Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal

Crisóstomo Ibarra, the mestizo son of the recently deceased Don Rafael Ibarra, is
returning to San Diego town in Laguna after seven years of study in Europe. Kapitán
Tiago, a family friend, invites him to a reunion party in Manila. At the party Crisóstomo
meets Padre Dámaso who was San Diego's parish priest when Crisóstomo left for
Europe. Dámaso treats Crisóstomo with hostility to the surprise of the young man who
regarded the priest as his father's friend. Later as Crisóstomo was walking back to his
hotel, Lieutenant Guevara, another friend of his father, informs him that Don Rafael may
have been killed for political reasons and Dámaso may have been involved. Guevara
warns him to be careful.
The following day Crisóstomo returns to Tiago's home to meet with his childhood
sweetheart, Tiago's daughter María Clara. As the two flirt and reminisce, María reads
back to him a part of his farewell letter on his discussion with his father about the state
of the country. Ibarra excuses himself eventually as it was time to go to San Diego.
At San Diego Crisóstomo goes to the cemetery and finds his father's grave desecrated.
He seeks out the gravedigger who then tells him that the parish priest had ordered Don
Rafael's remains transferred to the Chinese cemetery, but that he threw the corpse into
the lake instead out of fear and pity. At that moment Padre Bernardo Salví, the new
parish priest, walks by. An enraged Crisóstomo pushes him to the ground, demanding
an explanation. A fearful Salví states that he was only newly assigned to the town but
reveals that Padre Dámaso ordered the transfer.
Crisóstomo decides to forgive and commits to improvements in his town. He plans to
build a private school, believing that his paisanos would benefit from a more modern
education than what is offered in the government schools, which were under the
influence of the friars. Enjoying widespread support from the locals and Spanish
authorities, Crisóstomo's project advances quickly. He receives counsel from Don
Anastacio, a local philosopher, and recruits a progressive schoolmaster. Construction
was set to begin shortly with the cornerstone to be laid in a few weeks during San
Diego's town fiesta.
One day, Crisóstomo, María and their friends go on a picnic along the shores of
the Laguna de Baý. They discover that a crocodile had been lurking in the Ibarras' fish
pens. The boatman jumps into the water with a knife drawn. Crisóstomo follows him and
the two subdue the animal together. Elías, the boatman, proclaims himself indebted to
Crisóstomo.
On the day of the fiesta, Elías warns Crisóstomo of a plot to kill him at the cornerstone
ceremony. Sure enough, Crisóstomo evades injury and the would-be assassin is killed.
During the luncheon, an uninvited Padre Dámaso further berates Crisóstomo. The other
guests hiss for discretion, but Dámaso carries on and insults the memory of Don Rafael.
Crisóstomo then loses control, strikes the friar unconscious and holds a knife to his
neck. Crisóstomo tells the guests about Dámaso's schemes that resulted in his father's
death, but releases Dámaso when María Clara pleads for mercy. Crisóstomo
is excommunicated from the Church, but has it lifted in Manila through the intercession
of the sympathetic captain-general. Returning to San Diego, he finds María ill and
refusing to see him.
Meanwhile, Elías senses Crisóstomo's influence with the government and takes him for
a sail so they can talk in private. Elías reveals that a revolutionary group had been trying
to recruit him but he stalled in order to get Crisóstomo's views first. The conversation
shifts to Elías' family history. It turns out that Elías' grandfather in his youth worked as a
bookkeeper in a Manila office, but one night a fire consumes the office and the Spanish
proprietor accuses him of arson. He was prosecuted and jailed; upon release he was
shunned by the community as a dangerous lawbreaker. His wife turned to prostitution to
support the family. Their lives were ruined.
Crisóstomo says that he cannot help and his school project is his focus. Rebuffed, Elías
advises Crisóstomo to avoid him in the future, for his own safety. However, Elías returns
a few days later to tell him of a rogue uprising planned for that same night. The
instigators had used Crisóstomo's name in vain to recruit malcontents. The authorities
know of the uprising and are prepared to spring a trap on the rebels. Realizing the
scheme's repercussions, Crisóstomo abandons his school project and enlists Elías in
sorting out and destroying documents that may implicate him. Elías obliges, but comes
across a name familiar to him: Don Pedro Eibarramendia. Crisóstomo says Pedro was
his great-grandfather and that they had to shorten his long family name. Elías responds
that Eibarramendia was the same Spaniard who accused his grandfather of arson, and
thus condemned Elías and his family to misfortune. Elias leaves the house in
consternation.
The uprising takes place and many of the rebels are captured or killed. They point to
Crisóstomo as instructed and he is arrested. The following morning, the instigators are
found dead—Padre Salví, the mastermind of the uprising, ordered his senior sexton to
kill them in order to silence them. Elías, meanwhile, sneaks back into the Ibarra
mansion and sorts through documents and valuables, then burns down the house.
Crisóstomo and his co-accused are loaded into horse carts and taken to prison with
their townmates shouting in anger and casting stones as they passed.
Kapitán Tiago later on hosts a dinner at his riverside house in Manila to celebrate María
Clara's engagement with Alfonso Linares, a Peninsular who was presented as her new
suitor following Crisóstomo's excommunication. Present at the party were Padre Salví,
Padre Sibyla, Lieutenant Guevarra, and other acquaintances. They spoke of the events
in San Diego and Crisóstomo's fate. Salví, who lusted after María Clara all along and
staged the uprising in order to frame Crisóstomo, says he requested to be moved to the
Convent of the Poor Clares in Manila under the pretense of the San Diego uprising
being too much for him.
Guevara outlines how the court came to condemn Crisóstomo. In a signed letter he
wrote before leaving for Europe, Crisóstomo spoke of his father, an alleged rebel who
died in prison. Somehow this letter fell into the hands of an enemy, and Crisóstomo's
handwriting was copied to create recruitment letters for the uprising. The signature on
the letters was similar to Crisóstomo's seven years before, but not at present day.
Crisóstomo only had to deny ownership of the signature on the original letter and the
case built on the bogus letters would be dismissed. But upon seeing the letter, which
was of course his farewell letter to María Clara, Crisóstomo lost the will to fight the
charges, and he is sentenced to be deported. Guevara then approaches María who had
been listening. Privately but sorrowfully, he congratulates her for her common sense in
yielding the letter. Now, she can live a life of peace. María is devastated.
Later that evening Crisóstomo, having escaped prison with the help of Elías, confronts
María in secret. María admits giving up his letter because Salví found Dámaso's old
letters in the San Diego parsonage, letters from María's mother who was then pregnant
with her and begging Dámaso for an abortion. It turns out that Dámaso was María's
biological father. Salví promised not to divulge Dámaso's letters in exchange for
Crisóstomo's farewell letter. Crisóstomo forgives her, María swears her undying love,
and they part with a kiss.
Crisóstomo and Elías slip unnoticed through the Estero de Binondo and into the Pasig
River. Elías tells Crisóstomo that his family treasure is buried at the Ibarra forest in San
Diego. Wishing to make restitution, Crisóstomo tells Elías to flee with him to a foreign
country where they will live as brothers. Elías declines, stating that his fate lies with the
country he wishes to reform. Crisóstomo then tells him of his own desire for revolution
to lengths that even Elías was unwilling to go. Just then, sentries catch up with their
boat at the mouth of the Pasig River and pursue them across Laguna de Bay. Elías
orders Crisóstomo to lie down and to meet him at his family's mausoleum in the forest.
Elías then jumps into the water to distract the pursuers and is shot several times.
The following day, María reads in the newspapers that Crisóstomo had been killed by
sentries in pursuit. She remorsefully demands of Dámaso that her wedding with Linares
be cancelled and that she be entered into the cloister, or the grave. Seeing her
resolution, Dámaso admits he ruined Crisóstomo because he was a mere mestizo and
Dámaso wanted María to be happy and secure, and that was possible only if she
married a peninsular Spaniard. Knowing why Salví had earlier requested to be assigned
to the Convent of the Poor Clares Dámaso pleads with María to reconsider, but to no
avail. Weeping, Dámaso consents, knowing the horrible fate that awaits his daughter
within the convent but finding it more tolerable than her suicide.
A few nights later in the Ibarra forest, a boy pursues his mother through the darkness.
The woman went insane with the constant beating of her husband, the death of her
younger son in the hands of Padre Salví, and the loss of her elder son to the Guardia
Civil. Basilio, the boy, catches up with Sisa, his mother, inside the Ibarra mausoleum,
but the strain had already been too great for Sisa. She dies in Basilio's embrace. As
Basilio grieves for his mother Elías stumbles into the mausoleum, himself dying from his
wounds. He instructs Basilio to burn their bodies and if no one comes, to dig inside the
mausoleum. He will find treasure, which he is to use for his own education.
As Basilio leaves to fetch the wood, Elías sinks to the ground and whispers that he will
die without seeing the dawn of freedom for his people, and that those who see it must
welcome it and not forget those who died in the darkness.
Afterwards, it is revealed that Dámaso is transferred to a remote town; distraught, he is
found dead a day later. Tiago fell into depression, became addicted to opium and faded
to obscurity. Salví, while waiting for his consecration as a bishop, serves as chaplain of
the Convent of the Poor Clares. Meanwhile, during a stormy evening in September, two
patrolmen reported seeing a specter on the roof of the convent weeping in despair. The
next day, a government representative visited the convent to try to investigate the
previous night's events. One of the nuns had a wet and torn gown and with tears told
the representative of "tales of horror" and begged for "protection against the outrages of
hypocrisy" (strongly suggesting that Padre Salví regularly rapes her when he is in the
convent). The abbess, however, said that she was mad. A general also attempted to
investigate the nun's case, but by then the abbess prohibited visits to the convent.
Nothing more was said about this nun, or for that matter, María Clara.