Bienvenido Santos' "When the Dancers Came," shares a common trait with the rest of his short stories in Scent of Apples. It is the trait that examines the sense of loss in the Filipino American community--a loss of home, country, and family. In "When the Dancers Came," Santos portrays this loss through the main characters of the story, Filimon "Fil" Acayan and Antonio "Tony" Bataller. Therefore, the main concentration of this dramatic story is the nostalgia that goes on between the two characters-- how the past is affecting their own sense of emotion and how the past is deceptive in a social sense and how this is affecting them in their present lives.

Fil is a very simple character in the story. Oftentimes, he seems to convey a very naive character in comparison to Tony, who sees life in a very different way as you will see later. Fil has a yearning to have a connection with his own countrymen. When he finds out that these dancers from the Philippines were coming, he was genuinely looking forward to see them and take them for a tour in Chicago. He's more in touch with his Filipino side and he's not willing to let himself be Americanized. He shows that he's very proud of his culture

Tony, on the other hand, is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Unlike Fil who's very eager to see these dancers, Tony seems very annoyed and tense about it. Tony seems to be a more complex character than Fil. It seems that deep inside, he longs to be in his country and to be with his fellow countrymen but at the same time he shows that he's like resenting himself for not being as successful as he thought he'd be living in America. Filipinos have this term called balikbayan. It's the idea that the person would leave the Philippines and eventually come back to their homeland wealthier. In the story, it seems as though Tony is not happy with his living situation and shows a sense of shame because he didn't achieve the goal he had set out for himself in America.

Like most Filipinos, he probably didn't have very high paying job. Filipinos around that time were probably looked down upon and discriminated. Fil actually described his idea of a job is for a U.S. citizen: "To a new citizen, work meant many places and many ways: factories and hotels, waiter and cook," which are jobs that are not considered as good careers (114). One Christmas, they both got drunk and Tony "fell giggling and cursed all the railroad companies of America" (118). This just shows what kind of jobs Filipino-Americans had at that time-jobs that are underpaid or jobs that deal with very hard

Some common words found in the essay are:
America Filipinos, Chicago He's, Physically Tony, Tony Bataller, Tony Fil, Unlike Fil, Fil I'm, Santos' Dancers, Filipino American, Dancers Santos, america filipinos, filipinos probably, day dancers,
Approximate Word count = 931
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)