LESSONS FROM RIZAL'S “NOLI” AND “FILI”
By Rudy A. Arizala
04 July 2009
Jose Rizal's novel “Noli Me Tangere” (The Social Cancer), is a parody
of the arrogance of the wealthy (upper class of society) in the
Philippines during the time of Rizal under the Spanish regime as well
as ignorance of the common masses. It depicts the ostentations of
the rich, arrogance of those in power, ignorance of the laboring
class and incompetence of those who govern and the governed.
In the “Noli” as well as in his subsequent novel, the “Fili”, Rizal
presented solution to the “social ills” afflicting the body of
Philippine society – either the use of peaceful means (reforms
through education) or subversion (filibuster) and violence - the use
of force.
Rizal, the educated elite, opted for peaceful reforms without
severing ties from Spain compared to Bonifacio, the commoner, who
advocated the use of force or revolution to free the Philippines from
foreign domination. In other words, the Filipinos were presented
means of achieving freedom and progress – through the point of a pen
or the blade of a “tabak”(sword). As emblazoned in the national
symbol of Chile, “Por la razon o fuerza”?
In the “Fili”, Rizal settled for righteousness and peaceful means.
Through the mouth of a native priest, Father Florentino, Rizal told a
dying Simoun, the main character in the “Fili” who was Ibarra in the
“Noli”:
“ I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the
sword's point, for the sword plays but little part in modern affairs,
but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by
exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by
loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying
for them. . .”
Rizal in the “Noli” started his story with a sumptuous feast at the
palatial residence of Capitan Tiago in Binondo, with glistening
artificial lights and selected guests consisting of the high and the
mighty- the cream of society during the Spanish regime in the
Philippines. And Rizal ended his story in the “Fili”, a sequel to
“Noli”, at a solitary hut by the forest on the edge of a deep blue
sea with a dying man – Simoun – amidst lurking dark shadows of the
forest competing with the pale light of the moon.
Speaking through the mouth of Padre Florentino, Rizal told a dying
Simoun why efforts to attain freedom and progress failed in the
following words:
“When our people is unprepared, when it enters the fight through
fraud and force, without a clear understanding of what it is doing,
the wisest attempts will fail, and better they do fail, since why
commit the wife to the husband if he does not sufficiently love her,
if he is not ready to die for her?”
But in Rizal's last novel – the “Fili - he did not leave future
generations without hope. Again through the mouth of Father
Florentino, he said after throwing the treasure chest of a dying
Simoun into the bottom of the ocean:
“May nature guard you in her deep abysses among the pearls and corals
of her eternal seas. . .When for some holy and sublime purpose man
may need you, God will in his wisdom draw you from the bosom of the
waves. Meanwhile, there you will not distort justice, you will not
foment avarice!”