dream, he tells Frisquito that "[his] sister is the biggest [liar] of them all" for signing up for a beauty class from Elizabeth Arden. and keep a modern apartment in order to assimilate into American culture. The contradiction between what Bongbong wants for himself and how he judges others is obvious. Soon after, Bongbong wrote to Frisquito, “If I went back to Manila, I could be a movie star” (86). It seems Bongbong doesn't know where he can succeed and has abandoned his starry-eyed hope of becoming a glamorous public figure in America. Perhaps he feels that in the Philippines, where he was known as the "best dressed young VIP", he is more likely to succeed because his natural command of Filipino culture gives him the advantage of trust (85). In America, however, without “any skills or college degrees,” he is unable to realize his dream (86). Bongbong presents another contradiction in his cultural loyalties when he simultaneously longs for the Philippines while being reluctant to reveal his country of origin. to Charmaine, a beautiful exotic woman who soon becomes Bongbong's friend. When Charmaine assumes he is a “Chicano”; he wants to tell him that he is “Ethiopian, or Moroccan, or Nepalese…” – that his country of origin has no importance for who he is today (88). He tries to shed his past to create a new identity, but fails because he cannot establish a concrete direction. To fill his days, he reads: “from bestsellers to plays, including political science and poetry. He doesn’t understand many things, but names and events [fascinate him].” (87). Bongbong buries himself in the books, but cannot understand their content. The books he chooses are “random” – and chosen based on “their titles or the color of their dust jackets” (87). If he cannot commit to being American from the inside, this superficial immersion in literature will not.