UNDERSTANDING RIZAL'S WORKS

Using Shakespeare's lines to learn Rizal's NOLI and FILI

Jose Sison Luzadas

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts….”

The lines are from Shakespeare’s “As you Like It”. If you are familiar with Dr. Rizal’s characters in the NOLI and FILI, there is no doubt, that man who in his time plays many parts, must be Crisostomo Ibarra in NOLI who disguised himself sporting the name in the FILI as Simoun!

Rizal introduced Crisostomo Ibarra at the beginning of the NOLI as a promising young man who after seven years abroad returned to the Philippines and was preoccupied with his plans to educate the native Filipinos so that someday they will be at par with the Spanish peninsulares by building schools and learn how to read, understand with critical analysis and to engage in trade and agriculture. Father Damaso thwarted all his plans. In the end Ibarra failed to avenge his father's death and even lost Maria Clara to the nunnery!

He disappeared like the sunset of San Diego and nowhere to find him after the long chase in the lake where Elias, the mysterious native and protector succumbed to bullet wounds inflicted by the pursuing civil guards in the long chase along the Pasig River. The drama of the vanishing Ibarra finally made his comeback appearance in the FILI as Simoun with disguises like his accent, moustache and dark glasses.

Completely a different man, he was so obsessed to avenge the wrongs inflicted to his family and personal experience in a scheme of vendetta feeding his countrymen hatred and encouraging the rulers to commit more crimes against the people until it was ripe to start a native uprising to topple the government. However, his plan betrayed him turning him a failed revolutionario. Rizal assigned Father Florentino, a native priest to rationalize a bungled revolution.

As if delivering an extreme unction that priest normally provides to a man on his last breath of life, Father Florentino did his job with more emphasized of the outside forces than the divine intervention why Simoun’s planned revolution failed.

He lectured to a wounded and dying Rebel that his revolution is doomed to fail because the people are not ready and because they are not ready they don’t deserve. If the people are not ready then…………

“What good is independence if the SLAVES of today are the TYRANTS of tomorrow?” Back to the basics. Educate the MASSES.

Send comments to Jose Sison Luzadas: luzadas@bellsought.net