Module 4 - Nationalism in The Novels3

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MODULEGE
4:2 (Readings
SSciin7Philippine History
(The Life and Works) of Jose Rizal)
MODULE 4 : Nationalism in the Novels
Activity Description Time to Complete
Asynchronous
1. Formative Activity 1 – 2 – 3 Exit Ticket 60 min.
2. Lesson Proper Readings:

60 min.
Section 1. Synopsis of the Novels
Section 2. Nationalism in the Novels
Synchronous Reinforcement Discussion on:

90 min
Noli Me Tangere (Synopsis)
El Filibusterismo ( Synopsis)
Nationalism in the Novels
3. Summative Reflection
150 min
Assessment
Total: (360 minutes)
2020-21 Module Packet for General Education -2 (Readings in Philippines History), College of Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Education, University
of San Agustin Iloilo City, Philippines.
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MODULE 4 : Nationalism in the Novels
This module discusses the nationalism of Dr. Jose Rizal that conveys in his two novels, Noli
Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of this section, you are expected to:
1. Discuss the synopsis of the novels of Dr. Jose Rizal
2. Compare and contrast Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo
3. Reflect on the fervors of nationalism conveyed from the two novels
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Activity . 3 – 2 – 1 Exit Ticket
LIST THREE THINGS YOU REMEMBER FROM THE TWO NOVELS
1. __________________________________________________
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2. __________________________________________________
3. __________________________________________________
GIVE TWO EXAMPLES OF NATIONALISM IN EL FELIBUSTERISMO & NOLI ME

TANGERE
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1. __________________________________________________
2. __________________________________________________
WRITE ONE QUESTION YOU HAVE OR SOMETHING YOU ARE CONFUSED

ABOUT
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?______________________________________________________
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READINGS:
Section 1. Synopsis of the Novels
Rizal was a cultured man of ideas, a scholar with versatile talents, an intellectual
humanist obsessed with the fact that his people must be liberated from their oppressive
ignorance and delivered into a conscious awareness of unity and freedom by means of
education.
None of Rizal’s writings has had a more tremendous effect on the Filipino people
than his two novels that courageously criticized Philippine life during the 19 th century – Noli
Me Tangere and El Filibustirismo. These works of fiction expressed the theme of Philippine
nationalism in a most profound and dramatic manner to arouse the latent spirits of a
frustrated people. And though Rizal aimed his message to the people of his own generation,
the novels remain the most potent inspiration for national unity today. They are considered
“the greatest Philippine social documents.” And in official recognition of the “gospels of
Philippine nationalism,” the Congress of the Philippines passed Republic Act 1425 on 12
June 1956, making the reading of the two novels compulsory in all the country’s colleges
and universities.
The profundity of these two novels has made Rizal known all over the world as the
foremost Asian nationalist. With utmost perspicacity the novels express his concept of love
of country with an innate sense of dedication. Through them he boldly spoke out against
unjust Spanish colonial exploitation and he agitated for political and social reforms. Ironically
these works strongly warned against rebellion against Spain but they triggered off the first
nationalist uprising in Asia. And for his temerity in speaking out his mind, Rizal paid dearly
with his life leaving behind a conscious people aware of what they had to do.
The alert reader today will find the Noli and the Fili two delightful, if somewhat
poignant comedies of manners, not unlike many novels of Victorian England. Running
through their pages is an unforgettable array of Dickensian characters, ranging from true
nationalists and pseudonationalists to pitiful victims of the society’s malaise.
The reader will find the novels irreverent at times and out-spokenly anti-clerical for
fiction of the 19th century, but they were written to present an anarchy of unbridled greed
existing in the country. Rizal was not necessarily anti-religious. But as he trained his guns
with impunity on the Spanish friars whom he felt were responsible for the misery of his
countrymen, he inevitably condemned some procedures and practices of the religion behind
which the friars were shielding themselves.
Rizal’s novels are more meaningfully studied as political satires for his reform
propaganda. With disarming honesty, Rizal wrote to free the human spirit from deterioration
as depicted in the historical situation from 1877 to 1887.
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To the Filipino reader who understands the historical background of the novels, Rizal
traced the delicate portrait of a people faced with social problems and political enigma.
Many of the predicaments presented have contemporary relevance. And the novels provide
an inexhaustible source of inspiration for solutions to current conditions and problems.
Noli Me Tangere literally means “touch me not.” It sketches a wound painful even to
the healer’s touch causing more agony than relief. The concerned healer reveals the actions
that a frustrated society resorts to in the moment of despair. Such despair could force the
oppressed to insurgence, as El Filibustirismo, the sequel, suggests.
Rizal did not advocate revolution. But while he spoke vehemently against it in his
novels, he emphasized that revolution would be the inevitable alternative if no attempt were
made by the Spanish government to introduce social and political reforms and check the
injustices committed against the natives. An enslaved people, Rizal claimed, eventually
would revolt against their oppressors. To the philosopher Rizal, freedom meant liberty, and
liberty meant the free exercise of people’s rights.
With a sensitive pen, Rizal portrayed in his novels the miserable plight of the Filipino
masses in an effort to convince the Spanish authorities that there was an urgent need for
reforms in society, in the government, and in the Catholic Church of the Philippines. He did
not put the blame of society’s malaise entirely on the Spaniards; he felt that the indios had
an equal share of hypocrisy and indifference. Thus, while the novels are sincere
denunciations of the abuses and excesses of authority committed by the friars and the civil
administrators, they are also an honest exposure of the weaknesses and defects of the
Filipinos. “There are tyrants where there are no slaves,” he often said. And he hoped that by
presenting an authentic picture of decadent Philippine society – a picture he ahd largely
drawn from his own experiences and observations - he would awaken a lethargic people to
a realization that only through education of the masses could a strong moral fiber be
developed.
To understand Rizal’s purpose in writing the novels, one has only to look at his
dedication of the Noli Me Tangere, which reads thus:
To My Country:
In the catalogue of human ills there is to be found a cancer so malignant that

the least touch inflames it and causes agonizing pains; afflicted with such a cancer, a
social cancer, has your dear image appeared to me, when, for my own heart’s ease
or to compare you with others, I have sought, in the centres of modern civilization, to
call you to mind.
Now desirous of your welfare, which is also ours, and seeking the best cure of
your ills, I shall do with you what was done in ages past with the sick, who were
exposed on the steps of the temple so that the worshippers, having invoked the god,
should each propose a remedy.
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To this end, I shall endeavor to show your condition, faithfully and ruthlessly, I
shall lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the disease, sacrificing to the truth
everything, even self-love for, as your son, your defects and weaknesses are also
mine.
The Author
Europe, 1886
The fervor in Rizal’s nationalism is articulated in the dedication of El Filibusterismo:
To the memory of the priests, Don Mariano Gomez, eighty-five, Don Jose Burgos,
thirty, and Don Jacinto Zamora, thirty-five, who were executed on the scaffold of
BAgumbayan on 28 February 1872.
The Church, by refusing to unfrock you, has put in doubt the crime charged against
you; the Government by enshrouding your trial in mystery and pardoning your co-
accused has implied that some mistake was committed when your fate was decided;
and the whole of the Philippines in paying homage to your memory and calling you
martyrs totally rejects your guilt.
As long therefore as it is not clearly shown that you took part in the uprising in Cavite,
I have the right, whether or not you were patriots and whether or not you were
seeking justice and liberty, to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil I am
trying to fight. And while we wait for Spain to clear your names some day, refusing to
be a party to your death, let these pages serve as a belated wreath of withered
leaves on your forgotten graves. Whoever attacks your memory without sufficient
proof has your blood upon his hands.
J. RIZAL
Noli Me Tangere
(Touch Me Not)
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Juan Crisostomo Ibarra is a young Filipino who, after studying for seven years in Europe,
returns to his native land to find that his father, a wealthy landowner, has died in prison as
the result of a quarrel with the parish curate, a Franciscan friar named Padre Damaso.
Ibarra is engaged to a beautiful and accomplished girl, Maria Clara, the supposed daughter
and only child of the rich Don Santiago de los
Santos, commonly known as Capitan Tiago.
Ibarra resolves to forego all quarrels and to work

for the betterment of his people. To show his
good intentions, he seeks to establish, at his own
expense, a public school in his native town. He
meets with ostensible support from all, especially
Padre Damaso’s successor, a young and gloomy
Franciscan named Padre Salvi, for whom Maria
Clara confesses to an instinctive dread.
At the laying of the cornerstone for the new

schoolhouse, a suspicious accident, apparently
aimed at Ibarra’s life, occurs, but the festivities
proceed until the dinner, where Ibarra is grossly
and wantonly insulted over the memory of his
father by Fray Damaso. The young man loses
control of himself and is about to kill the friar,
who is saved by the intervention of Maria Clara.
Ibarra is excommunicated, and Capitan Tiago, through his fear of the friars, is forced to
break the engagement and agree to the marriage of Maria Clara with a young and
inoffensive Spaniard provided by Padre Damaso. Obedient to her reputed father’s command
and influenced by her mysterious dread of Padre Salvi, Maria Clara consents to this
arrangement, but becomes seriously ill, only to be saved by medicines sent secretly by
Ibarra and clandestinely administered by a girl friend.
Ibarra succeeds in having the excommunication removed, but before he can explain
matters, an uprising against the Civil Guard is secretly brought about through agents of
Padre Salvi, and the leadership is ascribed to Ibarra to ruin him. He is warned by a
mysterious friend, an outlaw called Elias, whose life he had accidentally saved; but desiring
first to see Maria Clara, he refuses to make his escape, and when the outbreak page
occurs, he is arrested as the instigator of it and thrown into prison in Manila.
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On the evening when Capitan Tiago gives a ball in his Manila house to celebrate his
supposed daughter’s engagement, Ibarra makes his escape from prison and succeeds in
seeing Maria Clara alone. He begins to reproach her because it is a letter written to her
before he went to Europe which forms the basis of the charge against him, but she clears
herself of treachery to him. The letter had been secured from her by false representations
and in exchange for two others written by her mother just before her birth, which prove that
Padre Damaso is her real father. These letters had been accidentally discovered in
the convento by Padre Salvi, who made use of them to intimidate the girl and get
possession of Ibarra’s letter, from which he forged others to incriminate the young man. She
tells him that she will marry the young Spaniard, sacrificing herself thus to save her mother’s
name and Capitan Tiago’s honor and to prevent a public scandal, but that she will always
remain true to him.
Ibarra’s escape had been effected by Elias, who conveys him in a banka up the Pasig to the
Lake, where they are so closely beset by the Civil Guard that Elias leaps into the water and
draws the pursuers away from the boat, in which Ibarra lies concealed.
On Christmas Eve, at the tomb of the Ibarras in a gloomy wood, Elias appears, wounded
and dying, to find there a boy named Basilio beside the corpse of his mother, a poor woman
who had been driven to insanity by her husband’s neglect and abuses on the part of the
Civil Guard, her younger son having page disappeared some time before in the convento,
where he was a sacristan. Basilio, who is ignorant of Elias’s identity, helps him to build a
funeral pyre, on which his corpse and the madwoman’s are to be burned.
Upon learning of the reported death of Ibarra in the chase on the Lake, Maria Clara
becomes disconsolate and begs her supposed godfather, Fray Damaso, to put her in a
nunnery. Unconscious of her knowledge of their true relationship, the friar breaks down and
confesses that all the trouble he has stirred up with the Ibarras has been to prevent her from
marrying a native, which would condemn her and her children to the oppressed and
enslaved class. He finally yields to her entreaties and she enters the nunnery of St. Clara, to
which Padre Salvi is soon assigned in a ministerial capacity.
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EL FILIBUSTIRISMO
The book is also known in English by the title The Reign of Greed.
The protagonist of El Filibusterismo is a jeweler named Simoun. He is the new identity

of Crisostomo Ibarra who, in the prequel Noli, escaped from pursuing soldiers. It is revealed
that Crisostomo dug up his buried treasure and fled to Cuba, becoming richer and
befriending Spanish officials.
After many years, the newly fashioned Simoun returns to the Philippines, where he is able to
freely move around. He is a powerful figure not only
because of his wealth but also because he is a good
friend and adviser of the governor general.
Outwardly, Simoun is a friend of Spain; however, in

secret, he is plotting a terrible revenge against the
Spanish authorities. His two obsessions are to rescue
his paramour Maria Clara from the nunnery of Santa
Clara and to foment a Philippine revolution against
Spain.
The story of El Filibusterismo begins on board a

steamer ship sailing up the Pasig river from Manila to
Laguna de Bay. Among the passengers are
Simoun; Doña Victorina, a pro-Spanish native woman
who is going to Laguna in search of her henpecked
husband, Tiburcio de Espadaña, who has deserted
her; Paulita Gomez, her beautiful niece; Ben-Zayb (anagram of Ibañez), a Spanish
journalist who writes silly articles about the Filipinos; Padre Sibyla, vice-rector of the
University of Santo Tomas; Padre Camorra, the parish priest of the town of Tiani; Don
Custodio, a pro-Spanish Filipino holding a position in the government; Padre Salvi, thin
Franciscan friar and former cura of San Diego; Padre Irene, a kind friar who was a friend of
the Filipino students; Padre Florentino, a retired scholarly and patriotic Filipino
priest; Isagani, a poet-nephew of Padre Florentino and a lover of Paulita; and Basilio, son
of Sisa and promising medical student, whose medical education is financed by his
patron, Capitan Tiago.
A man of wealth and mystery, Simoun is a very close friend and confidante of the Spanish
governor general. Because of his great influence in Malacañang, he was called the “Brown
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Cardinal” or the “Black Eminence”. By using his wealth and political influence, he
encourages corruption in the government, promotes the oppression of the masses, and
hastens the moral degradation of the country so that the people may become desperate and
fight. He smuggles arms into the country with the help of a rich Chinese merchant, Quiroga,
who aspires to be Chinese consul of Manila. His first attempt to begin the armed uprising did
not materialize because at the last hour he hears the sad news that Maria Clara died in the
nunnery. In his agonizing moment of bereavement, he did not give the signal for the
outbreak of hostilities.
After a long time of illness brought about by the bitter loss of Maria Clara, Simoun perfects
his plan to overthrow the government. On the occasion of the wedding of Paulita Gomez
and Juanito Pelaez, he gives a wedding gift to them a beautiful lamp. Only he and his
confidential associates, Basilio (Sisa’s son who joined his revolutionary cause), know that
when the wick of his lamp burns lower the nitroglycerine, hidden in its secret compartment,
will explode, destroying the house where the wedding feast is going to be held killing all the
guests, including the governor general, the friars, and the government officials.
Simultaneously, all the government buildings in Manila will be blown by Simoun’s followers.
As the wedding feast begins, the poet Isagani, who has been rejected by Paulita because of
his liberal ideas, is standing outside the house, sorrowfully watching the merriment inside.
Basilio, his friend, warns him to go away because the lightened lamp will soon explode.
Upon hearing the horrible secret of the lamp, Isagani realizes that his beloved Paulita is in
grave danger. To save her life, he rushes into the house, seizes the lightened lamp, and
hurls it into the river, where it explodes.
The revolutionary plot is thus discovered. Simoun is cornered by the soldiers, but he
escapes. Mortally wounded, and carrying his treasure chest, he seeks refuge in the home of
Padre Florentino by the sea.
The Spanish authorities, however, learns of his presence in the house of Padre
Florentino. Lieutenant Perez of the Guardia Civil informs the priest by letter that he will
come at eight o’clock that night to arrest Simoun.
Simoun eludes arrest by taking poison. As he is dying, he confesses to Padre Florentino,

revealing his true identity, his dastardly plan to use his wealth to avenge himself, and his
sinister aim to destroy his friends and enemies.
The confession of the dying Simoun is long and painful. It is already night when Padre
Florentino, wiping the sweat from his wrinkled brow, rises and begins to meditate. He
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consoles the dying man saying: “God will forgive you Señor Simoun. He knows that we are
fallible. He has seen that you have suffered, and in ordaining that the chastisement for your
faults should come as death from the very ones you have instigated to crime, we can see
His infinite mercy. He has frustrated your plans one by one, the best conceived, first by the
death of Maria Clara, then by a lack of preparation, then in some mysterious way. Let us
bow to His will and render Him thanks!”
Watching Simoun die peacefully with a clear conscience and at peace with God, Padre
Florentino falls upon his knees and prays for the dead jeweler. The priest then takes the
treasure chest and throws it into the sea.
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Section 2. Nationalism in the Novels
The Plots of the Novels
Noli Me Tangere is the story of Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, scion of a wealthy family,
who returns home to San Diego “where still roam deer and boars” from his seven-year
education in the German section of sophisticated Switzerland. During his absence, his
father Don Rafael Ibarra was imprisoned for the accidental death of a Spanish tax-collector.
Don Rafael died in prison and he was denied a Christian burial by Father Damaso, San
Diego’s parish priest, because he had stopped going to confession long before his death,
and was a subscriber to liberal publications.
The young Ibarra finds the deplorable conditions in his country virtually unchanged
since he had left for Europe. Inflamed with a desire to educate his people and bring
progress to his hometown, he establishes a school, patterned after the progressive schools
he had known in Europe. His project, though enthusiastically endorsed by the townspeople,
is met with skepticism by the old scholar Tasio who years before had attempted to do the
same thing but he failed. The new parish priest,
Father Salvi, also looks at the school disapprovingly
for he sees it as a dangerous threat to his authority
over the natives.
During the laying of the school’s cornerstone,

an attempt is made on Ibarra’s life but he is saved by
Elias, the mysterious boatman whom he had earlier
rescued from death during a picnic at the lake. The
friars constantly harass and persecute Ibarra at San
Diego. At one gathering, the vilification hurled against
his dead father almost provoked Ibarra to kill Father Damaso, but his hand is stayed by his
fiancée Maria Clara. He is excommunicated by the friar and later absolved by the
Archbishop.
Finally, a false rebellion is plotted and through forged documents, Ibarra is implicated
as its leader. Unwittingly, his fiancée had lent support to the plotter by providing them with a
specimen of his signature when she was forced to exchange his love letter for some letters
which contained the hidden secret or her paternity.
Ibarra is imprisoned and later rescued once again by Elias who hides him in a banca
covered with zacate and rows him under a barrage of gunfire. Elias is wounded and
sacrifices his life for his beloved friend. Ibarra quietly buries Elias in the woods belonging to
his family; then he flees the country, leaving the impression that he died from the civil
guard’s bullets.
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The distraught Maria Clara is urged by Father Damaso to marry the Spaniards
Alfonso Linare. She refuses and enters the nunnery of the Poor Clares instead.
El Filibustirismo picks up the threads of the narrative where Noli leaves off, with the
return of Ibarra, under an assumed name Simoun. On board the dingy steamer, Tabo,
enroute to San Diego on the Pasig River, he is the subject of conversations on the lower
deck. The thirteen years away from his country has transformed him into an exotic looking,
mysterious personality. He radiates great influence and he becomes the indispensable
consultant and closest friend of the Governor General.
No one suspects that Simoun, the affluent jeweler, is the fugitive Ibarra. Only Basilio,
son of the demented Sisa of Noli Me Tangere, comes to know the secret. But even Basilio
finds it difficult to reconcile the dreamer and the idealist that once was Ibarra to the shrewed,
sly schemer that is now Simoun.
Now a young man pursuing a medical career, Basilio stumbles on Simoun’s secret on
a Christmas day visit to his mother’s grave in the woods of the Ibarras. Simoun tries to win
Basilio to his side as he explains his plans. He has returned to overthrow the government
and avenge the injustices he has suffered. He would use his wealth and his influence to
encourage corruption in the high circles of government; as a result, he would drive the
people to despair and incite them to revolution. His obsession, the revolution, would
primarily become a fulfilment of his vow of vengeance. The people’s freedom in the process
came only as a secondary purpose.
Twice Simoun attempts to ignite the fires of rebellion but he fails. On the first
occasion, the news of Maria Clara’s death reaches him just as he is about to give the signal
for the coordinated attack on the city. He had planned this revolution so that in the ensuring
confusion he would be able to rescue Maria Clara from the nunnery. But now she is dead.
In his numbness, he forgets that his followers await his signal. Panic ensues and they break
out in disorganized rampage.
His second attempt is thwarted by Isagani, the young poet, who snatches the lamp
Simoun sends as a wedding gift to Isagani’s former sweetheart who marries another suitor.
The lamp contained a homemade bomb which was timed to blow up when all the invited
high officials and friars were seated at the wedding feast. Having been warned by his good
friend Basilio of the impending explosion, Isagani risks his life to save his faithless Paulita.
Meanwhile, a parchment prophesying doom is passed around among the wedding guests
and Simoun is pinpointed as the instigator of the scheme. The signature identifies Simoun
as Ibarra.
Simoun flees with his box of jewels. Hunted by the law and wounded, he seeks
sanctuary in the house of a native priest, Father Florentino. To escape his pursuers, he
takes poison and dies in despair.
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The Characters
As gospels of Philippine nationalism, Rizal’s novels convey the essence of his

nationalism that was to reverberate in the hearts of his people. He identified this essence in
his letters as his aspiration: to alleviated the sufferings of the masses, to make men worthy,
to avenge one day the many victims of cruelty and injustice, to erect a monument to the
native tongue and to educate his people.
In Noli and Fili, the essence of Rizal’s nationalism is best understood through a study
of the characters. Through their dialogue and actuations, in their ideas and ideals, or in the
lack of these are seen Rizal’s range of vision, his concept of love of country, his appeal for
reforms, his attitude towards the friars, and his views on the weaknesses of the Filipinos.
The characters are the Spaniards and the Filipinos whom Rizal praise, or condemned with
compassion.
Ibarra-Simoun. The main protagonist in the Noli is Juan Crisostomo Ibarra y

Magsalin, first shown as a well-mannered young man recently arrived sometime in
the 1880s from his studies and travels in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Spain. His
maternal surname symbolizes the “translated” Filipino. His paternity goes back to the
Pelayos and Elcanos of Northern Spain. Al Elcano was companion to Magellan. His
grandfather was a taciturn Basque, Don Saturnino, a conqueror of the soil; his father
was the well-loved Don Rafael, who was fascinated by the native camisa and
indigenous culture while subscribing to Madrid publications, and who venerates the
likeness of the “executed priest” (Fr. Jose A. Burgos). These forebears have provided
Ibarra with “his more than average height, the impression of youth and of health,
equally developed in mind and body, [with] slight traces of Spanish blood, beautifully
bronzed and somewhat rosy in the cheeks (Noli, p 13).”
Upon his return to the Philippines, Ibarra is easily the talk of the town.
Indeed one of the most serious newspaper in Manila had devoted to Ibarra a front-
page article entitled ‘Imitate Him!’; lavishing advice on him and not a few praises. It
had called him the cultured youth and wealthy businessman; two lines below that ‘the
distinguished philanthropist’; in the next paragraph, ‘the pupil of Minerva who went to
the motherland to greet the true home of the arts and sciences’; a little farther on,
‘The Filipino Spaniard’, and so forth. (Noli, p 169)
The long-ignored respectability of the father is remembered; Don Rafael is publicly

acknowledged as “one of the most honorable and honest men in the Philippines” (Noli, p
14). Even the friars, such as Father Sybila, are willing to accede some credit: “The young
Ibarra is sensible enough; he doesn’t seem stupid; I think he is all right (Noli, p 49).” Indeed
Ibarra is gracious and respectful but sensitive and quick to strike at anyone who would
malign the good name of his dead father. In the course of time he becomes a harassed
young man whose ambitious projects fail one by one.
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In the Fili, Ibarra reappears as Simoun, an influential jeweler. His contrasting

appearance is an ingenious disguise. He is tall, lean, sinewy and very deeply tanned:
Who dressed in the English fashion and wore a pith helmet. His most striking
gesture was his long hair, completely white, which set off a black goatee so sparse
that it suggested he was a half-breed. To protect himself from the sun, he always
wore a pair of huge dark glasses that covered his eyes and part of his cheeks
completely, giving him the appearance of a man who was either blind or suffered
from some defect in his eyesight. (Fili, p 6)
Having the reputation of being the “adviser and true author of all the acts of His
Excellency the Governor-General (Fili, p 3),” he is sarcastically referred to as the “Brown
Cardinal” or “His Black Eminence” by the natives who compared him to that influential
Capuchin adviser of the notorious Cardinal Richelieu. Ibarra is no longer the educator but a
corruptor bet on the collapse of Castillian sovereignty. People recognize his carriage and his
Escolta residence, but doubt whether he is half-English or half-Latin-American.
Elias. Ibarra’s mysterious friend Elias appears in an almost deux ex machina fashion
every time Ibarra is in trouble. His robust appearance is marred by great sad eyes and a
stern mouth, long, unkempt black hair that falls to his strong neck, and a coarse dark shirt
that reveals powerful sinewy arms.
Although regarded as an outlaw, Elias is no ordinary renegade. His family

misfortunes had forced him to brigandry. Elias’ grandfather had been a bookkeeper in the
employ of Don Pedro Eibarramendia. When a fire razed the district where Don Pedro lived,
the bookkeeper was blamed. He was publicly flogged and dragged through the streets by a
horse, in effect “executed” through total ostracism and humiliation. His wife, in despair for
the family’s needs, turned to prostitution. The husband hanged himself and widow, accused
of causing the hanging, left the town with her two children.
In time, the older son Balat had become a dreaded tulisan while the younger brother
stayed in the woods with their mother. Balat eventually got caught and his body was
quartered. His trunk was buried, his limbs were exhibited in different towns, and his head
was forcibly hung at the entrance to his mother’s hut. Seeing this gory piece, the mother
died on the spot.
The younger brother then fled to Tayabas to start a new life but misfortune followed
him all the way. He soon fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy man, but before they
could marry, his lineage. The woman, however, gave birth to the twins, Elias and his sister,
and died soon after. Their father was tortured in prison and left for dead.
The children were then raised by their wealthy grandfather who sent them to good
schools leaving them a large legacy. In a dispute, a disgruntled relative uncovered their past
and they were forced to leave town with an old, devoted servant who turned out to be their
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real father. The father soon died in misery. Soon, Elias’ sister, bereft of her betrothed,
disappeared; she was found dead with a dagger pierced on her breast. Elias feeling
abandoned and desolate became an outlaw. As such he could freely comb the hills and
towns in search of the descendants of the man who caused his family misfortunes.
Tasio. The spirit of nationalism is also reflected in Don Anastacio, the scholar. Tasio
is the fool to the majority who are apathetic to his unorthodox ideas and bizarre behavior.
Because he had brain, his mother decided that his security lay in the priesthood and not in
an academic career. He gave up his studies for love but was widowed and orphaned in less
than a year. To avoid self-pity, idleness and the temptations of the cockpit, he concentrated
on his books. He became so engrossed in his hieroglyphics and other intellectual pursuits
that he neglected his estates and was completely ruined.
Once he had planned to open a school, but failed because so many factors worked
against him. In the story, he reacts coldly to Ibarra’s own plans for a town school, but offered
true sympathy and sensible advice. Upon Ibarra’s arrest and imprisonment, Tasio’s efforts to
testify to Ibarra’s innocence prove futile. His long walk to town compounded by his
excitement and anger at the obvious conspiracy against Ibarra exhausts him. He is found
dead at the foot of the stairs of his house.
Maria Clara. Ibarra’s fiancée is Maria Clara de los Santos, daughter of Doña Pia
Alba de los Santos and Father Damaso. Don Santiago, Doña Pia’s husband, had always
regarded her as his child. She was a Caucasian beauty with a classic profile. Her hair was
fair and her nose was well-shaped. She had a winsome mouth with cheerful dimples, white
onion-fine skin, and “her mother’s eyes, large, black, shadowed by long lashes, gay
sparkling when she was at play, thoughtful and deep otherwise (Noli, p 37).”
Her mother’s death of puerperal fever evoked endless sympathy for the orphan. She
became everybody’s darling and she responded with all graciousness. She became the
object of paternal affection and concern of her baptismal godfather, Father Damaso.
Maria Clara provided continuity and motivation in the story. She is Ibarra’s inspiration
in the planning and execution of his projects in two novels. The odyssey of her locket used
by Rizal as literary device to link incidents in the development of the plot. The locket a gift
from Capitan Tiago is tenderly given away to a leper. Much later, in the Fili, the locket is
given to Basilio by the leper as payment for medical treatment. Basilio lovingly offers to his
sweetheart Juli, who hesitantly allows her father Matanglawin (Cabesang Tales) to use it as
payment to Simoun for arms and ammunitions. Simoun is quietly overjoyed at obtaining the
locket as a memento of lost love.
Father Damaso Verdolagas. The former parish priest of San Diego, a Franciscan, is
easily the antihero in Noli. His verbosity is matched only by his arresting manner. “His
classic features, penetrating look, heavy jaws, and herculean build, gave him the
appearance of a Roman partrician in disguise (Noli, p 5).” His voice was rough and his
17
humor, “like that of a man who never held his tongue and who thinks that what he says s
dogma and beyond and question.”
He is depicted as an uncouth, bigoted, power-mad ingrate, the personification of

depraved evil among the friars. He had been in the country for 23 years and served as
curate of San Diego for 20 years. There he had come to know most of the townspeople
intimately. He exploited them apparently for the interest of his Church and Kin, but actually
for his own personal gain and convenience.
He had no respect for any authority except his religious superior. He denounced the
Madrid misters as “mad.” He was a renegade Carlist during the reign of King Alfonso. He
dominated his associates and caused fear due to his irritating innuendoes, downright
indignities, and utter disregard of people’s feelings. His manners were brusque thus failing
to cultivate the trust and confidence of his parishioners.
But his toughness was mellowed when he sought the welfare of Maria Clara. His love
and concern for his daughter seemed to be the only good in this Franciscan priest.
The Undesirables. These are the characters that portray the pervading social cancer
in the novels of Rizal. The most harmless looking among them erodes society with their
base intentions and nobody takes them seriously. The pretentious Chinese half-breed Don
Santiago de los Santos leads this group. He is an entertaining character and it is equally
challenging to uncover, beneath the naughty sarcasm, the cancers for which his type is
responsible.
“He was short and rotund, thanks to an abundance of fat that, according to his
friends, was a sign of heavenly favour and, to his enemies, came from battening on
the poor… his face wore a habitually amiable expression… there was no lack of
brains in his skull, which in outward appearance was small and round. And covered
with ebony-black hair cut long in front and very short in the back. His eyes, small but
not at all almond-shaped, never betrayed emotion… he would have been quite
justified in believing and passing himself off for a handsome man if his mouth had not
been distorted by the abuse of tobacco and betel-nut …. Nevertheless, that bad habit
had not impaired the whiteness of his own teeth and two other furnished by the
dentist at twelve pesos each (Noli, p 28).
Capitan Tiago was one of the richest property-owners in Binondo, Pampanga, and
the lakeside town of San Diego. He had come to his fortune and social title by marrying
Doña Pia Alba, a prominent good-looking mestizo who was very astute in the sugar, coffee
and indigo business as well as in the management of farm lands in San Diego. Capitan
Tiago would patronize new ideas but would not dare to accept them without prior approval of
the religious or civil authorities.
“Santiago does not consider himself a native,” Father Damaso remarks about him.
For Capitan Tiago tries to imitate the Europeans in dress and in manners. “He would put on
18
a frock coat and top-hat to go to the cockpit, the market, religious processions, the humblest
Chinese store.” Aligning himself with the Spaniards, he would exploit the natives.” His
subordinates considered him a martinet and a tyrant; the poor thought him ruthless, cruel,
and ready to profit from all their miseries (Noli, p 34).”
Was he feared or laughed at? “It is true that his debtors welcomed him with
orchestras, gave banquets in his honour, and showered him with gifts. The best fruit will
always be found on his table, when a deer or wild pig was caught, he was given a quarter; if
he admired a debtor’s horse, it was in his stables half an hour late. But people at him behind
his back and called him Sacristan Tiago (Noli p. 55).”
About his religiosity, “Capitan Tiago had never addressed himself to God in his
prayers, not even in his greatest difficulties; he was rich, and he let his money pray for him
(Noli, p 29).”
His materialism is such that he considers Maria Clara’s loss of a sweetheart

secondary only to his loss of money. Forced to break his daughter’s engagement to Ibarra,
he thinks of his money, too:
“Calm yourself, my child, I am more unfortunate than you and I am not crying.
You can find another fiancé, a better one, but I, I am losing fifty thousand pesos!
(Noli, p 229).”
He is always eager to please the authorities who consider him “full of the best will in
the world, peaceful, obsequious, obedient, and generous with gifts.”
Capitan Tiago was a happy man, as happy as a man with a little brain could be
in those parts; he was rich, he was at peace with God, with the Government, and with
men (Noli, p 29).”
When this peace is later threatened, Capitan Tiago withdraws to that haven of opium.
In the Fili, this addiction causes his death.
The other undesirables are the Espadañas. Doña Victorina is another native who
tries to act more Spanish than the Spaniards. She is almost illiterate and unintelligent. She
speaks little Spanish, but nonetheless she considers herself superior to most people
because of her pretenses to Spanish affinity. She claims to be 32 years at 45, and disdains
her many Filipino suitors for a Spanish husband.
At the time of the story in the Noli, she is married to Don Tiburcio de Espadaña – a
late marriage, to be sure, but to a Spaniard nevertheless. She has grown to be “ more than
blowsy; she was over blown.” Her hair had dwindled down to a bun the size of an onion, her
face was furrowed with wrinkles, her teeth were falling; she had to squint to see some
distance away. She is a pretentious and domineering shrew, and holds her husband in
19
control by threatening to tear out his false teeth and leave him a horrible sight for days if he
would not grant her wishes.
The husband is a lame and bald man who stutters and sprays saliva when he talks. A native
of Extrmadura, Spain, he had come to the Philippines as a customs official, but aside from
getting seasick and breaking a leg during his trip, he had the ill fortune of finding his
dismissal papers waiting for him upon his arrival. Jobless and hungry, he felt that a marriage
to Dona Victorina would alleviate his woes. In the Noli, through his wife’s machinations, he
passes for a Doctor of Medicine who treats only patients” of quality.” His only qualifications
were his work experience as an attendant in the hospital of San Carlos in Madrid and his
citizenship.
In the Fili, Don Tiburcio is the Philippine Ulysses, hopping from town to town, with his
Calypso in pince-nez Doña Victorina in hot pursuit. He finds refuge at the offshore residence
of Father Florentino, she finds distraction in her niece Paulita Gomez’s suitor Juanito
Pelaez. The reader parodies of the Filipino without identity, the Spaniards without dignity;
apparently harmless creatures, yet for their huge number they actually magnify the
insincerity and absurdity of Philippines society.
The Supporting Characters. Other symptoms of the social cancer are indicated
among the victims of poverty and ignorance. These are Sisa, driven by her sufferings to
insanity, and her sons, ten-year-old Basilio who survives the family travails and pursues a
medical career in the Fili, supporting himself through servitude to and vigilance over the
opium addict Capitan Tiago, and seven-year-old Crispin, who becomes a fatal target of the
blows of the parish caretaker.
The victims of injustice are equally pathetic figures. Cabesang Tales is driven to
outlaw by circumstances that reveal the roots of agrarian malaise in the country. His son,
Tano, “so good, so honest!” is conscripted into military service in the Carolines where he is
so alienated and confused by physical and moral distress that he comes home in a state of
shock. He did not recognize the dumb old man who is his own grandfather Selo, whom he
shoots in a clash with some “bandits.”
Tano’s sister Juli, beloved of Basilio, is the innocent and hardworking rustic who sacrifices
her honor and her life for her family and beloved.
The nameless and countless defeatists are typified by the fanatic Tertiary sisters,
Rura, Sipa and Juana whose examples prefigure the “spit level” Christianity of
Contemporary Filipinos – “perfect” Christians in name alone. A frivolous sense of values is
displayed by Paulita Gomez, niece of Dona Victorina and sweetheart of Isagani, who
marries the more affluent Juanito Pelaez. Another character common even today is Senor
Pasta whose pertenses to learning have made him voluble in evasive argument.
The misdirected zeal of the unholy friars has definitely aggravated the social cancer.
Along with Father Damaso in interfering with the public welfare are Father Bernardo Salvi,
20
ecclesiastical governor of the archdiocese and incumbent curate of San Diego, and Fathers
Hernando de la Sybila and Camorra.
The idealists and dreamers must excise the cancer before they succumb to their own
deterioration and hopelessness. The Dominican Father Fernandez lends a fair ear to his
students; he is Isagani’s classical exception to the majority of uncaring, illogical friar-
teachers. Isagani, nephew of Father Florentino and young poet trained at the Ateneo, is a
symbol of the liberated Filipino youth whose unselfish devotion urges him to save the
faithless Paulita. He aborts Simoun’s master conspiracy to blow up the Spanish hierarchy at
the wedding party.
Rizal's ultimate spokesman in the Fili is Father Florentino. He os a distinguished

native priest whose serious countenance evinced the "tranquility of a soul strengthened by
study and meditation and perhaps tested by intimate moral sufferings" (Fili, p 17). He is
Rizal's portrait of the ideal shepherd of God's flock.
The delicate and noble delineation of characters is the strongest literary asset of the
novels. Replying to the torrent of comments, suggestions and queries that was unleashed
by the Noli, Rizal said:
I am not enraged with all the Spaniards. In my work there are noble honorable
Spaniards. . . There are also bad Indio's, worse even than various Spaniards. My
adversaries would like me to portray the Peninsular Spaniards like angels and the
Filipinos like stupid men, without drawing distinctions. This is not only folly but also an
imitation of Spanish writers, and I do not do this. There are persons who enjoy
grumbling or backbiting but they are resentful when they hear the truth.
This motley array of characteristics treated humorously or satirically at times, portray

the causes and the symptoms and the cure of the social cancer itself. The suffering of the
people, the constraints in the school and judicial systems, the misdirected concern and ill-
defined roles of the military, civil, and religious authorities and the multifarious concepts and
manifestations of nationalism, are depicted in these great works of art.
Expressions of Nationalism Among the Characters. The spirit of nationalism that

pervades in the novels is expressed in the impassioned dialogue of the principal
protagonists. At other times it is implied by the veiled comments and actuations of the
sensitive characters whose ignorance of Rizal sought to eradicate.
In the early part of the Noli, the principal character Ibarra elucidates Rizal's political
sentiment that Spain and the Philippines were two parts of one nation and that loyalty to one
was loyalty to the other. One was patria grande, the other was patria chica; today this is
recognized as nationalism and regionalism.
Ibarra states in a toast that is reminiscent of Rizal's brindis speech of 1884,

"Gentlemen, in spite of everything, I give you Spain and the Philippines. "( Noli, p 19)
21
This sentiment for one's country is based on the knowledge of the country's tradition
and culture. Thus, Ibarra explained to a young Spaniard at the bienvenida party:
Before visiting any of those countries i would try to study its history, its Exodus,
so to speak, and after that I found everything understandable. I saw that in all cases
the prosperity or unhappiness of nations is in direct proportion to their liberties and
their problems, and by that token, to the sacrifices or selfishness of their ancestors." (
Noli, pp 18-19)
Later as he reflects on the country's ills and the possibility of rebellion, he says:
'No, in spite of everything, my country comes first - first the Philippines,

daughter of Spain - first Mother Spain. What was destined, what was unavoidable,
cannot stain the honour of the Motherland." (Noli, p 47)
And later, he again says to Tasio:
"Is my love of country incompatible with love for Spain? . . . I love my country,
the Philippines, because I owe her my life and happiness, and because every man
should love his country. I love Spain, the country of my forefathers, because, after all,
the Philippines owe and will owe to Spain both happiness and future." (Noli, p 159)
Conversing with the Governor General, Ibarra honestly declares:
"Sir, my greatest desire is the happiness of my country, a happiness which I

would wish to be due to the Motherland and to the efforts of my fellow citizens, one
united to the others with eternal ties of common ideals and common interests. What I
ask can only be given by the Government after many years of continuous work and
the correct measures of reform." ( Noli, p237)
However, the disillusioned Ibarra turned Simoun in the Fili looks forward to the
separation of the Philippines from Spain and urges Basilio to work for a free nation:
"... So they refuse to integrate you into the Spanish nation. So much the better!
Take the lead in forming your own individuality, try to lay the foundations of the
Filipino nation. They give you no hopes. All the better! Hope only in yourselves and
your own efforts. They deny you representation in the Spanish parliament. Good for
you! Even if you were able to elect representatives of your choosing, what could you
do there but be drowned among the many voices, yet sanction by your presence the
abuses and wrongs which may be afterwards committed? The less rights they
recognize in you the more right you will have later to shake off their yoke and return
evil for evil. If they refuse to teach you their language, then cultivate your own. Make
22
it more widely known, keep alive our native culture for our people, and instead of
aspiring to be mere province, aspire to be a nation, develop an independent, not a
colonial mentality, so that in neither rights nor customs nor language the Spaniard
may ever feel at home here, or ever be looked upon by our people as a fellow citizen,
but rather, always as an invader, a foreigner, and sooner or later you shall be free."
(Fili, pp 51-52)
In Simoun , Rizal provides a philosophy of patriotism:
"However perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue in

oppressed peoples because it will always mean the love of justice, freedom and self-
respect ... A man is great not because he goes ahead of his generation, which in any
case impossible, but because he guesses what it wants. The intellect may think that
geniuses are ahead of their time, but they only appear so to those who look at them
from afar or who mistake the rearguard for a whole generation ." (Fili, p 53)
Elias' enkindled love for country is shown in his sympathy for the poor and the
oppressed who are the victims of Spanish repression in the islands. He is the people's
spokesman as he outlines to Ibarra the abuses committed on them by the friars and the civil
authorities. And the pleads with the young man in whom he sees qualities of leadership to
use his influence to seek reforms. In vain does he convince Ibarra of the imperativeness of
the reforms to prevent the suffering masses from rising up in arms.
Towards the end of the Noli, as both he and Ibarra are being hunted by the
authorities, Ibarra invites Elias to leave the country. Elias refuses and insists:
"Impossible. It is true that I cannot live or be happy in my country but I can

suffer and die in it, and perhaps for it; that is something. Let the misfortunes of my
country be my own, and since our people are not all united by a noble ideal, since our
hearts do not beat faster to the same name, at least our common unhappiness may
unite me with them. I shall weep with them over our sorrows, and let the same
misfortunes oppress all our hearts." (Noli, p 386)
When the embittered Ibarra vows to return to incite revolution, Elias counsels by
reminding Ibarra of his former words:
"I would tell you to think well about what are you going to do. You are going to
start a war, for you have money and brains, and will easily find many helping hands;
unfortunately many are discontented. But in this fight which you propose to start, the
defenseless and the innocent will suffer most. The same sentiments which a month
ago led me to ask you for reforms, lead me now to ask you to reflect further. Our
country does not think of independence from the Motherland; she asks nothing more
than a small measure of liberty, of justice, and of love. The discontented, the criminal
and the desperate will follow you, but the people will stand apart. I would not follow
23
you myself; I would never resort to these extreme measures while I could see some
hope in man." (Noli, pp 388-89)
Isagani, on the other hand, nurses a sentimental desire to die for his country:
Ah, he too would like to die, to become nothing, to leave his country a glorious
name, to die for her, defending her against foreign invaders, and let the sun
afterwards shine on his dead body, an immovable sentinel on the rocks of the sea!
(Fili, pp 195-96)
Contrasted to this patriotic fervor is Senor Pasta's reply to Isagani when the young
poet asked the lawyer to work for the student's cause on the question of the Academy for
the Spanish language:
"O yes, I yielded to no one in my love of country and in my progressive ideas,

but . . . I cannot commit myself. I do not know whether o or not you realize my
position; it is very delicate . . . I have many interests . . . I must act within the limits of
strict prudence . . . It would be most embarrassing. (Fili, p 116)
Tasio, disgusted with the failure of his projects and futility of overcoming the
obstacles to progress, cynically advises Ibarra to be resigned to things as they are:
"Why shouldn't we do as that weak stem loaded with roses and buds? The
wind blows and shakes it and it blows down as if to hide its precious burden. If the
stem were to stay straight it would break, and wind would scatter the flowers, and the
buds would die unopened. But the wind passes on, and then the stem straightens up
again, proud of its treasure. Who will blame it for having bowed necessity? . . . To
fight alone against the world is not courage but foolhardiness." (Noli, pp 160-61)
Regarded as a fool by people who did not understand his progressive ideas, Tasio
withdraws into his ivory tower. In spite of his frustrations, he looks forward to a bright future
for his country where ignorance shall have been replace by liberal and noble ideas from
Europe, and his country would encourage economic and technological development.
Decadence in the Social Order. Rizal's concept of nationalism is not only expressed
explicitly in the patriotic dialogue of the characters, but also largely reflected in the portrayal
of a Philippine society that needed social reforms.
The town of San Diego was typically rural, inhabited by petty, petulant people. "In
San Diego no less than in Rome, there were continuous quarrels, for each authority wanted
to be the sole master and found the other superfluous. (Noli, p 56) The mayor's office" had
cost him five thousand pesos and many humiliations, although, considering the income, it
was cheap at that." (Noli, p 55)
The dingy steamer, Tabo, that sluggishly plies the Pasig River in the Fili
24
Was typical of the country, something like a triumph over progress, a steamship that
was not quite a steamship, changeless, defective but an undisputable fact, which,
when it wanted to look modern, was perfectly happy with a new coat of paint. No
doubt the ship was genuinely Filipino! With a little good will, it could even be taken for
the Ship of State itself built under the supervision of Most Reverent and Illustrious
personages. (Fili, p 1)
The placement of the steamer’s passengers suggests the positions of the oppressed
and the oppressors in a colonial hierarchy. It also reveals the kind of discrimination that
Rizal knew so well in his college days. Accordingly,
below decks could be seen brown faces and black hair; natives, Chinese, half-
breeds, jammed in among baggage and cargo, while above them on the upper deck,
under the awning that protected them from the sun, and handful of passengers
dressed in European style, friars and officials, were seated in comfortable armchairs,
smoking huge cigars and admiring the view, without taking the slightest notice of the
efforts of the skipper and the crew to negotiate the difficulties of the passage. (Fili, p
2)
The abuses of these “upper deck passengers” are exposed by Rizal as the true
“social cancer.” As a consequence, people had lost their self-respect. They are berated by
Don Filipo: “Sacrifice your self-esteem for a good cause. You sacrificed it before for a bad
one, and you ruined everything,” he reminds them, referring to a community project. (Noli, p
113)
But the social cancer is conditioned by foreign factors of which the local authorities
wash their hands. “It’s plain to see,” smirks Father Damaso “ever since the Suez Canal was
opened, we have been corrupted. Before, when we had to go round the Cape (of Good
Hope), we didn’t get so many souls here, nor did so many go abroad to lose their souls.”
(Noli, page 220)
Whatever the cause of source to the cancer, indolence was always pointed to be at
its root. A young Spaniard inquires:
“Are the natives really born lazy? Or was that foreigner traveller right who said
that we Spaniards use this change of laziness to excuse our own, as well as to
explain the lack of progress and policy in our colonies? He was, of course, speaking
of other colonies of ours, but I think the inhabitants there belong to the same race as
these people.”
Simoun satirically remarks:
25
“Beer is a good thing. I have heard Father Camorra say that the lack of energy
in this country is due to the fact that its inhabitants drink so much water.” (Fili, page
15)
“The trouble is not that there are bandits in the mountains and in uninhabited places,”
Simoun continues (page 76). “The trouble lies with bandits in the towns and cities,” cynically
alluding to both religious and civil authorities, whether peninsular or local in origin, who
viciously exploited the natives. Decadence pervaded in the morass of bias and in the
misguided innate virtue of family practices and values.
These are shown in Capitana Tinay’s parody of Rizal’s mother Teodora Alonso. Tinay
announces, “I shall tell my son to give up his studies. They say wise men die on the
gallows.” (Noli page 25)
Ibarra pinpoints the parochial view of the people as an urgent reason for further
education. In his letter to Maria Clara, he quoted his father’s legacy:
“You must learn something about life in order to serve your country. But you
cannot learn it here; if you stay with me, under my care, sharing my worries from day
to day, you will never be able to take in a long view. And when I’m gone, you will be
like the plant described by our poet Baltazar, grown in water, withering the moment it
is not tended, shrivelled by a touch of sun.” (Noli, page 42)
With the fragile Sisa, it was simply a matter of ignoring the problem until it resolved
itself. Thus, did she close her hut and stoke the handful of coals in the kitchen stove. “Thus
does man cover up with the ashes of outward indifference the burning emotions of his soul
lest they be extinguished by careless exposure “to one’s fellow.” (Noli, page 85)
Ibarra laments the presence of bad officials, abetted by inert people:
“There are officials who are useless, even bad, if you will, but there are also
good ones, and, if the latter can do nothing, it is because they are faced with an inert
mass, the people, who take scant interest in the matters which concern them.
However, I did not come here to argue with you on this point; I came to ask your
advice. You say I should my head before grotesque idols.” (Noli, page 159)
As Simoun, he is irked by the absence of initiative. To Basilio, he remonstrates:

“Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages oppression. There are
no tyrants where there are no slaves. Man is by nature so evil that he always abuses his
powers when he is not resisted.” (Fili, page 54) Exasperated by Basilio’s non-involvement,
Simoun chides: “Don’t you realize that a life which is not dedicated to a great idea is
useless? It is a pebble lost in the field, when it should form part of some building.” (Fili, page
52)
26
The Abuses of the Religious Authorities
Rizal further depicts the corruption of the clergy in the characters of Father Damaso,
Salvi, Sibyla and Camorra. The friar was generally regarded as “the chief moral, political,
and civil authority in the town, supported by his order, feared by the government, high,
powerful, consulted, listened to, believed and obeyed always by all” (Noli, page 98) As such,
he demanded privileges and enjoyed priorities over high government officials whose tenures
of office he could control. As expected, his respect for civil authority depended on its
convenience to his whims. “The highest civil official in the Philippines was, in the opinion of
the priests, much inferior to the convent cook.” (Noli, page 16) Tasio noted this to Ibarra:
“The lowest lay-brother is more powerful than the Government with all its soldiers” (Noli,
page 156)
The priest made the civil officials fear them. They controlled the acts of the ignorant
natives and threatened indios’ heads with excommunication for the slightest sign of
disrespect and disobedience. In this sermon delivered on the feast of San Diego one sees
the utmost trepidation:
“Listen to what the Holy Councils say. When a native meets a priest on the
street, he shall bend his head and offer his neck so that the Father may lean on it; if
the priest and the native are both on horseback, then the native shall stop, and shall
take off his hat reverently; and finally if the native is on a horseback and the priest is
on foot, the native shall get off his horse and will not remount until the priest tells him
to be off, or has gone out of sight. That is what the Holy Councils say and whoever
does not obey shall be excommunicated. (Noli, page 199)
Father Damaso regarded the indios with contempt. He called them lazy, vicious, and
ungrateful even when he was royally entertained at their homes. He despised their
aspirations for enlightenment;
“You know what the native’s like. Let him learn a few letter and he passes
himself off as a doctor. All these chaps go off to Europe without having learned to
wipe their noses.” (Noli, page 220)
He orders the schoolmaster of San Diego to stop teaching to his pupils “Don’t go
around in borrowed clothes. Use your own native tongue. Don’t go spoiling Spanish; it’s not
for you.” (Noli, page 98)
This opposition to the education of the masses is supported by many of his

colleagues. Father Salvi secretly tries to foil Ibarra’s school project, and Fathers Irene,
Sibyla, and Camorra, argue strongly against the students’ petition for the establishment of
the academy for the Spanish language. One says’
27
“But the natives should now know Spanish, don’t you realize that? When the
do. They start arguing with us and they have no business arguing, all they should do
is pray and obey, they have no business interpreting laws and books.” (Noli, page 82)
This biased attitude causes Isagani’s grievances which he tells Father Fernandez. He
accuses the friars of
“Curtailing the pursuit of knowledge . . . stiffing al fervor and enthusiasm for it,
and implanting in us outmoded ideas, discredited theories and false principles
incompatible with progress.” (Fili, page 219)
The friars, who could easily encourage the latent abilities of the native, insulted and
exploited him. They made him think that religion was a matter of observing external rituals,
mouthing devotional prayers without understanding them, and rendering strict obedience to
the friars. They made him believe that salvation could be obtained through a generous
donation to the Church, paying for a large number of masses or candles lighted at the shrine
of a particular saint. Thus, Captain Tiago made his gold pray for him and completed with
Doña Patrocinio on the display of religious fervor and generosity.
Many of the friars were sadly deficient in spiritual leadership. Despite the vow of
chastity, they had immoral liaisons with native women who, either through threat or gentle
persuasion had accede to their carnal desires. Maria Clara is a product of such liaison and
Juli is a victim of Father Camorra’s lewd designs. In utter shame, she jumps from the
second-floor window of the convent to her death.
The friars were guilty of bribery and corruption. In the Fili, Father Camorra asked
Captain Basilio for a gift of a pair of lady’s earrings; otherwise the parish priest’s unfavorable
report would cause the Captain’s great harm. “These earrings were compulsory gifts” (Fili,
page 38) and the students gave Father Irene a pair of chestnut horses to gain approval of
their petition.
The friars also enriched themselves not only by exhorting excessive fees for Church
services (200 pesos for Father Damaso’s sermon on the feast of San Diego), but also by
unjust acquisition of landed estates. The religion orders would stake claims on certain on
certain parcels of land and rent them out to tenants. Very often, the property was already
owned by some natives who would vainly protest this illegal occupancy.
On the eve of their first harvest, a religious Order which owned the lands in the
neighboring town had claimed ownership of the newly acquired fields, alleging that they
were within the limits of its property, and to establish its claim immediately attempted to put
up boundary markers. The administrator of the religious Order’s estate, however, let it be
understood that out of pity he would allow Tales the enjoyment of the land of an annual
rental, a mere trifle, a matter of 20 or 30 pesos. (Fili, page 24-25)
Not wishing to anger the powerful friars, the peace-loving Tales gave in. After a year,
for one reason or another, the friar landlords raised the rental to P50.00. The rental
28
increased annually from then on and when it reached to P200.00, Cabesang Tales
grumbled in protest. The friar administrator threatened that if Tales would not pay, then
another tenant would take over. Thinking that the friar was not serious Tales refused to pay
and he brought the case to court and dared to “battle against a most powerful Religious
Order before which Justice lowered her head and judges dropped their scales and
surrendered their swords.” After a long period of litigation, the case was decided against
Tales. An appeal to the higher court proved futile, and the poor man turned to the eventual
life of an outlaw.
In a letter to Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, Rizal showed his vehemence to friar

hypocrisy:
I have replied to the insults that for so many centuries have been heaped upon
us and our country. I have described the social conditions, the life there, and
our beliefs, our hopes, our desires, our complaints our sorrows. I have
unmasked hypocrisy that under the clock of religion impoverished and
brutalized us. I have distinguished the true religion from the false, from the
superstitious, from that which capitalizes on the holy word in order to extract
money, in order to make us believe in absurdities of which Catholicism would
blush if it would know them. I have lifted the curtain in order to show what is
behind the glittering words of our government. I have told our complaints, our
defects, our vices, and our culpable and cowardly complacency with the
miseries over there in the Philippines. Whenever I have virtue, I have
proclaimed it and rendered homage to it… The incidents are all true and they
happened!
Corruption in the Civil Government. The civil government perpetuated anomalies

with its own defective organization which was largely dependent on the authority of the friars
and with the appointment of the weak officials who had no training at all in government
administration. As Tasio succinctly points out,
“The Government itself sees nothing, and decides nothing except what the
parish priest or the head of the religious Order makes it see, hear, and decide. It is
convinced that it rests on them alone; that it stands because they support it; that it
lives because they allow it to live; and that the day they are gone, it will fall like
discarded puppet. It is only an arm, the convent is the head. (Noli, p 157)
Isagani lament this situation to Senor Pasta:
“Governments have been made for the good of peoples, and to fulfill their
purposes properly, they must follow the wishes of the citizens who best know what they
need.” (Fili, p 117)
29
But the Governor General clarifies to Ibarra the over-centralized and under
systemized policy:
“Here, we old soldiers must do everything and be everything: King, Ministers of

State, of War, of the Interior, of Economic Development, of Justice, and all that. What
is worse, we must consult the home government on every point, and that distant
government, according to circumstances, approves our proposal, sometimes without
knowing anything about them. And we Spaniards say: jack of all trades, master of
none! Furthermore, we come, usually knowing little about the country, and leave it
just when we are getting to know it… We in the Government do not lack good
intentions, but we are compelled to make use of the eyes and arms of others, whom
we usually do not know, and who perhaps, instead of serving the interest of the
country, only serve their own. That is not our fault but that of circumstances.” (Noli, p
236)
Regarding the presence of corrupt officials in the government, the concerned

Lieutenant Guevarra tells Ibarra:
“The continual changes in the administration, demoralization in high places,

favoritism, combined with the cheaper fares and shorter trip out here since the Suez
Canal was opened, are to blame for everything; the worst elements of the Peninsula
come here, and if a good man comes, he is soon corrupted by the present condition
of the country.” (Noli, p 22)
The majority of peninsular Spaniards sent to the Philippines resembled Tiburcio de

Espadana, the Customs official in the Noli who could not even speak Spanish correctly. Laid
off by the government that found him incompetent, he staves off hunger by marrying a
wealthy indio and naively allows himself to be called a Doctor of Medicine even though he
knew nothing about the profession.
The corrupt Governor General in the Fili bribed his way into his appointment using
Simoun’s money. His excessive lack of administrative ability is shown in his dependence on
Simoun, whose Machiavellian design and ridiculous decisions distorted his sense of values.
He pays more attention to trivial matters than to the pressing needs of the country. He
tolerates gambling as it would enrich government coffers, and, consequently, his own
pocket. Although it is prohibited to encourage the cultivation of poppy in the colony, he
allows opium-smoking because it “gives the government, without any work at all, a yearly
revenue of more than four hundred and fifty thousand pesos.” (Noli, p 236)
The civil government ignored the basic needs of the people. It discouraged freedom
of the press. It entrusted the matter of educating the natives to the friars who discouraged
the learning of the natives. It often showed a maladministration of justice, with decision
constantly tipped to favor the Spaniards, as in the case of Cabesang Tales, or favored the
30
party that gave “gifts” to the judges. It also exploited the natives through conscript labor and
increased taxes.
The Civil Guard. One of the government agencies, the guardia civil, particularly
stands out in its cruel treatment of the natives. Rizal's novels describe the illegal searches
and planned robberies committed by the guards in the guise of law enforcement, as well as
the terrible tortures suffered by the people.
Answering Ibarra's assertion that the guardia civil is a necessary institution for
security of the towns, Elias gives proof of its rampant abuses:
"It paralyses communication because everybody is afraid of being harassed

for petty causes. It is concerned with appearance rather than with fundamentals --one
of the first symptoms of incapacity. A man is tied and beaten up because he has
forgotten his identity card, no matter if he is a decent person with good reputation.
The officers think it is their duty to exact a salute, willing or unwilling, even at night,
and they are imitated in this by their subordinates, who use it as an excuse-- although
an excuse is never lacking--to manhandle and fleece the peasants. The sanctity of
the home does not exist for them; not long ago they entered a house in Kalamba
through the window and beat up a peaceful inhabitant to whom their commanding
officer owed money and favours. There is no security for the individual: when they
want their barracks or their houses cleaned, they go out and seize anyone who does
not resist and make him work the whole day." (Noli, p 309)
Elias observes that the guardia civil lorded over the towns for fifteen years, yet
outlaws abounded, robberies continued and the perpetuators were never caught. Crime
existed and real culprits went about freely, while the peaceful inhabitants cringed in terror.
"Ask any honest citizen if he looks upon the constabulary (guardia civil) as a good
thing, as a means of protection furnished by the Government and not as an imposition, a
despotism whose excesses are more harmful than the depredations of the outlaws... One
cannot even protest against the imposition of the forces of laws and order." (Noli, pp 308-
309)
The Defective Educational System. Another deplorable aspect of the colonial

government was the poor administration and ineffective supervision of the educational
system in the country.
The importance of the school system was acknowledged. At the laying of the
cornerstone of Ibarra's school, the governor proclaimed:
"Residents of Sand Diego, we have the honour to preside over a ceremony

whose importance you will understand without our telling you. This is the foundation
of a school, and the school is the foundation of society, the book on which is written
31
the future of nations. Show us the schoosl of a nation and we shall tell you what kind
of a nation it is." (Noli, p 205)
Ibarra complemented:
"I want my country's good, that is why I am building the schoohouse, but I seek
it through education, through progress. We cannot find our way without the light of
knowledge." (Noli, p 320)
The town situation was pitiful. In San Diego, before Ibarra return, there was no school
building. The school master in the Noli had to use a portion of the “ground floor of the parish
house, beside the carriage of the parish priest" as a schoolroom. Under these
circumstances, not much learning was accomplished, to the delight of Father Damaso. The
schoolmaster was limited by the curriculum prescribed by the parish priest and cautioned
against teaching the pupils Spanish language. Added to his difficulties was the prejudice
against educating the people. Out of 200 children listed, only 25 came to class regularly.
(Noli, p 96) The teacher denounces this desperate condition to Ibarra:
"In our present circumstances education will be never be possible without the
most powerful help, first, because the young have no inducement or encouragement
to study, and secondly, because even if they had, they would be stifled by poverty
and other needs more pressing than education. They say that Germany even the son
of the peasant spends eight years in the village school. Here, who would spend half
that time where there is so little to be gained from it? They learn to read and write,
they memorize passages, whole books, in Spanish, without understanding a single
word--how does school do any good to our village boys?"
"A poor school teacher does not fight single-handed against prejudices,
against certain influences. I would need, above all, a schoolhouse, a place to teach
in; now I must do so on the goundfloor of the parish house, beside the carriage of the
parish priest." (Noli, p 96)
Teachers had no prestige:
"The children lose their respect for their teacher when they see him badly
used, and unable to assert his rights. If the teacher is to be listened to, if his authority
is to be beyond question, he needs prestige, a good name, moral authority, a certain
freedom." (Noli, p 96)
Teachers were downgraded:
“Neither learning nor zeal are expected from a schoolmaster; only resignation,
self-abasement, and passivity.” (Noli, p 08)
32
At the college level, it was a farce. A very discouraging atmosphere is shown in the
physics class described in the Fili. The schoolroom was bare except for an impressive for an
mahogany framed blackboard. Whatever laboratory equipment the school had locked away
in a glass cabinet for students “to gaze at but not touch.” It would be brought out from time
to time for display. No laboratory experiments were conducted and class recitation was
often a farce. Why go to school?
One went to school, they argued not to study or learn but to complete the
prescribed course, and, if they could memorize the textbook, nothing more could be
asked of them and they would be sure to pass on to the next grade. (Fili, p 42)
One went class not to learn but to avoid the mark (for absence), there was
nothing else to the class except to recite the lessons by heart, to read the textbook,
and at most to answer one or two questions, abstract, profound, misleading,
enigmatic; there was never lacking, it is true, the usual little homily on humanity,
submission and respect for the religious, (Fili, p 92).
The professor invariably required his students to recite the day’s assignment
by heart and word for word. The human phonographs went to work, some well, others
helped by friendly promptings. Whoever accomplished a flawless recitation gains a
good mark; whoever made three mistakes, a zero.
Basilio passed his oral examination by “answering the only question they asked him
like a machine, without pausing for breath, and the examining board approved his
performance amid great laughter.” (Fili, p 42)
The college teachers were very often insulting; they even stooped to make fun of the
students’ names. And all the students felt at the end of the session that
each one of them had lost one more hour of his life and with it a measure of
his dignity and self-respect, an hour which, on the hand, had added to the
discouragement, resentment, and aversion to study in his heart.
For just like the two hundred and thirty-four [students in Physics class],
thousands before them had wasted their time and, if matters were not set right, so
would others still to come, to be brutalized, to have their dignity outrage and their
youthful enthusiasms turned into indolence and hatred, like waves on a polluted
beach that one after the other accumulate the garbage upon it. (Fili, p 103)
A few hopefully kept their optimism. Basilio joined the science enthusiast’s
bandwagon: “It is the goal of the most cultured nations.” (Fili, p 52) Señor Pasta singled out
the responsibility of students: “He who wants to learn, learns and learns well.” (Fili, p 120)
33
The Plight of the Filipinos. Eight million Filipinos had become the victims of human
indignities. Rizal did not spare them from censure. He sympathized with their sufferings, yet
he felt that the people’s indifference had made them inert. His sensitive pen reminded the
people that these follies and misfortunes were caused by a colonial subservience that had
to stop; the moral cast of his thoughts demanded a renewal of strength and a recourse of
change.
There was abject misery among the poor: “Sugar prices were low, the rice harvest
had been lost, half the work animals had died, rentals and taxes were rising no one knew
why or what for, while more and more abuses by the Constabulary discouraged
merrymaking in the towns.” (Fili, p 37) The people were continuously exploited and
harassed by the authorities such as the despondent Sisa, whose sons are falsely accused
of stealing the parish priest’s money. The younger of the two, Crispin, is beaten to death by
the sacristan mayor. The family of Cabesang Tales suffered poverty and oppression andis
driven to outlawry as Sisa becomes insane.
It was futile to complain against the excesses of authority. Day after day they were
reminded that they had no right to question authority – they born to serve, they were fit only
to be ruled, and therefore, they were not supposed to complain. The most effective
constraint was the threat of filibusterismo, or subversion, the serious charge for a non-
conformist attitude of mind, “as an overt attempt to overthrow an established order of
society.” (Fili, p XIV)
Simoun decribes the depredations of the natives to Father Florentino thus:
“Ah, if you had seen what I have: unfortunate wretches suffering unspeakable
tortures for crimes they never committed, the murders done to conceal the crimes or
blunders of others, pitiful fathers of families torn from their homes to work uselessly
on highways that crumbled the next morning and which seemed to be built to bury
their families in misery – endure, work, it is the will of God!” (Fili, p 296)
Rizal did not wholly blame the religious and civil authorities for their sordid state of
affairs. The people themselves, by their timidity, fear and cowardice had shackled their
minds and debased their souls. They gradually allowed the Spaniards to enslave them. The
Governor General observed;
“Ah, if these people weren’t so stupid, they’d take the measure of these
Reverences! But every people deserves its fate, and let us do what everybody else
does.” (Noli, pp 51-52)
Don Filipo impatiently admits that the friars are always right “because we always start
by admitting they are right.” (Noli, pp 223-224) The Mayor concludes, “The friars are rich
and united; we are divided and poor.”
34
The burning need to unite and clamor for emancipation from the malaise of the
country was unheeded by the people. Many had grown callous through suffering and had
learned by experience that it was dangerous to go against the Establishment. Tasio advised
Ibarra, “To fight alone against the world is not courage but foolhardiness.” (Noli, p 161).
Taking “prudence” as synonymous to “fear,” they chose to be silent and left things as they
were.
One such character is Señor Pasta who preferred security in office to a risky
involvement in the agitation for civil rights. Another is Basilio who would rather have the
simple, uneventful life of a country doctor than fight for his right.
Simoun berates him that resignation becomes a crime when it breeds tyrants and
slaves. Still failing to arouse Basilio’s interest in his schemes, Simoun bitterly rationalizes:
“When somebody is dead it is useless to try to wake him up. Twenty years of
uninterrupted slavery, of systematic humiliation, of constant prostration, can make a
soul so hunch-backed that it will take more than a day to straighten it up. Children
inherit from their fathers their ways of thought, good or bad. Long live then your ideas
of a happy life, long live the dreams of the slave who only asks for a rag with which to
wrap his chains so they won’t make so much noise or bruise his skin. Your ambition
is a cozy little home, a woman of your own and a handful of rice. Behold the model
Filipino!” (Fili, pp 54 – 55)
Tasion had earlier dampened Ibarra’s idealism with brutal frankness.
“The reforms which come from above are annulled below by the vices of all,
by, for example, the get-rich-quick madness, and the ignorance of the people who let
everything pass. Abuses cannot be corrected by royal decree if zealous authorities
do not watch over its execution, and while freedom of speech against the excesses of
petty tyrants is not granted.” (Noli, p 158)
Rizal criticized the unspoken embarrassment of the natives for their own ancestry so
that the search for a national identity was a superficial imitation of European manners and
mode of dressing. Capitan Tiago, who “does not think of himself as a native,” and Doña
Victorina de Espadaña personify this colonial mentality.
The Filipinos’ gullible obedience and surrender of individual rights abetted rather than
curtailed the abuses of the friars. The Tertiary Sisters and the members of the Municipal
Board of San Diego, particularly the mayor, are examples of this subservience to the friars’
whims.
This distorted sense of values is shown in the general attitude towards gambling and
fiestas. The cockpit was a most frequented place, but people shied away from the schools.
In an effort to compete with the neighboring towns in the celebration of the feat of the patron
35
saint, the people of San Diego spent money lavishly, even if this meant continued poverty.
Speaking through Tasio, Rizal criticized this extravagance thus:
“Having a good time doesn’t mean making fools of ourselves. It’s the same
senseless orgy every year. And all for what? Throwing away all that money when
there is so much misery and need! But of course! I understand. The orgy, the
bacchanal, serves to drown out the general lamentation.” (Noli, p 183)
Tasio also scorns the increasing apathy of society towards the country’s need for
improvement. Sinking into pessimism shortly before his death, he admits to his good friend
Don Filipo:
“You are right; our young people think only of love affairs and pleasures; they
spend more time and effort on seducing and dishonouring a girl than on planning the
good of their country; our women are so devoted to the care of God’s house and
household that they neglect their own; our men are energetic only in the pursuit of
vice and heroic only in dishonouring themselves. Childhood awakens in meaningless
routine; youth lives its best years without an ideal; and maturity, sterile maturity,
serves no other purpose than to corrupt by its example.” (Noli, p 334)
The people despaired, and turned to hatred and crime. Father Florentino clarifies this
degeneration to Simoun:
“The glory of saving a country cannot be given to one who has contributed to
its ruin. Yu believed that what crime and iniquity had stained and deformed, more
crime and more iniquity could cleanse and redeem. This was error. Hate only creates
monsters; crime, criminals; only love can work wonders, only virtue can redeem. If
our country is some day to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be
through corruption of its sons, some deceived, others bribed; redemption
presupposes virtue; virtue, sacrifice, and sacrifice, love!” (Fili, p 295)
The Urgency of Needed Reforms
Eventually the people would rise from their lethargy, Tasio predicts. In a conversation
with Ibarra, Tasio says:
“The people do not complain because they have no voice; they do not move
because they are in stupor; and you say that they do not suffer because you have not
seen how their hearts bleed. But some day you will see and hear! Then woe unto
those who draw their strength from ignorance and fanaticism, who take their pleasure
in fraud, and who work under cover of night, confident that all are asleep! When the
light of day reveals the monstrous creatures of the night, the reaction will be terrifying.
All the forces stifled for centuries, the poison distilled drop by drop, all repressed
emotions, will come to light in a great explosion.” (Noli, pp 157 – 158)
36
The same prediction is made by a ranking official who courted his own dismal cy
criticizing the Spanish administration in the islands. To the Governor General, he reasons
out:
“It is because I love Spain that I am speaking now and I do not care how much
it displeases you. I do not want her to be accused in time to come of having been a
stepmother of nations, a bloodsucker of peoples, a despot over a handful of islands,
because that would be a terrible mockery of the noble purposes of our ancient kings.
How do we fulfill their sacred will and testament? They promised these islands
protection and justice and we make game of lives and liberties of their inhabitants;
they promised civilization, and we begrudge it, fearing that the natives may aspire to
a full life; they promised light, and we blindfold the natives so they may not witness
our excesses; they promised to teach virtue, and we foment vice: and instead of
peace, prosperity and justice, there is distress; commerce withers away and the
masses lose their faith. Let us put ourselves in the place of the Filipinos and ask
ourselves what we would do. Ah, in your silence I read their right to rebel and, if
things do not get better, some day they will rebel, and in truth justice will be on their
side as well as the sympathies of all honest men, of all the patriots of the world.” (Fili,
pp 250 – 251)
All this agitation point to the urgency for immediate social and political reforms.
Through the delineation of characters, Rizal expounded on what he expected from Spain
and he aroused a moral sensitiveness in his beloved people.
Immediate reform, Rizal said, would have to start from the Spaniards. The colonial
philosophy would have to be redefined, as Father Fernandez suggested to Father Syvila:
“I say, then, why not take this opportunity, when they are still ignorant, to
change our policies completely, to place those policies on a solid and permanent
foundation, say, that of justice, instead of ignorance? There is nothing like being fair; I
have always told my brethren that, although they do not want to believe me. The
natives, like any young people, idolize justice; they even ask to be punished when
they are at fault, but by the same token they are exasperated by being punished
when they do not deserve it. Is what they want reasonable and fair? Then let us give
it to them; let us give them all the schools they want, they will soon tire of them, youth
is lazy and only our opposition makes them active. The bonds of prestige, Father
Sybila, are very much worn out; let us make ready other bonds, say, the bonds of
gratitude.” (Fili, p 83)
The old Dominican superior concurred, admitting urgency for change:
37
“Attacks wake us ups; we discover our weaknesses, and we can improve

ourselves. Exaggerated praises only fool us, lull us to sleep, while making us
ridiculous, then we shall fall as we fell in Europe.” (Noli, p 50)
Speaking for the masses, Elias pleads that the Spaniards institute “radical reforms in
the armed forces, in the clergy, in the administration of justice, that is to say, a more
paternal approach from the Government.” (Noli, p 307)
When Ibarra asks, “Reforms? In what sense?” Elias answers: “For example, more
respect for human dignity, greater security for the individual, less strength in the armed
forces, less privileges for an organization which so easily abuses them.” (Noli, p 307)
Elias definitely asks for the abolition of the guardia civil. But this cannot be done
since the government needed “a body of men with that unlimited power and authority which
it needs to make itself respected,” then
“we should consider well to whom we give such unlimited power placed in
human hands of ignorant and willful men, without moral training, without proven
honesty, is a weapon placed in the hands of a madman let loose in an unarmed
crowd. I admit, and I want to believe like you [Ibarra], that the Government needs this
strong right arm, but it should choose it well from among the most worthy, and since it
prefers to confer authority on itself rather than receive it from the people, let it at least
show that it knows how to do so.” (Noli, p 311)
Elias also proposed reforms in the administration of justice. Much change was
necessary about a system that upheld rental for untitled lands and arbitrary increase of rent
accompanied by the threat of expulsion if the tenant did not comply with the landlord’s
demands. This was a system that encouraged the inordinate corruption of court officials and
showed partiality in the settlement of cases. The tragic families of Elias and Cabesang Tales
and Sisa were such victims.
Regarding the state of the religious orders, Elias claims that the people do not really
ask for their removal “but only for the reforms required by new circumstances and
necessities.” (Noli, p 313) Let the friars pay more attention to their religious mission of
teaching the True Faith rather than encouraging superstition and fanaticism by giving
greater importance to mundane practices. Let them stop enriching themselves at the
people’s expense.
The friars should also attend to their obligation “of constantly improving the young
morally and physically, of guiding them to happiness, of creating an honest, prosperous,
intelligent, virtuous, noble and loyal people,” instead of obstructing education, Isagani
admonishes. (Fili, p 218)
There was need for the government to institute reforms in the faulty educational
system. Assigning the educational system to the friars was a blunder:
38
“When it is a matter of giving a whole people moral sustenance, a matter of

nourishing the youth, a people’s best part, destined to be the whole, the Government
not only does not call for competitive tenders but awards the power precisely to that
organization which presides itself in not wanting education or any form of progress.”
(Fili, p 219)
The government might start by directly assuming the administration and supervision
of the schools, Isagani suggests. It also should redefine the educational goals. What was
necessary was the training of worthy professionals as lawyers and physicians.
There was need for qualified teachers, effective methods of instruction, an enriched
curriculum, adequate educational facilities, and encouragement of students. As Isagani
pointed out to Father Fernandez, “When we have real professors, you shall have real
student.” (Fili, p 224)
The schoolmaster in San Diego valued his students and initiated innovations:
“Since it is necessary to have an outward and an inward calm, a serenity in the

spirit, a material and moral tranquility and receptivity for the brain to receive the
ideas, I believe that, before everything else, I should inspire in the children
confidence, a sense of security, and self-respect. Also, I realized that the sight of
daily floggings killed the sense of pity, and stifled that of personal dignity, which
moves the world; and with it the sense of shame, which once lost is difficult to
recover. I tried to make study pleasant and good-humored; I wanted to make the
primer not a black book bathed in the tears of childhood, but a friendly guide to
marvelous secrets; I wanted to make the school not a torture-chamber but a
playground of the mind. So I cut down floggings gradually; I took the rod and the whip
home and replaced them with the spurs of competition and self-esteem. If a child did
not learn his lesson, I blamed it in his lack of effort, never on his lack of brains. I
made the children believe that they had more talent than they really had, and trying to
live up to it they were compelled to study, just as self-confidence leads to heroism.
Any child who was praised before the whole class studied twice as much the next
day.” (Noli, pp 99 – 100)
The town council could include the school in their annual program of projects:
“A fifth part of the money raised could be utilized to award prizes: for instance,
to the best herdsman, farmer, fisherman, and so on. We can organize boat-races on
the river and the lake, run horse-races, put up greased poles, and hold other games
in which the country folk can join … With the remainder of the money we can begin a
small building to serve as a school, for we should not expect God Himself to come
down and build it for us.” (Noli, p 112)
39
Such encouragement could lead to something laudable, a spiritual, intellectual

freedom and renewal, according to a priest martyr:
“Do not forget that if wisdom is the patrimony of all men, only those of good
heart can inherit it; I have tried to transmit to you what I in turn received from my
teachers, adding to that legacy as much as I was able in handing it on to the next
generation. You must go to countries that are very rich. They come here seeking
gold; you go to their countries in search of the treasures that we lack. But remember
all that glitters is not gold.” (Noli, p 46)
Perceptive Spaniards like Father Fernandez realized the necessity for reforms: first,
by changing the attitude towards the natives, and then advocating the much needed
changes for the advancement and eventual freedom of the masses.
Rizal implies that the natives, on the other hand, should prove that they are worthy of
the reforms. “Money and good-will are not enough,” Tasio stresses to Ibarra, “in our country
abnegation, tenacity, and faith are also required; the field is not for sowing, it is full of
weeds.” (Noli, p 160) They should understand that reform measures would contribute to the
common good and that a sense of social consciousness would prepare them for freedom
and happiness. Circumspection would eradicate corruption:
“The reforms which come from above are annulled below by the vices of all,
by, for example, the get-rich-quick madness, and the ignorance of the people who let
everything pass. Abuses cannot be corrected by royal decrees if zealous authorities
do not watch over its execution, and while freedom of speech against the excesses of
petty tyrants is not granted.” (Tasio to Ibarra, Noli, p 158).
This preparation would start with the reorientation of the masses’ attitude towards
education. The masses should be taught that education is not only for a few, but for all.
“Freedom is to man what education is in the mind,” says Isagani. (Fili, p 220)
Basilio had envisioned this freedom even as a little boy, when he declared to his
mother Sisa:
“I’m not going to work for the friars anymore . . . I’m going to be a herdsman
instead, I’ll take very good care of the herds, and so I’ll make the owner like me . . . I’ll
pick fruits in the forest . .. I’ll lay traps and snares to catch birds and wild goats, I’ll fish
in the river, and when I’m bigger I’ll go hunting. I could also cut firewood . . .
Meantime I’ll be my own master . .. And since old Tasio says Crispin is very clever,
we’ll send him to Manila to study; I’ll support him by working.” (Noli, p 87)
Building up agricultural manpower was a mean to self-reliance, as Isagani says:
40
“I see nothing wrong in training these farmers and peasants, in giving them at
least the skills that will enable them to improve themselves and to improve their work,
that will allow them to understand many things which now they do not.” (Fili, p 120)
The enlightened natives would then eradicate superstition, develop a cultured sense
of values, improve their economic lives, make their homes comfortable, and consequently,
enjoy the true happiness they deserve. They would eventually study science and bring
about technological advancement in the country. This could inspire infrastructure programs,
like road planning and development. For instance, Simoun proposed “to dig a canal, straight
through from the lake to Manila, that is to say, to make a new river channel, and close up
the old Pasig. Land will be saved, distances shortened, and mud-banks avoided.” (Fili, p 6)
The masses must develop the idea of human dignity and free themselves from the
fetters of deterioration and greed. Rizal’s belief in the integrity of the Filipinos is a renewal of
strength and an awareness that the Filipino will survive by his very endurance. This is
reiterated by Father Florentino:
“I do say that we must win our freedom by deserving it, by improving the mind
and enhancing the dignity of the individual, loving what is just, what is good, what is
great, to the point of dying for it. When a people reaches these heights, God provides
the weapon, and the idols and the tyrants fall like a house of cards, and freedom
shines in the first dawn. Our misfortunes are our fault, let us blame nobody else for
them. If Spain were to see us less tolerant of tyranny and readier to fight and suffer
for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us freedom because, when the fruit of
conception reaches the time of birth, woe to the mother that tries to strangle it! But as
long as the Filipino people do not have sufficient vigour to proclaim, head held high
and chest bared, their right to a life pf their own in human society and to guarantee it
with their sacrifices, with their very blood; as long as we see our countrymen feel
privately ashamed, hearing the growl of their rebelling and protesting conscience,
while in public they keep silent and even join the oppressor in mocking the
oppressed; as long as we see them wrapping themselves up in their selfishness and
praising with forced smiles the most despicable acts, begging with their eyes for a
share of the booty, why give them independence? With or without Spain they would
be the same, and perhaps, perhaps worse. What is the use of independence if the
slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?” (Fili, p 297)
And through Simoun, Rizal advised that the people look beyond their oppression to
the establishment of a sovereign nation. “Take the lead in forming your own individuality, try
to lay the foundations of a Filipino nation . . . and develop an independent, not colonial
mentality.” (Fili, p 51)
As long as a people keeps its own language, it keeps a pledge of liberty, just
as a man is free as long as he can think for himself. Language is a people’s way of
thinking. Fortunately your independence is secure. Human passions watch over it.”
(Fili, p 50)
41
These passions obliterate the individual, for it is only the nation that counts, as Elias
indicated to Basilio: “Nothing will remain of me . . . I die without seeing the sun rise on my
country. You who are to see the dawn, welcome it, and do not forget those who fell during
the night.” (Noli, p 402)
This echoed by Father Florentino:
“Where are the youth who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their
enthusiasm, to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of
their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and
immaculate must the victim before the sacrifice to be acceptable. Where are you,
young men and women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been
drained from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds, the fiery
enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await
you!” (Fili, p 298)
Symbolism in Maria Clara and Sisa
Among the characters of Noli Me Tangere, two women, Maria Clara and Sisa,
represent the enduring sacrifices of Filipino womanhood and the nation itself.
Maria Clara, the main female character of the Noli, is portrayed by Rizal as the fruit
of an illicit love affair between the Spanish Franciscan friar, Father Damaso, and a native
woman, Pia Alba, for six years the childless wife of Capitan Tiago. Why such an origin?
Because in Rizal’s mind, the unhappy state of the Philippines which Maria Clara
symbolizes was the product of the exploitation of the Spanish rulers and the failure of the
people. In chapter 63 of the Noli, Father Damaso sternly disapproves of the marriage of
Ibarra to Maria Clara. Ibarra symbolized the liberalism that was sweeping the Philippines as
a result of stimulating influences from European sources.
Rizal injected womanly qualities into the symbol that was Maria Clara. He moulded
her into something like Leonor Rivera, his real life sweetheart. She was the typical, although
not the ideal, Filipino woman. Thus she is shown as a young convent-bred woman, shy and
awkward in spite of her innate charms. At twenty-one, she was immature and unable to form
her own convictions without the approval of her confessor or elders. She lacks the mature
intellect and industry that Rizal praised among the German women who “cared more for the
substance of things than for appearance.” Thus Maria was not Rizal’s ideal woman who
would possess not only the modesty and gentleness of Leonor Rivera but also the
intellectual acumen of the German fraulein.
The distinction between the “typical” and the “ideal” is important in understanding and
interpreting the character and symbolism of Maria Clara. As Rizal characterized her, he
42
exposed her weaknesses, her lack of courage and sound judgement. At the same time, he
enfolded her in the delicate soft mist of his poetic imagination. He criticized her too, for her
blind obedience to her parents. He treated her with compassion, never with spite and
hatred. He loved her in spite of her short comings, as he loved his country.
Maria Clara was the image of the Philippines with her virtues and consistencies, a
symbol made more human by characteristics of the typical 19th century Filipino.
Sisa is described as another symbolic character.
Sisa was still young; once she must have been pretty and charming. Her eyes,
which like her character, her sons had inherited, were beautiful, deep, and long
lashed; her nose were well proportioned, her pale lips attractively drawn. Her
complexion was what the Tagalogs call kayumangging kaligatan, that is to say, a
clear, golden brown. In spite of her youth, sorrow or perhaps hunger, had made her
pale cheeks sunken; and if her abundant hair; once her greatest glory, was still well
groomed, with a so simple chignon unadorned with pins and combs, it was not out of
coquetry but habit. (Noli, p 82)
From this eloquent description, Sisa is the Philippines. Her features are beautiful, but
are made uncomely by later sorrow and suffering. She represents to Motherland, as well as
Rizal’s own mother and all Filipino women.
Sisa knows her sons characteristics intimately, even the way they walked: Basilio,
with strong sure steps; Crispin, with light irregular footfalls. She is highly sensitive,
especially to slurs against her character, as when she was referred to as the “mother of the
thieves.”
She knew she was wretchedly poor, forsaken by all, even by her own
husband, but until now she had treasured her good reputation and looked with pity on
the women, scandalously dressed, who were known to the town as camp followers.
Now it seemed to her that she had fallen even lower than they in human society.
(Noli, p 116)
This is the typical Filipino, submissive to all miseries, yet refusing any degradation to
honor!
She was all forgiveness, all heart, and this reaction invited further exploitation. To
Sisa, this was resignation to her fate. But when applied to a people, such an attitude may be
an acceptance of laziness and a selfish disregard for rights and duties.
Sisa in fact is both self-effacing and courageous. She could not assert her essential
ideals but she held on to her martyrdom. Perhaps this is because of acceptance for the fate
of her sons. She wanted to save them from oppression and suffer any humiliation for their
sake.
43
The Response to the Novels. The message conveyed by the novels made Rizal
famous overnight. There was a deluge of both favorable and unfavourable response to his
“eye-openers”. Rizal’s interpretation of the political and social malaise caused the popular
feeling of animosity towards the Spaniards. The idealism and fortitude of Ibarra and Elias,
the Maria Clara type of beauty, the antiheroic friar, the meaning of the cover design—all
these features were acclaimed by his readers.
Their ambivalent message seemed to incite revolution while serving as a grave

warning. It kindled varied reactions among the readers. Within weeks of the publication and
distribution of the Noli, Rizal began receiving tributes from friends in Europe.
Commendations came from such European scholars as Doctors, Adolph B. Meyer, Friedrich
Ratzel, Feodor Jagor, and Ferdinand Bluementritt. The Filipino painter par excellence Felix
Resurreccion Hidalgo wrote:
I admire your courage in saying plainly what you think and the inspiration
reflected in your work which makes one feel the palpitation of the heart of a man who
loves his country.
At Rizal’s expression that his mission had ended, Marcelo H. del Pilar retorted:
Rizal has no right yet to die. His name constitutes the purest and most
immaculate standard of sacrosanct aspirations and Plaridel and his men are no other
than mere volunteers who serve under that standard.
From other quarters, too, came words of caution and advice against the author’s
return to the Philippines where, it was believed, he would be imprisoned and eventually put
to death for his brutal frankness against the ruling powers of Spain. Rizal had his own
misgivings, frustrations and negative reactions. He grieve to Ponce:
In Madrid where I had so many friends among our countrymen, my work not
only did not find support, but was not even permitted to enter, due to the neglect and
strange conduct of others, according to a friend, my only one remaining there it
seems. I don’t mind it personally; I’m sorry for what it signifies: I’m sorry because I
see fading out even our last virtue, which is our unconditional unity when it concerns
the welfare of our country. If we lose that, what will become of us be miserable in
everything, what virtues have we learned—we who came to Europe—what superiority
would we have to our other blind brothers?
In Manila, illustrious country men have tried to blacken my work, and I said to
myself; now that Filipino colony of Madrid, the most patriotic, the most advanced,
behaves that way toward me, I am very sorry, because this is an implied
condemnation of my book by my countrymen, if not something worse, which would be
moral degeneration. Between the two, I would rather be sacrificed.
44
In the Philippines the Spanish friars reacted to the novels with maddening anger and
alarm. The committee of Dominican Priests from the University of Santo Tomas which the
archbishop assigned to pass judgement on the Noli found it to be heretical, scandalous, and
subversive. The strongest objections were raised by the Augustinian Salvador Font, whose
report was used as the basis for Governor Terrero’s order prohibiting the circulation of the
novel, and Father Jose Rodriguez, prior of Guadalupe, who wrote a pamphlet attacking the
Noli. Simultaneously, in Madrid, Senators Jose Salamanca, Luis Ma Paredes and Fernando
Vida lambasted the book and the author. Newsmen Vicente Barrantes and Wenceslao E.
Retana condemned the presentation of facts. Font was rebutted by Del Pilar, Rodriguez by
Father Vicente Garcia who protested:
In the words or various phrases in his book that I am going to cite, I see his
faith in God and the Christian religion that contradicts all idea of impiety and atheism.
In the Philippines, the effect of the novels on the masses was enthusiastic. Tomas
Arejola testified:
Your moral influence on us is indisputable . . . The tact and persuasiveness of

a Rizal is necessary in order that what we want to do for the common welfare of our
motherland should conform to our desires.
Alejandrino contributed ₱240 through Pedro Serrano Laktaw. Narcisa Rizal Lopez
sent ₱400 “from our countrywomen, single, married, and old, who wish to send you more if
they had more money but unfortunately at this time money is scarce.” Another friend, the
town druggist of Kalamba, Mateo Elejorde, informed Rizal of how the people believed in
him:
Receive thirty pesos that your friends, in spite of their poverty, send you. You
may use it according to your discretion… Alas! Jose! All the people here ask about
you and pin their hope on you. Even the poorest people of the mountains are asking
me about your return. It seems that they consider you the second Jesus who will
liberate them from misery… They have a thirst for news and what is happening to
you. Send us also the volume of Noli if available already, and also Solidaridad, and if
you have time, write us frequently, for it is a pleasure for us to know what is
happening to you there.
The few copies of the novels that cleared the Customs and reached the bookstores
were sold out. The copies changed hands rapidly, passing around in less than a month from
first hand to third hand at more than twice the original sale price. Even the illiterate natives
were not spared the excitement the novels generated. From the lips of those who read
them, the message was relayed, the context varying, depending on how the plot impressed
the reader. Whichever way this was, the excited retellers inflamed the intelligence of the
people who became more conscious of their plight. For the first time, the Filipinos were
45
seeing themselves and their problems in a truthful awareness. The people’s perception
grasped the message of a patriotic nationalism that was to become the inspiration for a
future blessed with freedom and happiness.
The ban against the books only served to arouse curiosity rather than discourage
their clandestine circulation. Some readers paid the full price for taking risks; others
hesitated. With the aplomb of the sage Tasio, Rizal resigned himself:
If the present generation does not want to read me because of fear, I shall
keep what I have written for the coming generation, but I continue and will continue
working. What are we going to do? Our countrymen are afraid to spend two or three
days in prison for the sake of enlightenment; perhaps the coming generation may be
more daring. Let us hope.
In due course, a copy of the Fili came into hands of Andres Bonifacio who interpreted
the message as a call to armed uprising. The rest is history and a fight for emancipation.
Rizal had feared that his novels would not be read by his people. But he wrote Ponce
that the Noli had been written for the Filipinos and that it was necessary that they read it. In
his reply to Barrantes, Rizal had explained why: “I ask for reforms so that the little good that
there is may be saved and the bad may be redeemed.” Hence, he determined to learn
French sufficiency to translate his novels for a Gallic audience which, he felt, would be more
receptive to his ideas than his own people. But these fears were allayed. Antonio Ma
Regidor predicted:
Every Filipino patriot will read your book with avidity and upon discovering in
every line a voracious idea and every word a fitting advice, he will be inspired and he
will regard your book as the masterpiece of a Filipino and the proof that those who
thought us incapable of producing intellects are mistaken or are lying.
Praises are reiterated by Ponce:
Your work continues to arouse enthusiasm among our countrymen, with very
few exceptions—exceptions which I cannot understand nor explain, considering that
it is an eminently patriotic work in which you have staked your name, exposing
yourself to the vultures of clericalism, just to prescribe some remedy to the infinite
maladies of which our mother country is complaining. Those who criticize such acts
of self-denial and sacrifice deserve eternal condemnation in the history of our
motherland.
You are right in saying that we should be solidly united to ward off all the evils
in our beloved country. Let us work together, every one of us within his own sphere,
toward the same end. Let us have faith.
46
Ferdinand Bluementritt defined the role of Rizal in his country’s future.
You can become for your people one of those great men who will exert a
definite influence on their spiritual development.
The novels were widely circulated in his time, they survived the Spanish era, and
they have come to be adopted by the Filipinos as the living gospels of Philippine
nationalism. They have been translated into several foreign languages and native dialects,
thereby reaching a greater audience than Rizal ever anticipated. They have been
interpreted in play, recorded for prosperity in motion pictures and scripted for the
sophisticated opera.
The readership and acclaim of the novels is much more extensive today. The readers
are also more discerning. They have perceived the novels as a renewal of mind and spirit.
Critics have debated on the social and political influence of the novels, as well as their
intellectual and literary merits.
Rizal’s message is heeded by a grateful Filipino people in a paramount concerted

effort towards progress and self-reliance. Tasio and Isagani's dreams have finally become
the reality of 40 million eager Filipinos.
47
3. ASSESSMENT: Reflection: In 3 Paragraphs, write a reflection (write your own

title) on the fervors of nationalism convey from the two novels, NOLI ME
TANGERE and EL FELIBUSTERISMO.
REFLECTION GUIDES:
 After you learned the issues and problems during Rizal’s time mirrored by his 2
novels, what do you think it means to love your country? Especially in your daily
lives, what do you do (or can do) to show your nationalism?
 What are the best ways to show your love for your country? What are some of
the things you would NOT do if you love your country?
 What if on the issue of loving your country, someone says something you don’t
find pleasant? What should you do?
TITLE
48
RUBRICS FOR REFLECTION

Criteria Qualitative Assessment Scale Score
A. Idea Points 1 to 3 _____
B. Knowledge Points 1 to 3 _____
C. Interpretation Points 1 to 3 _____
D. Message Point 1 only _____
SUM: _____ (TOTAL SCORE: X 10 )
Points 3 2 1
Idea Makes a complete and Makes a detailed Makes a detailed

 detailed description of description of most of description of some of
the subject matter the subject matter, the subject matter,
about Nationalism in Nationalism in the 2 Nationalism in the 2
the 2 novels novels novels
Message Provides a Provides a somewhat Provides some idea
comprehensive complete but not about Nationalism in
message about comprehensive the 2 novels
Nationalism in the 2 message about
novels Nationalism in the 2
novels
Interpretation Forms a deep and Forms a somewhat a The reflection on
reasonable reflection deep and reasonable nationalism of El
on the nationalism of El reflection on the Filibusterismo and
Filibusterismo and Noli nationalism of El Noli Me Tangere
Me Tangere Filibusterismo and Noli gives relation to the
Me Tangere student.
Know It gives a clear
ledge knowledge about
Nationalism
REFENCES:
Romero, Sta. Romana, Santos (1978). Rizal and the Development of National
Consciousness, Quezon City, Philippines:
JMC Press.
49
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MODULE 4 : Nationalism in the Novels

Activity Description Time to Complete

1. Formative Activity 1 – 2 – 3 Exit Ticket 60 min.

2. Lesson Proper Readings:

Section 2. Nationalism in the Novels

Synchronous Reinforcement Discussion on:

Total: (360 minutes)

MODULE 4 : Nationalism in the Novels

At the end of this section, you are expected to:

1. Discuss the synopsis of the novels of Dr. Jose Rizal

2. Compare and contrast Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo

3. Reflect on the fervors of nationalism conveyed from the two novels

Activity . 3 – 2 – 1 Exit Ticket

LIST THREE THINGS YOU REMEMBER FROM THE TWO NOVELS

GIVE TWO EXAMPLES OF NATIONALISM IN EL FELIBUSTERISMO & NOLI ME

WRITE ONE QUESTION YOU HAVE OR SOMETHING YOU ARE CONFUSED

Section 1. Synopsis of the Novels

In the catalogue of human ills there is to be found a cancer so malignant that

The fervor in Rizal’s nationalism is articulated in the dedication of El Filibusterismo:

Ibarra resolves to forego all quarrels and to work

At the laying of the cornerstone for the new

The protagonist of El Filibusterismo is a jeweler named Simoun. He is the new identity

Outwardly, Simoun is a friend of Spain; however, in

The story of El Filibusterismo begins on board a

Simoun eludes arrest by taking poison. As he is dying, he confesses to Padre Florentino,

Section 2. Nationalism in the Novels

The Plots of the Novels

During the laying of the school’s cornerstone,

As gospels of Philippine nationalism, Rizal’s novels convey the essence of his

Ibarra-Simoun. The main protagonist in the Noli is Juan Crisostomo Ibarra y

The long-ignored respectability of the father is remembered; Don Rafael is publicly

In the Fili, Ibarra reappears as Simoun, an influential jeweler. His contrasting

Although regarded as an outlaw, Elias is no ordinary renegade. His family

He is depicted as an uncouth, bigoted, power-mad ingrate, the personification of

His materialism is such that he considers Maria Clara’s loss of a sweetheart

Rizal's ultimate spokesman in the Fili is Father Florentino. He os a distinguished

This motley array of characteristics treated humorously or satirically at times, portray

Expressions of Nationalism Among the Characters. The spirit of nationalism that

Ibarra states in a toast that is reminiscent of Rizal's brindis speech of 1884,

'No, in spite of everything, my country comes first - first the Philippines,

And later, he again says to Tasio:

Conversing with the Governor General, Ibarra honestly declares:

"Sir, my greatest desire is the happiness of my country, a happiness which I

In Simoun , Rizal provides a philosophy of patriotism:

"However perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue in

"Impossible. It is true that I cannot live or be happy in my country but I can

"O yes, I yielded to no one in my love of country and in my progressive ideas,

Simoun satirically remarks:

Ibarra laments the presence of bad officials, abetted by inert people:

As Simoun, he is irked by the absence of initiative. To Basilio, he remonstrates:

The Abuses of the Religious Authorities

This opposition to the education of the masses is supported by many of his

In a letter to Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, Rizal showed his vehemence to friar

Corruption in the Civil Government. The civil government perpetuated anomalies

Isagani lament this situation to Senor Pasta:

“Here, we old soldiers must do everything and be everything: King, Ministers of

Regarding the presence of corrupt officials in the government, the concerned

“The continual changes in the administration, demoralization in high places,

The majority of peninsular Spaniards sent to the Philippines resembled Tiburcio de

"It paralyses communication because everybody is afraid of being harassed

The Defective Educational System. Another deplorable aspect of the colonial

"Residents of Sand Diego, we have the honour to preside over a ceremony