Remembering Noli and Fili

The last time I read Noli Me Tangere was in third year high school for Filipino class. If there was a quiz the next day, I would sluggishly pick up my book, read the chapter, underline important parts, memorize important names and details and then move on to another subject. It felt like such a task to read chapter after chapter and then analyze it in class the next day. Anyway, the central characters are already so iconic in our culture that we don’t need to analyze them thoroughly. For example, who doesn’t know or hasn’t heard of Maria Clara? She has become the epitome of the traditional Filipina. Although I enjoyed our class discussions, most people just gave bookish and predictable answers about our introspections into the characters and the plot, stuff that I already knew when I read the comic version of Noli. The only thing I enjoyed about Noli Me Tangere was making a grand play about it, centered on Kapitan Tiyago’s character.

It was the same thing in senior year. The only time I immersed myself in the El Filibusterismo was for another play, but since we were only given Chapters 13 to 18, I only focused on that part of the novel. When I finished high school, all my memories of Rizal’s great novels were all images of my classmates on our small auditorium stage, dressed in costume and giving their all in acting.

When I found out that we had to read the two novels again for my history class this summer, I was aghast. How could I finish both novels in a few weeks time? I already had my own summer reading list, from the Shopaholic series to The Fight Club to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. My summer curriculum was creeping into whatever was left of my summer. I tried to put off the two novels until the very last minute, and I suddenly realized that I had about a week left until our long exam about Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Thus began my travel back to old Manila and the fictional town of San Diego. I read the two books in about four days, and it was the first time that I was really able to entirely absorb their details. In high school, we discussed a chapter every other day, and the tendency was to pour all your energies into that single chapter and forget about it the next day. Ten chapters later, I would end up being confused about which character was which and totally clueless about other significant details, as if I hadn’t read the book at all.

This time around, after reading the books in a few sittings, I began to see the beauty of each novel. I found myself laughing at Maria Clara as she tried to keep from reacting at the sound of Ibarra’s voice and failing miserably, marveling at the eloquence and intelligence of Ibarra, Elias, Isagani, and Basilio, feeling frustrated when Huli threw herself off the church tower, pitying Simoun when he found out that Maria Clara was dead, wanting to kill Padre Salvi, and feeling sad when Simoun finally passed away. I finally discovered the richness and the beauty of the two novels, especially because I was not reading textbooks, but the unabridged versions, the Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo in their full glory. (I wonder why our high school textbooks are shorter – for brevity or for censorship purposes?) They gave us a clear picture of our country more than a hundred years ago, and showed us what feelings resided in the hearts of the "indios" when we were still a colony of Spain. We often assume that we know everything there is to know. Why do we go through the Noli and the Fili quickly in high school? Besides the fact that we probably just want to watch TV or something, we already assume we know what happens in the book–thus, there is no need for us to read the entire thing. The important things for us to remember in Noli are that the friars were abusive, Sisa goes crazy and dies at the end, Elias dies in the end, and Padre Damaso is Maria Clara’s real father. In Fili, Simoun is Ibarra, Isagani throws out the lamp-bomb before it explodes, and Simoun commits suicide in the end. However, these elements do not make up the entire novel. We forget about the other characters who also represent significant types of people, the interesting and important discourses about different topics, from education to the Spanish tongue to revolution, different comments of Filipinos regarding the same topics, even priceless funny moments that show us the quirks of the characters back then. The two novels paint us a picture of our country before our independence, and it helps us to understand what our countrymen went through and what our heroes believed in and fought for.

Besides the historical significance of the novels, the two are actually very well-written and engaging books. The plot is amazingly rich, with twists and surprises that keep you glued to each chapter. The characters are interesting and dimensional, from the hilarious ones like Doña Victorina and Sandoval, to the insightful ones like Pilosopo Tasio and Padre Florentino. Both are epic tragedies, filled with love, loss, hope and despair. Even if I felt so frustrated with the plots half of the time, I really enjoyed reading both books. My summer reading was not in vain, after all.

My history teacher told me that the Noli Me Tangere was recently translated and published in Thailand. If people abroad are very much interested in reading it, why are we reading this book for school? The novels are a major part of our own history, but why do we feel so forced into reading these novels? People are going crazy over The Da Vinci Code. People have at least seen one version of the movie The Three Musketeers. Noli and Fili are our stories; the characters are our people. Let us not be satisfied with the bookish details that high school leaves in our mind–Noli is not just Sisa, Ibarra and Maria Clara. Fili is not just Simoun and Basilio. Let us rediscover these stories for ourselves and understand, critique, and analyze them. We shouldn’t just leave history behind in high school. History goes beyond high school textbooks, and these two novels are pieces from and of history.