NOLI

ME
TANGE
RE
Noli Me Tangere is
a novel by Filipino polymath and nation
al hero José Rizal first published in 1887
in Berlin.
Early English translations used titles
like An Eagle Flight (1900) and The
Social Cancer (1912), but more recent
translations have been published using
the original Latin title.
 PLOT
SUMMARY
Having completed his
studies in Europe, young
Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y
Magsalin comes back to
the Philippines after a
7-year absence. In his
honor, Don Santiago de los
Santos, a family friend
commonly known as
Captain Tiago, threw a
get-together party, which
was attended by friars and
other prominent figures.
One of the guests, former
San Diego curate Fray
Dámaso Vardolagas
belittled and slandered
Ibarra. Ibarra brushed off
the insults and took no
offense; he instead politely
excused himself and left
the party because of an
allegedly important task.
The next day, Ibarra visits María Clara, his betrothed, the beautiful daughter of
Captain Tiago and affluent resident of Binondo. Their long-standing love was
clearly manifested in this meeting, and María Clara cannot help but reread the
letters her sweetheart had written her before he went to Europe.
Before Ibarra left for San Diego, Lieutenant Guevara, a Civil Guard, reveals to him
the incidents preceding the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich
hacendero of the town.
According to Guevara, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of being a heretic, in
addition to being a subservient — an allegation brought forth by Dámaso
because of Don Rafael's non-participation in the Sacraments, such as
Confession and Mass.
Dámaso's animosity against Ibarra's father is aggravated by another incident
when Don Rafael helped out on a fight between a tax collector and a child
fighting, and the former's death was blamed on him, although it was not
deliberate.
Suddenly, all of those who thought
ill of him surfaced with additional
complaints. He was imprisoned, and
just when the matter was almost
settled, he died of sickness in jail.
Still not content with what he had
done, Dámaso arranged for Don
Rafael's corpse to be dug up from
the Catholic Church and brought to
a Chinese cemetery, because he
thought it inappropriate to allow a
heretic a Catholic burial ground.
Unfortunately, it was raining and
because of the bothersome weight
of the body, the undertakers decide
to throw the corpse into a nearby
lake.
Revenge was not in Ibarra's plans, instead he carried through his
father's plan of putting up a school, since he believed that
education would pave the way to his country's progress (all over
the novel the author refers to both Spain and the Philippines as
two different countries as part of a same nation or family, with
Spain seen as the mother and the Philippines as the daughter).
During the inauguration of the
school, Ibarra would have
been killed in a sabotage had
Elías — a mysterious man who
had warned Ibarra earlier of a
plot to assassinate him — not
saved him.
Instead the hired killer met an
unfortunate incident and died.
The sequence of events
proved to be too traumatic for
María Clara who got seriously
ill but was luckily cured by the
medicine Ibarra sent.
▪After the inauguration, Ibarra hosted a luncheon during
which Dámaso, gate-crashing the luncheon, again
insulted him.
▪Ibarra ignored the priest's insolence, but when the latter
slandered the memory of his dead father, he was no
longer able to restrain himself and lunged at Dámaso,
prepared to stab him for his impudence.
▪As a consequence, Dámaso excommunicated Ibarra,
taking this opportunity to persuade the already-hesitant
Tiago to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra.
▪The friar wished María Clara to marry Linares, a
Peninsular who had just arrived from Spain.
 FRAY SALVÍ

With the help of the Governor-General, Ibarra's excommunication was

nullified and the Archbishop decided to accept him as a member of the
Church once again. But, as fate would have it, some incident of which
Ibarra had known nothing about was blamed on him, and he is wrongly
arrested and imprisoned. The accusation against him was then overruled
because during the litigation that followed, nobody could testify that he
was indeed involved.
Unfortunately, his letter to María Clara somehow got into the hands of the
jury and is manipulated such that it then became evidence against him by
the parish priest, Fray Salví. With Machiavellian precision, Salví framed
Ibarra and ruined his life just so he could stop him from marrying María
Clara and making the latter his concubine.
 Meanwhile, in Capitan
Tiago's residence, a party
was being held to
announce the upcoming
wedding of María Clara
and Linares. Ibarra, with
the help of Elías, took this
opportunity to escape
from prison.
Before leaving, Ibarra
spoke to María Clara and
accused her of betraying
him, thinking that she
gave the letter he wrote
Elías her to the jury.
 PÍA ALBA
María Clara explained that she would never conspire against
him, but that she was forced to surrender Ibarra's letter to
Father Salvi, in exchange for the letters written by her mother
even before she, María Clara, was born.
The letters were from her mother, Pía Alba, to Dámaso alluding
to their unborn child; and that María Clara was therefore not
Captain Tiago's biological daughter, but Dámaso's.
Afterwards, Ibarra and
Elías fled by boat. Elías
instructed Ibarra to lie
down, covering him with
grass to conceal his
presence. As luck would
have it, they were spotted
by their enemies. Elías,
thinking he could
outsmart them, jumped
into the water. The guards
rained shots on him, all
the while not knowing
that they were aiming at
the wrong man.
María Clara, thinking that Ibarra
had been killed in the shooting
incident, was greatly overcome
with grief.
Robbed of hope and severely
disillusioned, she asked Dámaso
to confine her into a nunnery.
Dámaso reluctantly agreed when
she threatened to take her own
life, demanding, "The nunnery or
death!"
Unbeknownst to her, Ibarra was
still alive and able to escape. It
was Elías who had taken the
shots.
It was Christmas Eve when Elías woke up in the forest fatally wounded, as it
is here where he instructed Ibarra to meet him. Instead, Elías found the
altar boy Basilio cradling his already-dead mother, Sisa.
The latter lost her mind when she learned that her two sons, Crispín and
Basilio, were chased out of the convent by the sacristan mayor on
suspicions of stealing sacred objects.
(The truth is that, it was the sacristan mayor who stole the objects and only
pinned the blame on the two boys.
The said sacristan mayor actually killed Crispín while interrogating him on
the supposed location of the sacred objects. It was implied that the body
was never found and the incident was covered-up by Salví).
Elías, convinced that he would die soon, instructs Basilio
to build a funeral pyre and burn his and Sisa's bodies to
ashes.
He tells Basilio that, if nobody reaches the place, he
come back later on and dig for he will find gold.
He also tells him (Basilio) to take the gold he finds and
go to school.
In his dying breath, he instructed Basilio to continue
dreaming about freedom for his motherland with the
words: “ I shall die without seeing the dawn break upon
my homeland. You, who shall see it, salute it! Do not
forget those who have fallen during the night. ”
Elías died thereafter.
In the epilogue, it was explained that Tiago
became addicted to opium and was seen to
frequent the opium house in Binondo to satiate
his addiction.
María Clara became a nun where Salví, who has
lusted after her from the beginning of the novel,
regularly used her to fulfill his lust.
One stormy evening, a beautiful crazy woman was
seen at the top of the convent crying and cursing
the heavens for the fate it has handed her.
While the woman was never identified, it is
suggested that the said woman was María Clara.