Sir Joe,
I had heard this argument before: Rizal is not a hero because he simply had death wish. Sort of a maniacal way of committing suicide as a way out from a predicament he himself had put himself into. His exposes earned him the wrath of the friars who laid the trap by harassing his family, necessitating his return. He was then arrested, put on trial and then executed.
Another argument went like this: Rizal is not a hero because when he was arrested, he turned around and denied his link with the revolution. He even tried to save his skin by saying he was not a traitor to Mother Spain. He then volunteered to serve as a military doctor in Cuba, knowing that if he was going to be executed he would be spared the torturous “garrote” and instead be executed by firing squad as a military man.
Still another argument says: Rizal planned these all along. He planned to die the way he did so he will be recognized as a hero and thus perpetuate his name.
Any of the above arguments could be true. But there is no way we could prove or disprove anything within the mind of a person as complex as Rizal. His mindset was formed in his very early years when his mother, accused of poisoning her relative was dragged on the streets of Calamba, and was thrown into prison for a trumped up case of attempted murder. Any young boy even after seeing his loved one treated so badly would try to forget such a harrowing experience. But not Rizal. The hatred towards the friars and the Spanish authorities burned and etched in his brilliant mind, that even in his early years he was already creating a plan, not for revenge, but for changing the system so the kind of wrong done to his mother will not be repeated on anyone else.
I had heard this argument before: Rizal is not a hero because he simply had death wish. Sort of a maniacal way of committing suicide as a way out from a predicament he himself had put himself into. His exposes earned him the wrath of the friars who laid the trap by harassing his family, necessitating his return. He was then arrested, put on trial and then executed.
Another argument went like this: Rizal is not a hero because when he was arrested, he turned around and denied his link with the revolution. He even tried to save his skin by saying he was not a traitor to Mother Spain. He then volunteered to serve as a military doctor in Cuba, knowing that if he was going to be executed he would be spared the torturous “garrote” and instead be executed by firing squad as a military man.
Still another argument says: Rizal planned these all along. He planned to die the way he did so he will be recognized as a hero and thus perpetuate his name.
Any of the above arguments could be true. But there is no way we could prove or disprove anything within the mind of a person as complex as Rizal. His mindset was formed in his very early years when his mother, accused of poisoning her relative was dragged on the streets of Calamba, and was thrown into prison for a trumped up case of attempted murder. Any young boy even after seeing his loved one treated so badly would try to forget such a harrowing experience. But not Rizal. The hatred towards the friars and the Spanish authorities burned and etched in his brilliant mind, that even in his early years he was already creating a plan, not for revenge, but for changing the system so the kind of wrong done to his mother will not be repeated on anyone else.
He studied assiduously, went abroad to learn how other places were governed, to find out the best system to apply to his country. He wrote the books that in the words of Sir Ka Miling Silverio were two volcanoes the eruption of which had shaken the very foundation of the Spanish colonial government of the Philippines.
When he returned to save his family from further harassments, he met his doom.
Were all these a product of a well scripted play? If it is so then Rizal was the ultimate playwright – better than Shakespeare, a century ahead of the modern trend of reality TV, in whose play he was the central character who had guided the plot to its ultimate ending, like no one could have devised but the genius Rizal himself.
Sir Manny Bade
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