1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin returns to the Philippines after studying abroad to carry out his father's dream of building a secular school. However, he faces opposition from the corrupt friars Father Dámaso and Father Salví.
2. María Clara is Ibarra's fiancée, but their engagement is forbidden by her godfather Father Dámaso. She provides incriminating letters of Ibarra's to the court to protect the secret that Dámaso is actually her biological father.
3. Father Dámaso is a arrogant Spanish friar who falsely accused Ibarra's father of heresy, leading to his death.
1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin returns to the Philippines after studying abroad to carry out his father's dream of building a secular school. However, he faces opposition from the corrupt friars Father Dámaso and Father Salví.
2. María Clara is Ibarra's fiancée, but their engagement is forbidden by her godfather Father Dámaso. She provides incriminating letters of Ibarra's to the court to protect the secret that Dámaso is actually her biological father.
3. Father Dámaso is a arrogant Spanish friar who falsely accused Ibarra's father of heresy, leading to his death.
1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin returns to the Philippines after studying abroad to carry out his father's dream of building a secular school. However, he faces opposition from the corrupt friars Father Dámaso and Father Salví.
2. María Clara is Ibarra's fiancée, but their engagement is forbidden by her godfather Father Dámaso. She provides incriminating letters of Ibarra's to the court to protect the secret that Dámaso is actually her biological father.
3. Father Dámaso is a arrogant Spanish friar who falsely accused Ibarra's father of heresy, leading to his death.
1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin returns to the Philippines after studying abroad to carry out his father's dream of building a secular school. However, he faces opposition from the corrupt friars Father Dámaso and Father Salví.
2. María Clara is Ibarra's fiancée, but their engagement is forbidden by her godfather Father Dámaso. She provides incriminating letters of Ibarra's to the court to protect the secret that Dámaso is actually her biological father.
3. Father Dámaso is a arrogant Spanish friar who falsely accused Ibarra's father of heresy, leading to his death.
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 4
CHARACTERS OF NOLI ME TANGERE eventually falsely report his death, she calls off her
marriage with Linares, instead deciding to enter a
1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin (Ibarra) convent because she can’t stand to exist in a world - A wealthy young man of mixed Spanish and Filipino that doesn’t contain Ibarra. ancestry who has recently returned to the Philippines 3. Father Dámaso from Europe after spending seven years studying - A Spanish friar living in the Philippines, Father Dámaso is abroad. Ibarra is cultured and well-respected, though an arrogant and pedantic priest who, despite having the friars in his hometown of San Diego are suspicious of lived amongst Filipinos and hearing their confessions for him. This is because his father Don Rafael was recently over twenty years, is barely able to speak or imprisoned and labeled a subversive and heretic, a understand Tagalog, the country’s native language. A sentence that eventually led to his death in jail. Ibarra shameless loudmouth, he is unafraid of slandering learns of this on his first night back in the Philippines. nonreligious citizens who he thinks undermine his power. Hoping to carry out his father’s dreams, he later Ibarra learns that this is exactly what happened decides to build a secular school in San Diego, one between his father, Don Rafael, and Dámaso— that remains uninfluenced by overzealous friars like because Rafael refused to go to confession and Father Dámaso and Father Salví, Ibarra’s two primary supported secular means of empowering Filipino adversaries. Unfortunately, building the school proves a citizens, Dámaso jumped at the opportunity to cast difficult task due to the fact that Father Salví works Rafael as a heretic and a subversive. As such, Dámaso together with a number of Ibarra’s enemies to frame is Ibarra’s most evident and outspoken rival, a fact him as a conspirator against the government, ultimately Dámaso seems to leverage by taunting the young man forcing him to flee San Diego as an outlaw at a dinner party one night, making allusions to Rafael’s revolutionary. This means leaving behind the love of his death and insulting Ibarra’s project to build a school. life, María Clara, whom he was originally supposed to Unfortunately, Ibarra is unable to ignore these marry. Ibarra is a politically important character provocations, and his violent response leads to his own because Rizal uses him to voice ideas regarding excommunication. To make matters worse for Ibarra, colonialism and the nature of power in the Philippines. Father Dámaso is very well-connected in San Diego, For the majority of the novel, Ibarra believes that, and he is María Clara’s godfather, which puts him in a although the Catholic friars and the Spanish position of power over Ibarra’s engagement (indeed, government are corrupt, they provide the Philippines he forbids her from marrying Ibarra). María Clara later with valuable support. In contrast to his friend Elías (a discovers that Dámaso is her real father, a fact she more drastic revolutionary who wants to overthrow the hopes to keep quiet at all costs because it would country’s prevailing power structures), Ibarra insists disgrace her deceased mother’s honor and her father’s upon reforming the Philippines from the inside out, respectability, so Dámaso gets away with his working with the friars and Spanish officials to bring corruption. about positive change without dismantling the system 4. Elias entirely. However, by the end of the novel, once Ibarra - An outlaw and vagabond revolutionary who resents is branded a heretical subversive, his ideas about the power the Catholic church and Spanish reform and revolution begin to align with Elías’s more government have over the Philippines. After Ibarra radical theories. saves his life from a vicious crocodile, Elías swears to 2. María Clara protect the young man from his enemies, which are - A woman well-regarded in San Diego for her high social legion. Lurking in the town in the disguise of a day station. Having grown up together as childhood friends, laborer, Elías discovers plots against Ibarra and does María Clara and Ibarra are engaged to be married, everything he can to thwart them. He also tries to though Father Dámaso—her godfather—is displeased convince Ibarra to join him and a band of with this arrangement and does what he can to disenchanted revolutionaries who want to retaliate interfere. When Ibarra is excommunicated after almost against the abusive Civil Guard that empowers the killing Dámaso at a dinner party, arrangements are church and oppresses the people it claims to govern. made for María Clara to marry a young Spanish man He and Ibarra engage in long political discussions named Linares. She doesn’t speak up against this idea throughout the novel, each character outlining a because she doesn’t want to cross her father, Captain different viewpoint regarding the nature of national Tiago, a spineless socialite who disavows Ibarra to stay growth and reform. Elías urges his friend to see that in the good graces of friars like Father Dámaso. Later, nothing productive will come of working within the María Clara discovers that Captain Tiago isn’t her real existing power structures, since the church and father—rather, Father Dámaso impregnated her government are both so corrupt and apathetic when it mother, who died during childbirth. When Ibarra is put comes to actually improving the Philippines. Ibarra is on trial after being framed as a subversive by Father more conservative and doesn’t agree with Elías’s Salví, María Clara is blackmailed into providing the drastic opinions until he himself experiences court with letters Ibarra has sent her—letters his persecution at the hands of the country’s most prosecutors unfairly use as evidence of malfeasance. powerful institutions, at which point he agrees with his She does so in order to keep secret the fact that friend and accepts his fate as a committed subversive Dámaso is her biological father, since she doesn’t want revolutionary. to disgrace her mother’s name or compromise Captain Tiago’s social standing. Still, she feels intense remorse at having sold Ibarra out. When the newspapers 5. Father Salví though this attitude need only appear to be true. On - A serious and committed Spanish friar who takes over the whole, Tasio is an extreme representation of what it Father Dámaso’s post in San Diego as the town’s priest. is to live without caring what other people think: though Fray Salví is a meticulous and cunning man who uses his he enjoys a certain freedom of thought, he also isolates religious stature for political influence, benefitting both himself from the rest of the community, ultimately dying himself and the church. He is often at odds with the alone with nobody to empathize with his lifelong town’s military ensign, volleying back and forth for struggle toward reason and intellectual liberation. power over San Diego and its citizens. While preaching, 8. Don Rafael Ibarra he will often have his sextons (people who tend the - Ibarra’s father, who has died before the novel’s church grounds) lock the doors so that listeners, and opening pages. Ibarra learns from a sympathetic friend especially the ensign, must sit through long sermons. of his father’s, Lieutenant Guevara, that Don Rafael Unlike other priests, he refrains from frequently beating perished in prison after Father Dámaso accused him of noncompliant townspeople, though he applies heresy and subversion. These accusations surfaced excruciating might on the rare occasions he does resort because Don Rafael refused to attend confession, to violence. On the whole, though, he asserts his thinking it useless and instead trying to live according to influence by engineering behind-the-scenes plans to his own moral compass, which was, Lieutenant defame his enemies. For instance, to ruin Ibarra—who is Guevara says, incredibly strong and respectable. As engaged to María Clara, the woman Father Salví such, Father Dámaso started making allusions to secretly loves—he organizes a violent rebellion against Ibarra’s father while preaching. Not long thereafter, the Civil Guards and frames Ibarra as the ringleader. Don Rafael came across a government tax collector Just before the bandits descend upon the town, Salví beating a little boy. When he intervened, he rushes to the ensign’s house and warns him of the accidentally killed the collector and was subsequently imminent attack, thereby portraying himself as a hero imprisoned. This is when Father Dámaso and a handful concerned with the town’s wellbeing. of Don Rafael’s other enemies came forward and 6. Captain Tiago (Don Santiago de los Santos) slandered his name. Lieutenant Guevara hired a - A Filipino socialite and well-respected member of the lawyer, but by the time he’d cleared the old man’s country’s wealthy elite. Close with high-ranking clergy name, Don Rafael had died in his cell. He was buried in members like Father Salví and Father Dámaso, Captain San Diego’s catholic cemetery, but Ibarra eventually Tiago is one of the richest property owners in Manila learns that Father Dámaso ordered a gravedigger to and San Diego. He is concerned with making sure his exhume his body and transport him to the Chinese daughter, María Clara, marries an affluent man with cemetery in order to separate him from non-heretical ample social capital, which is one of the reasons he so Catholics. Not wanting to haul his body all the way to quickly abandons his support of Ibarra when the friars the Chinese cemetery and thinking that the lake would disgrace the young man’s name. As for his own be a more respectable resting place, the gravedigger disgrace, Captain Tiago is not actually María Clara’s threw Don Rafael’s body into the lake. biological father—rather, his wife had an affair with 9. Crispín Father Dámaso before dying in childbirth. This is - A very young boy studying to be a sexton, or a perhaps why he is so concerned with keeping up the caretaker of the church. Crispín and his brother Basilio appearance of respectability, for his own wife work tirelessly to send money home to their mother, dishonored him. As such, he is blind to the vapid Sisa, who is married to a drunk gambler who provides posturing of people like Doctor de Espadaña, a nothing in the way of financial or even emotional fraudulent doctor for rich people, and his wife, Doña support. Unfortunately, the chief sexton falsely accuses Victorina, an obvious social climber. When they present Crispín of stealing money from the church. This means their nephew Linares as a possible new match for María that the boy has to work extra hard to make up his Clara, Captain Tiago is quick to assent, thinking that debt, though his elders are constantly fining him for such a pairing will ensure respectability. minor or invented infractions. One night, he and his 7. Old Tasio (Don Anastasio) brother are supposed to go home to visit their mother - An old man who used to study philosophy and who for the first time in a week, but the chief sexton prefers secular knowledge to Catholicism. This atheistic interferes with their plans, ordering that they stay past worldview attracts attention from the friars and pious dark and past the town’s curfew. When Crispín points townspeople, who call him a “madman” (or, if they are out that this will make it impossible for them to visit Sisa, being kind, “Tasio the Philosopher”). Tasio respects the sexton hauls him away and beats him severely. This Ibarra and hopes dearly that Ibarra will succeed in is the last time he is seen, and one can presume he building a school that is independent of the church. died at the hands of a merciless sexton or priest, though When Ibarra comes to Tasio for advice, though, Tasio a church member tells Sisa that Crispín stole from the counsels the young man to avoid talking to him, fearing church and escaped in the night. that it will hinder the project to build a school. He tells 10. Basilio Ibarra that people call anybody who disagrees with - Crispín’s older brother, who is also training to be a their own beliefs a “madman,” which means that Ibarra sexton. When Crispín is dragged away, Basilio tries to should seek the approval of the friars and government find him unsuccessfully. Despite the town’s curfew, he officials before starting to build the school. This, he tells runs home to his mother and spends the night there, the young man, will make it seem as if he actually cares telling her that the next day he will seek out Ibarra and what these powerful and influential leaders think, ask if he can work for him instead of training to be a sexton. This never transpires, though, because the Civil tells Ibarra that he appreciated his father’s conviction Guard comes looking for him and his brother. Basilio and moral compass, which went against the church escapes from this mother’s house and into the forest, and Father Dámaso’s oppressive dominance. He is also where he lives with a kind family until Christmas Eve, the one to inform Ibarra about what exactly happened when he goes looking for Sisa. Upon finding her, he between Don Rafael and Father Dámaso. discovers that she has gone crazy with grief and is 15. Captain General unable to recognize him. He follows her back into the - An unnamed representative of Spain, and the highest woods, where she eventually dies after finally government official in the Philippines. Civil Guard understanding that he is her son. members, townspeople, and friars alike deeply respect 11. Doctor Tiburcio de Espadaña him and defer to his judgment, each set of people - A Spaniard who speaks with a stutter and looks volleying for his favor. Fortunately for Ibarra, the significantly older than his thirty-five years. Don Tiburcio Captain General is not an enthusiastic supporter of the came to the Philippines as a customs officer, but was church and its over-inflated power, believing that the dismissed upon his arrival. Having very little money to his friars have been afforded too much power in Filipino name, he went to the country provinces of the society. Nonetheless, he recognizes the church’s Philippines to practice medicine, despite the fact that influence and does nothing to impede it, though he he had no training as a doctor. Nonetheless, because does pull strings to have Ibarra’s excommunication he charged exorbitant amounts of money, people lifted after the young man’s dispute with Father came to think of him as one of the country’s best Dámaso at the dinner party. Despite his support of the doctors. After some time, the townspeople discovered project to build a school, he is unable to help when his fraudulence and he was forced to find another Father Salví frames Ibarra as a subversive and heretic. means of survival. When María Clara falls ill, though, 16. Linares Tiburcio is once again falsely practicing medicine. His - Doctor de Espadaña’s nephew from Spain. Linares has new wife Doña Victorina is a fierce social climber, so a law degree and is the most intelligent member of the she convinced him to go back to medicine, advising de Espadaña family, a fact that endears him to Doña him only to take on extremely well-respected patients. Victorina. Eager to use Linares as a means of climbing This is why Captain Tiago chooses him to attend to the social ladder, the family encourages him to lie to María Clara. Father Dámaso, telling the priest that he is the godson 12. La Doctora Victorina de los Reyes de Espadaña of one of the priest’s close friends. Linares gives - A Filipina woman married to Don Tiburcio. Above all Dámaso a letter—presumably forged, though this is else, Doña Victorina cares about her image as a never made clear—from his friend that asks him to find beautiful and admired socialite, though she is the young man a job and a wife. Seeing an opportunity actually—as Rizal goes out of his way to emphasize— to ensure that his daughter, María Clara, doesn’t marry past her prime. She is only in her thirties but looks much the disgraced Ibarra, Father Dámaso arranges her older, and she quickly adopts the latest trends, often engagement to Linares. changing her patterns of speech to reflect the sound of 17. Don Filipo (Filipo Lino) high society members. It is her idea to have Don - The deputy mayor of San Diego. Don Filipo is described Tiburcio treat María Clara. She also encourages him to as “almost liberal” and represents the informal party of bring along his respectable nephew Linares, whom she the younger, more open-minded generation. Like his is eager to pair off with María Clara when Captain followers, he resents the idea that the town should Tiago—whose advances she denied as a young spend great amounts of money on the yearly festival woman because he was Filipino and not Spanish—calls celebrating the various religious holidays in November. off the wedding between his daughter and Ibarra. Unfortunately, Don Filipo works for the mayor, who 13. Doña Consolación essentially acts as the church’s political puppet. This - An older Filipina woman married to the ensign. Doña makes Don Filipo largely unable to bring about actual Consolación is a brutal, vulgar partner who berates the change, meaning that the town’s power structures ensign, engaging him in intense physical fights heard remain closely tied to the church. across the town. It is well known that she makes many of the ensign’s decisions, and she even fuels his rivalry with Father Salví, encouraging her husband to take action against the priest to assert his dominance. Rizal depicts Doña Consolación as incredibly crass and very ugly, writing that her one “sterling trait” is that she seems to have “never looked in the mirror.” Much like Doña Victorina, with whom she eventually gets into an intense fight, she believes herself to be much more worthy of respect than she actually is, constantly deceiving herself in regards to her station in life. She even pretends to not remember her native language, Tagalog, instead speaking very bad Spanish. 14. Señor Guevara - An elderly lieutenant of the Civil Guard who deeply respects both Ibarra and the late Don Rafael. Guevara SUMMARY OF NOLI ME TANGERE prison. Before leaving, Ibarra spoke to Maria Clara and accused Having completed hi studies in Europe, young Juan Crisostomo her of betraying him, thinking she gave the letter he wrote her to Ibarra y Magsalin came back to the Philippines after a seven- the jury. Maria Clara explained that she would never conspire year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos, also against him, but she was forced to surrender Ibarra’s letter to known as “Capitan Tiago”, a family friend, threw a welcome Father Salvi, in exchange for the letters written by her mother, home party, attended by friars and other prominent figures. One Dona Pia, even before she, Maria Clara was born. of the guests, Fray Damaso Vardolargas, the former curate of San Diego, belittled and slandered Ibarra. Maria Clara, thinking Ibarra had been killed in the shooting incident, was greatly overcome with grief. Robbed of hope and The next day, Ibarra visits his betrothed Maria Clara, beautiful severely disillusioned, she asked Damaso to confine her to a daughter of Captain Tiago and affluent resident of Binondo. nunnery. Damaso reluctantly agreed when she threatened to Their long-standing love was clearly manifested in this meeting, take her own life, demanding, “The nunnery or death!”. and Maria Clara cannot help but reread the letters her Unbeknownst to her, Ibarra was still alive and able to escape, as sweetheart had written her before he went to Europe. Before it was Elias who had taken the shots. Ibarra left San Diego in time for the town fiesta, Lieutenant Guevarra, a Civil guard, reveals to him the incidents preceding It was Christmas Eve when Elias woke up, fatally wounded, in the the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich haciendero of forest where he had instructed Ibarra to meet him. Instead, Elias the town. found the altar boy Basilio cradling his already dead mother, Sisa. The woman had lost her mid after learning that Basilio and According to Guevarra, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of her other son, Crispin, were chased out of the convent by the being heretic, in addition to being a subversive – an allegations sacristan mayor on suspicions of stealing 2 golds. brought forth by Damaso because of Don Rafael’s non- participation in the Sacraments, such as confession and mass. Fr. Elias, convinced he would die soon, instructs Basilio to build a Damaso’s animosity towards Ibarra’s father is aggravated by funeral pyre and cremate his and Sisa’s copses. He tells Basilio another incident when Don Rafael helped out in a fight between that, if nobody reached the place, he was return later and dig a tax collector and a child, with the former’s death being as he would find gold. Elias then tells the body to take the gold blamed on him, although it was not deliberate. Suddenly, all and use it to get an education. In his dying breath, he instructed those who thought ill of him surfaced with additional complaints. Basilio to continue dreaming about freedom for his motherland He was imprisoned, and just when the matter was almost settled, with the words: he died of sickness in jail. His remains, formerly interred at the local cemetery, were removed as per Fray Damaso’s orders a “I shall die without seeing the dawn break upon my home =land. few years past. You, who shall see it, salute it! Do not forget those who have fallen during the night.” Revenge was not in Ibarra’s plans; instead he carried through his father’s plan of putting up a school, since he believed education Elias died thereafter. would pave the way to his country’s progress. During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a In the epilogue, it was explained that Tiago became addicted to sabotage had Elias- a mysterious man who had warned Ibarra opium and was seen to frequent the opium house in Binondo. earlier of a plot to assassinate him-not saved him. Instead the Maria Clara became nun, and Salvi, who had lusted after her hired killer met an unfortunate incident and died. from the beginning of the novel, regularly, used her to state his carnal desires. One stormy evening, a beautiful yet insane After inauguration, Ibarra hosted a luncheon which Fr. Damaso woman was seen on the roof of nunnery, crying and cursing the gate-crashed. The friar again insulted Ibarra, who ignored the heavens for the fate it had handed her. While the woman was priest’s insolence, but when the latter slandered the memory of never identified by name, the novel insinuates that it was Maria his dead father, he was no longer able to restrain himself and Clara. lunged at Damaso, prepared to stab him. Consequently Damaso excommunicated Ibarra for assaulting a cleric, taking this opportunity to persuade the already hesitant Tiago to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra. The friar instead wanted Maria Clara to marry Alfonso Linares de Espadana, a peninsular who just arrived from Spain.
With the help of the Gover General, Ibarra’s excommunication
was lifted and the Archbishop of Manila decided to receive him into the Church once again.
A revolt happened soon after, and both Spanish colonial officials
and friars implicated Ibarra as its mastermind. Thus, he was arrested and detained, later disdained by those who become his friends.
Meanwhile, in Capitan Tiago’s residence, a party was being held
to announce the upcoming wedding of Maria Clara and Linares. Ibarra, with the help of Elias, took this opportunity to escape from
[Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 10] Steven W. Holloway - Aššur is King! Aššur is King! _ Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East) (2001,