AIMS Sample

Aims - This stage is a full account of what you were trying to find out and why it was important. In a different description in more traditional terms, the aims contain the rationale, significance of the study, and the stratement of the problem.

EXAMPLE

Horror is one of the sub-genres of fiction in the Philippines. One would expect that since there are a number of horror stories and movies, the said genre would be defined in Philippine terms. This is not the case, however. One has to resort to studies of scholars like David Hartwell (1987) who has traced the tradition of horror fiction in the English and American literature for more than 150 years. Hartwell defines horror stories a

Stories – all clustered around the principle of a real or implied or fake intrusion of the supernatural into the natural world, an intrusion which arouses fear. (Hartwell, 1987: 4-5)

Contrary to this definition, Anthony J Fonseca and June Michele Pulliam (1999) state that horror fiction need not have the intention of inducing fear from the reader. They assert that such works, instead, should contain a monster.

No concrete definition exists for Filipino horror but Fonseca and Pulliam concepts are applicable to our own reading of the horror story. Nick Joaquin even states that horror fiction has to be totally realistic, its plot set in “broad daylight among the matter-of-fact, the commonplace, the quotidian” (Quirino, 1982: vi). He explains that horror fiction authors use various elements from myths and legends. Scholars like Maximo Ramos, and others as well as studies made by the Philippine Folklore Society lend credence to this as they traced elements of mythology and folklore in horror fictions that spans the various cultural regions of the Philippines (Ramos, 1971: 1). In Cebu, there is no known research in the genre.

Thus, this study aims to fill in this gap in the existing knowledge. In addition, it seeks to reveal the connections between the horror story and myths and legends. It attempts to substantiate that “abat” is a term which encompasses all different types of monsters. And since literature is a reflection of the human experience, the results of the study will contribute to the better understanding of the Cebuano and Filipino identity.

In order for the objectives to be realized, the paper analyzed the Cebuano horror stories found in the post-war Bisaya Magazine, from 1948-2000. The following are the different aspects of the topic that were covered by this study: (1) the different traits and forms of the abat, (2) the functions and the roles of the abat in the stories, (3) the evolution of the abat through the post-war period, and (4) the abat’s contribution to the definition of the Cebuano horror story.