Previous
9. Commentaries
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in El Filibusterismo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Identity
Violence vs. Nonviolence
Education and Freedom
Hypocrisy and Colonial Oppression
Summary
Analysis
The next day Simoun surprises local residents by asking to stay in Cabesang Tales’s house, along with his servants and jewels. Simoun asks Tales about the local bandits, showing him his pistol which he hopes will deter them from robbing him. The local elite filter in to look at Simoun’s jewels, which they buy not only for their own sake but also to curry favor with Simoun and, through him, the captain-general. Captain Basilio, eager to show off, falls for Simoun’s sales tricks about the jewels being from ancient Rome. Simoun charges exorbitant prices for his finest jewels, and he brags about the power one can wield with such valuable goods.
Simoun’s reasons for choosing to stay with Cabesang Tales rather than in a more luxurious locale are initially left unclear. Perhaps, Rizal implies, Simoun’s deliberate performance of obscene wealth in the home of a man who has lost nearly everything is part of his general strategy of exposing the hypocrisy and inequality of the system through his own actions. The local elite embarrass themselves through their obvious desire for Simoun’s jewels and eagerness to play along with his sales pitches, revealing their own ignorance of the world. Simoun’s story about ancient Rome, for example, is highly implausible, but the jeweler deliberately leads his customers on to humiliate them.
Themes
Simoun attempts to buy a locket from Cabesang Tales which once belonged to Ibarra’s lover and Captain Tiago’s daughter, María Clara. A gift from Basilio to Julí, the locket was the only item she wouldn’t sell to ransom her father, and Tales too refuses to sell it without Julí’s permission. On the way, Tales sees the priest who took his land, and he becomes enraged. The next day, Simoun finds his pistol missing and a note of apology from Tales, who explains that he’s joined the bandits. That night, Tales murders the priest and his land’s new tenant and his wife. Simoun is intrigued and though he sends his servants by the lake with most of his jewels, he deliberately continues by land into the bandits’ trap with the jewels he had already shown off.
Simoun reveals his intentions in staying with Tales. The locket in question was a gift from Ibarra—Simoun, that is—to María Clara before their downfall in Noli Me Tángere. The locket eventually made its way to Basilio and then to Julí, and Simoun is hoping to recover this piece of his past. However, Tales takes revenge into his own hands. Simoun decides to deliberately expose himself to the bandits, Tales included, for reasons left as yet unclear.
Themes
