GROUP 7

Bautista, Ardent B.
Iris, Mark T.
Dolores, Fernalene
Vega, John Carl
Nazareno, Jealyn

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE READING

1. The marked acceleration of commerce and intellectual contact between the Philippines
and Europe were historical circumstances which gave birth to a new social class －the
middle class where Jose Rizal belonged.
2. Rizal easily adopted the liberal point of view and developed his own national sentiment
and consciousness. What actually made him a progressive and a radical of his own time
was his ultimate recognition that the liberties of the individual could be realized only if
the nation as a whole, particularly the masses whom he spontaneously observed would
be uplifted and to enjoy more freedom from an overwhelming system of clerical and
authoritarians and antiliberals.
3. Rizal was able to produce his anticolonial and anticlerical writings because of the
following factors: (a) The martyrdom of Father Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora; (b) The
humiliation of his mother at the hands of the colonizers; (c) The Calamba affair in
which both the middle class and peasantry suffered as a result of their just petition
against the increased land rent and other arbitrary impositions of the friars.
4. Rizal manifested his deep sense of nationalism in the following writings: (a) Morgas’s
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas where he wanted to fight racial discrimination by
asserting that a national culture could develop without colonial culture; (b) “The
Indolence of Filipinos,” where he debunked the colonial argument that Filipinos were
inherently lazy and exposed the fact that the colonizers lived gloriously on the labor and
blood of his people: (c) “The Philippines A Century Hence,” where he demonstrted in
full the vicious process used by the colonizers to subjugate the people by corrupting
them and taking advantage of their virtues.
5. When Rizal wrote his master works Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, he
explored the possibility of reform first and, upon exhausting that possibility within the
colonial framework, he also explored the possibility of a revolution.
6. The most prominent characters in Noli Me Tangere were: (a) Crisostomo Ibarra who
was an extremely well-intentioned reformer who thinks that the solution to the suffering
of the motherland would be a new type of education of her children; (b) Sisa signified
the suffering motherland who was a victim of injustices and lost her consciousness
subsequently; (c) Padre Damaso and Padre Salvi who symbolized a friar-dominated
society, the wealthiest and most politically powerful elements of the society; (d) Maria
Clara a symbol of weakling and hybrid Filipino who could not assert her rights; (e)
Capitan Tiago, the symbol of the newly-risen corrupt Filipino bourgeoisie, a cuckold of
colonial power; (f) Pilosopong Tasio, the idealist cynic who believed that change will
ultimately come with the coming in of fresh ideas from abroad; (g) Lucas and Bruno
who belonged to the Indios but acted as pretty mercenaries; (h) Cabesang Tales, the
 peasant victim of feudal oppression who organized a peasant rebel with a mass
following and waged guerrilla warfare after finding out that the redress of grievances
and justice are not possible in the system; (i) sacristan who himself is an Indio yet
served as chief executor of his own people.
7. Rizal depicted the different social issues through various characters: (a) The bastard
Filipino culture signified by Sister Rufa and Sister Pute, whose thinking consists of a
systematization of superstition which includes airy stocks of plenary indulgences,
bundles of candles and sacks of girdles and scapularies or “ split-level Christianity;” (b)
The social system dominated by the curate and alferez, assisted by a docile and stupid
gobernadorcillo and principalia, whose main activities are holding fiestas, and by the
corrupt trader, contract-maker, influence-peddler, and cuckold Capitan Tiago; (c)
Colonial mentality depicted by Dona Consolacion, which always manages to adopt what
limps in the alien culture.
8. In the Fili, Rizal exposes thoroughly and systematically the decadence of the system as
the beginning of a revolutionary situation. He exposes the rotting body of the corrupt
Capitan Tiago, the sham character of Senor Pasta and the devilish viciousness of Padre
Irene and Padre Camorra, Don Costudio, and many ugly features of the coloial
domination, including Don Tiburcio de Espadaňa’s misery.
9. The characters of Rizal’s Noli and Fili come from every stratum of Philippine colonial
society. It depicts people from all walks of life － from the educated, powerful, rich,
corrupt, religious, gamblers, businessman, lovers, reformers, and influential
personalities to the poor, ignorant, social-gambling dévotes, rebels, and religious
fanatics, among others.
10. Rizal was already a “marked” man only after writing the Noli. His novels was
immediately denounced as subversive and heretical. The foreign rulers of his native land
started to slander him and call him an agent of another alien power. After the more
forward novel, Fili, he was practically bound for Bagumbayan for his execution.