Name: Bethany Jane C.

Mascardo Subject: Life and Works of Rizal

Course & Year: BPED-1st Year Schedule: MWF 4:00-5:00pm

The chapter 4 of Nick Joacquin’s book “A Question of Hero” talks about the
Anatomy of the Anti-Hero. It shows the discrepancy of the book of Leon Maria Guerrero
which is “The First Filipino” and the “Rizal From Within” by Ante Radiac.

Both books talk about the life of Rizal but it presents distinct view of who really our
national hero. Guerrero presents to us the man who has all the intelligence or which he
calls Rizal as the very embodiment of the intelligentsia and the petite bourgeoisie. He
stated that Rizal was the first man to use the term Filipino because all the revolts of the
native against Spain failed because the result doesn’t unite the Filipino as one nation.
Dagohoy proclaimed himself as the king of Bohol. Malong also proclaimed himself as
the king of Pangasinan and Almazan, king of the Ilocos. No one proclaimed himself that
they are Filipino. This was the failure of the revolts before.

What makes the book of Guerrero different to Ante Radiac’s book is that Guerrero
only state the admirable side of Rizal just like what he said in his book that “he was
brought up in circumstances that even in the Philippines of our day would be considered
privileged”. The hero was really privileged because of his family background, the
wealthiest in their town by owning 2 stone houses, a library and able to send Rizal in
Manila to study. But what Guerrero believed is that even if Rizal born as peasant and in
penury, he will still have made a mark because of his character, even if he is in different
environment with a difference experience in the world, might have made him another
version of Bonifacio. What Rizal prefer was reform than revolution and if revolution
then revolution from below. And because he prefer a reform rather than revolution, this
brought dilemma in our present day. The retraction of Rizal causes a lot question about
his title as the national hero.

In Radiac’s book, he doesn’t just expose the goodness and popularity of Rizal in his
time but he presents the blemishes, physical deficiency, anxieties, nostalgia, feelings of
inferiority, insecurities, complexes and other weaknesses of Rizal as he was on his young
age until he grow in maturity. Radiac believes that there are parts of Rizal that he was so
weak that he stated that Rizal was aggrieved by his puny physique and was told of being
faint-hearted and dubitator by Miguel Unamuno. He has insecurities of being small and
weak in body compare to the people around him who were stronger than him. He can’t
even join competitions or games because of his small stature. Rizal wants to be like them
but eventually produces inferiority complex but Radiac says that Rizal’s career reduce
the discrepancy between the image of who he is and what he wanted to be. It produces in
himself a determination to excel. Radiac sees Rizal as underprivileged, born heavily
handicapped but he rose because of his efforts to overcome his disadvantage and he
wants to show the world that even if he was small, he was capable in turning his
inferiority into a career of ascension.