Page 145 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

128 Jolyon Mitchell

Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, about Noli Me Tangere, Rizal reveals the taboo-
breaking sense he had in mind:

The book contains things which no one has spoken about until the
present—things so delicate that they cannot be touched upon by anyone.
I have tried to do what no one has ever wanted to do.
(Bantug with Ventura 1997: 69–70)

Through a satirical novel, Rizal dares to touch matters such as the
hypocrisy, infighting, and oppression of the Spanish Friars in the Philippines.
The characters from Noli and Fili, as they are commonly known today,
regularly reappeared in novels, films, and plays throughout the twentieth
century. The once-banned book has been translated into numerous foreign
languages, is sold worldwide, and appears in the core syllabus of many
schools in the Philippines.
Part of the power of these two books is the way in which their narratives
resonate with the experience of Filipinos in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. Through ironic characterizations, these stories subvert the
status quo. Rizal ridicules many of the friars, and some of the collaborating
politicians, who then controlled so much of life in the Philippines. Though
the excesses of the Spanish regime were the original target, the fact that
Filipinos would endure colonization by the United States for nearly half a
century and a brief occupation by the Japanese during the Second World War,
made these subversive narratives even more attractive to locals in search of
an independent national identity.
There is considerable debate as to whether the central protagonist in
Noli, Ibarra, should be interpreted as Rizal himself. There are clearly
similarities between the peripatetic life of this fictional character and Rizal.
It is ambiguous who actually dies at the end of the novel, either Ibarra or his
bold friend Elias. So the last words, “whispered as if in prayer” come from
an “unknown”:

Nothing will remain of me… I die without seeing the sun rise on my
country. You who are to see the dawn, welcome it, and do not forget
those who fell during the night!
(Rizal 2004: 371)

These words are regularly quoted, often out of their original narrative
context, as if an actual prophetic insight of Rizal about his own martyrdom,
dying before he would see the Philippines gain its brief independence in
1898, which did not become permanent until 1946. As with many fictional
narratives, they are appropriated and put to work in nonfictional settings.