VENTURA, BRITTANY M.

BSE SST II-1

SUMMARY OF NOLI ME TANGERE

Noli Me Tangere also known as Social Cancer was written by a Filipino political activist
and author Jose Rizal. It was published in Berlin, in the year 1887 with the help of Maximo
Viola who was considered the savior of Noli Met Tangere. Moreover, the Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel that inspired Rizal to write the Noli Me Tangere that
depicts the Filipinos under the lash of Spanish oppressors especially the brutality and corruption
of clerical rulers in the Philippines.

The novel all started when Juan Crisostomo Ibarra came back to the Philippines after a 7-
year absence because of studying in Europe. Captain Tiago threw a party to celebrate his return
which was attended by friars and other influential figures. Unfortunately, the former curate
Father Damaso belittled and insulted Ibarra, but Ibarra ignored the insult and took no offense.
Ibarra went to see Maria Clara, his fiancée, a beautiful daughter of Captain. Their long-standing
love was clearly manifested in this meeting, and Maria Clara cannot help but reread the letters
her sweetheart had written to her before he went to Europe. Before Ibarra left for San Diego,
Lieutenant Guevarra, a Guardia Civil, revealed to him the incidents preceding the death of his
father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich haciendero of the town.

According to the Lieutenant, Don Rafael was accused of being a heretic and filibuster
without any evidence. Father Damaso's hatred against Ibarra's father was worsened by another
incident when Don Rafael helped out in a fight between a tax collector and a student fighting,
and the former's death was blamed on him, although it was an accident. Suddenly, all of those
who thought ill of him surfaced with additional complaints. He was imprisoned, and just when
the case was almost settled, he got sick and died in jail. However, Father Damaso not content
with what he had done, he arranged for Don Rafael's corpse to be dug up and transferred from
the Catholic cemetery to the Chinese cemetery because he thought it is inappropriate to allow a
heretic such as Don Rafael to have a Catholic burial ground. Unfortunately, it was raining and
because of the bothersome weight of the corpse, the men in charge of the burial decided to throw
the corpse into the lake.

Revenge was not in Ibarra's plans; instead, he carried through his father's plan of putting
up a school, since he believed that education would pave the way for his country's progress.
During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a sabotage had Elias a
mysterious man who had warned Ibarra earlier of a plot to assassinate him. Instead, the hired
killer met an unfortunate incident and died. The sequence of events proved to be too traumatic
for Maria Clara who got seriously ill but was luckily cured by the medicine Ibarra sent to her.
After the inauguration, Ibarra hosted a formal lunch during which Father Damaso who is
uninvited was gate-crashing the lunch and insulted Ibarra again. Ibarra ignored the priest's rude
and disrespectful behavior, but when the latter slandered the memory of his dead father, he was
no longer able to restrain himself at Father Damaso, prepared to the latter for his imprudence.
Consequently, Father Damaso excommunicated Ibarra. Father Damaso took this opportunity to
persuade the already-hesitant father of Maria Clara to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra.
The friar wished to marry a Peninsular named Linares who has arrived from Spain.
 With the help of Captain-General, Ibarra's excommunication was nullified and the
Archbishop decided to accept him as a member of the Church once again. But, as fate would
have it, some incident of which Ibarra had known nothing about was blamed on him, and he was
wrongly arrested and imprisoned. But the accusation against him was overruled because, during
the litigation that followed, nobody could testify that he was indeed involved. Unfortunately, his
letter to Maria Clara somehow got into the hands of the jury and was manipulated such that it
then became evidence against him. Meanwhile, in Captain Tiago's residence, a party was being
held to announce the upcoming wedding of Maria Clara and Linares. Ibarra, with the help of
Elias, took this opportunity and escaped from prison. But before leaving, Ibarra talked to Maria
Clara and accused her of betraying him, thinking that she gave the letter to write her to the jury.
Maria Clara explained to Ibarra that she will never betray him but that she was forced to
surrender Ibarra's letter to her in exchange for the letters written by her mother even before Maria
Clara was born. The letter mentioned that the child, Maria Clara, was not the daughter of Captain
Tiago, but of Father Damaso.

Afterward, Ibarra and Elias bounded a boat and left the palace. Elias instructed Ibarra to
lie down, and the former covered him with grass to conceal his presence. As luck would have it,
they were spotted by their enemies.