Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me

Not) Reader’s Guide

BY JOSE RIZAL

Category: Literary Fiction | Fiction Classics

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INTRODUCTION TO JOSÉ RIZ AL’S

NOLI ME TANGERE 0
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by Luis H. Francia * +

Written in Spanish and published in 1887,

José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere played a
crucial role in the political history of the
Philippines. Drawing from experience, the
conventions of the nineteenth-century
novel, and the ideals of European
liberalism, Rizal offered up a devastating
critique of a society under Spanish colonial
rule.

The plot revolves around Crisostomo Ibarra,

mixed-race heir of a wealthy clan, returning
home after seven years in Europe and filled
with ideas on how to better the lot of his
countrymen. Striving for reforms, he is
confronted by an abusive ecclesiastical
hierarchy and a Spanish civil
administration by turns indifferent and
cruel. The novel suggests, through plot
developments, that meaningful change in
this context
BOOKS is exceedingly
SERIES ABOUTdifficult,
US if notIN
SIGN
impossible.

The death of Ibarra’s father, Don Rafael,

prior to his homecoming, and the refusal of
a Catholic burial by Padre Damaso, the
parish priest, provokes Ibarra into hitting
the priest, for which Ibarra is
excommunicated. The decree is rescinded,
however, when the governor general
intervenes. The friar and his successor,
Padre Salvi, embody the rotten state of the
clergy. Their tangled feelings—one paternal,
the other carnal—for Maria Clara, Ibarra’s
sweetheart and rich Capitan Tiago’s
beautiful daughter, steel their
determination to spoil Ibarra’s plans for a
school. The town philosopher Tasio wryly
notes similar past attempts have failed,
and his sage commentary makes clear that
all colonial masters fear that an
enlightened people will throw off the yoke
of oppression.

Precisely how to accomplish this is the

novel’s central question, and one which
Ibarra debates with the mysterious Elias,
with whose life his is intertwined. The
privileged Ibarra favors peaceful means,
while Elias, who has suffered injustice at
the hands of the authorities, believes
violence is the only option.

Ibarra’s enemies, particularly Salvi,

implicate him in a fake insurrection,
though the evidence against him is weak.
Then Maria Clara betrays him to protect a
dark family secret, public exposure of
which would be ruinous. Ibarra escapes
from prison with Elias’s help and confronts
her. She explains why, Ibarra forgives her,
and he and Elias flee to the lake. But
chased by the Guardia Civil, one dies while
the other survives. Convinced Ibarra’s dead,
Maria Clara enters the nunnery, refusing a
marriage arranged by Padre Damaso. Her
unhappy fate and that of the more
memorable Sisa, driven mad by the fate of
her sons, symbolize the country’s
condition, at once beautiful and miserable.

Using satire brilliantly, Rizal creates other

memorable characters whose lives
manifest the poisonous effects of religious
and colonial oppression. Capitan Tiago; the
social climber Doña Victorina de Espadaña
and her toothless Spanish husband; the
Guardia Civil head and his harridan of a
wife; the sorority of devout women; the
disaffected peasants forced to become
outlaws: in sum, a microcosm of Philippine
society. In the afflictions that plague them,
Rizal paints a harrowing picture of his
beloved but suffering country in a work that
speaks eloquently not just to Filipinos but
to all who have endured or witnessed
oppression.

ABOUT JOSÉ RIZ AL

Born on June 19, 1861, José Rizal was from
an upper-class Filipino family. His mother,
Teodora Alonso, a highly educated woman,
exerted a powerful influence on his
intellectual development. He would grow
up to be a brilliant polymath, doctor, fencer,
essayist, and novelist, among other things.

By the late nineteenth century, the Spanish

empire was in irreversible decline. Spain
had ruled the islands since 1565, except for
a brief hiatus when the British occupied the
islands in 1762. The colonial government
was unresponsive and often cruel, with the
religious establishment wielding as much
power as the state. Clerical abuses,
European ideas of liberalism, and growing
international trade fueled a burgeoning
national consciousness. For Rizal and his
generation, the 1872 Cavite Mutiny, in which
three native priests were accused of
treason and publicly executed, provided
both inspiration and a cautionary tale.

Educated at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de

Manila and the Dominican University of
Santo Tomas in Manila, Rizal left for Spain
in 1882, where he studied medicine and the
liberal arts, with further studies in Paris
and Heidelberg. The charismatic Rizal
quickly became a leading light of the
Propaganda Movement—Filipino
expatriates advocating, through its
newspaper, La Solidaridad, various reforms
such as the integration of the Philippines
as a province of Spain, representation in
the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), the
Filipinization of the clergy, and equality of
Filipinos and Spaniards before the law. To
Rizal, the main impediment to reform lay
not so much with the civil government but
with the reactionary and powerful
Franciscan, Augustinian, and Dominican
friars, who constituted a state within a
state.

In 1887, he published his first novel, Noli Me

Tangere, written in Spanish, a searing
indictment of clerical abuse as well as of
colonial rule’s shortcomings. That same
year, he returned to Manila, where the Noli
had been banned and its author now hated
intensely by the friars. In 1888, he went to
Europe once more, and there wrote the
sequel, El Filibusterismo (The Subversive),
published in 1891. In addition, he annotated
an edition of Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de
las Islas Filipinas, showing that the
Philippines had had a long history before
the advent of the Spaniards. Rizal returned
to Manila in 1892 and founded a reform
society, La Liga Filipina, before being exiled
to Dapitan, in Mindanao, Southern
Philippines. There he devoted himself to
scientific research and public works. Well-
known as an ophthalmologist, he was
visited by an English patient, accompanied
by his ward, Josephine Bracken, who would
be his last and most serious romantic
involvement.

In August of 1896, the Katipunan, a

nationalist secret society, launched the
revolution against Spain. Its leaders
venerated Rizal and tried to persuade him
to their cause. He refused, convinced that
the time was not yet ripe for armed
struggle. In the meantime he volunteered
to serve as a doctor with the Spanish forces
fighting against Cuban revolutionaries. En
route, Rizal was arrested and subjected to a
mock trial in Manila by the authorities
although he had nothing to do with the
revolution. Found guilty, he was shot at
dawn on December 30, 1896. On the eve of
his execution, Rizal penned “Mi último
adiós” (My Last Farewell), considered a
masterpiece of nineteenth-century
Spanish verse. He was thirty-five.

Rizal’s martyrdom only intensified the

ultimately successful fight for
independence from Spain. Because of his
role in shaping his country’s destiny, José
Rizal is often described as the “First
Filipino” and has since served as an
inspiration to countless nationalists and
intellectuals.

ABOUT LUIS H. FRANCIA

Luis H. Francia, the author of this guide,
was born and grew up in Manila,
Philippines, where he obtained his B.A. in
humanities from the Ateneo de Manila
University—the same alma mater as that of
José Rizal, author of Noli Me Tangere. He
teaches Filipino language and culture at
the Asian/Pacific/American Studies
program of New York University. He has
taught Asian-American literature at Sarah
Lawrence College and at the University of
Hawai’i at Manoa.

He has written several books, the most

recent ones being Museum of Absences, a
collection of poems, and the
semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A
Personal Archipelago, winner of both the
2002 PEN Open Book and the Asian
American Writers Workshop Literary
awards. He is the editor of Brown River,
White Ocean, an anthology of Philippine
literature in English, and coeditor of
Flippin’: Filipinos on America, also a literary
anthology, and of Vestiges of War, an
anthology of creative and scholarly works
dealing with the 1899 Philippine-American
War.

He and his wife, art historian and curator

Midori Yamamura, live in New York City.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Crisostomo Ibarra and the mysterious
and powerful Elias are quite similar, even
though the former is an immensely wealthy
mestizo and the latter, an impoverished
fellow who has seen better days. Both have
been victimized by the colonial system, yet
have contrasting approaches to addressing
the social ills that surround them. In one
pivotal scene the two debate passionately
about their respective views, as though the
author were debating himself. How do their
experiences shape these views? What
reforms does Ibarra advocate? Why does
Elias consider these futile?

Through Ibarra, Rizal the social reformer

makes it clear that he believed greatly in
the transformative power of secular
education. To learn only by rote prevented
the ordinary Filipino from truly
understanding his situation, hence Ibarra’s
proposal to build a school for the town of
San Diego. In contrast, what was the
conventional view of education in San
Diego? Why were Padre Damaso and, later
on, Padre Salvi, against such innovation?
How did race figure in their opposition?

Tasio, the town sage, is elated by Ibarra’s

plan for a school but immediately cautions
the young man, “The first advice I will give
you is to never come to me for advice
again.” What makes the old man say this?
What is his reputation in San Diego and
what perspective does he add to the novel?

The Noli is clearly anticlerical in its

depiction of the friars and of the Catholic
church. Padre Damaso and, to a lesser
extent, Padre Salvi, personify clerical
abuses—the main cause, in the novel, of the
population’s discontent. Rizal’s portraits,
however, are not one-dimensional; rather,
they reveal the all-too-human faults of
each priest. How does the novelist
individualize them? How do the failings of
Damaso and Salvi propel the novel’s
action? The two friars have in common
their feelings for Maria Clara, yet those very
feelings should divide them. Why?

Maria Clara betrays Ibarra even though

she loves him. Her motive is to prevent the
identity of her true, biological father from
being revealed. Discuss the consequences
of her act, and how it leads to tragedy.

The novel describes vividly life in the

town of San Diego and its social and
political hierarchy. If we see San Diego as a
microcosm of Philippine society, what kind
of portrait emerges, overall, of life under
the Spanish colonial system? In particular,
how does the planning for the town feast
clearly illustrate who holds real power?

Capitan Tiago and Doña Victorina de

Espadaña identify completely with the
colonial mind-set. In portraying the two,
Rizal pokes fun at their pretensions. What
pretensions are these and how are they
lampooned? Is Rizal gentler with one than
the other?

The author also mocks the mindless

religiosity exhibited by Tiago and some
other characters, especially the equally
wealthy spinster, Doña Patrocinio, whom
Tiago considers his rival and vice versa.
Each strives to make as splashy material
offerings as possible to the church,
thinking thereby to ensure their spiritual
future. Discuss the Catholic notion of
indulgences, how this ties in to lavish
expenditures, and, more broadly, how it
ironically reveals the worldly nature of the
church.

The head of the Guardia Civil and his

wife, Doña Consolacion, strike fear in the
hearts of San Diego’s ordinary inhabitants.
The wife is repellent, even to her husband.
What do they exemplify and what purpose
do these two characters serve in the novel?
Rizal depicts a gap that exists between
the Spanish civil administration and
clerical rule. How wide or narrow is that
gap? What incidents demonstrate the
differences between the two sectors?

Sisa goes mad due to her harsh

treatment by the Guardia Civil, the death of
one son, and the disappearance of another.
Critics have said that she is symbolic of the
oppressed mother country. Do you agree
with this notion? Are there parallels with
Maria Clara and her fate and, to a lesser
degree, Tiago’s?

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TANGERE (TOUCH ME NOT)

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