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12. Plácido Penitente
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
Plácido’s physics class is exemplary of Dominican-led education in the Philippines, insofar as the students are not taught to understand and experiment with scientific theories, but only to memorize and recite the lesson for their teacher. The teacher, Father Millón, is a rising star in the order, despite his own hostility toward basic theories of physics, like heliocentrism. Millón grades his students exclusively on the basis of their recitation, mocking and degrading them when they make mistakes. The current lesson is about mirrors and the reflection of light. Millón toys with his students, asking them theoretical questions they are incapable of answering and quoting Latin to intimidate them.
Rizal uses Plácido’s physics class to paint a picture of the state of education in the Philippines more broadly. Under the friars, he argues, students are subjected to backwards curricula that have no practical relevance for their careers and lives. Indeed, Rizal goes so far as to suggest that the purpose of friar-led schooling is not to educate students about the subjects at hand, but to inculcate in them deference and obedience to authority. Millón is an especially egregious case, not only for his abuse of his students but his ignorance of his own subject. This is exemplified by his rejection of heliocentrism, the theory that the earth revolves around the sun—one of the basic premises of modern physics.
Themes
Millón turns to Juanito Peláez, who is unable to answer his questions without Plácido’s help. Millón notices Plácido’s frustration and quizzes him instead, going out of his way to humiliate him. Millón accuses Plácido of having 15 absences. When Plácido counters that he has only been absent from the roll call five times, Millón explains that he counts each actual absence as five in his records. He gives Plácido his first mistake in the gradebook, prompting Plácido to ask how he can simultaneously be marked as absent and given a bad grade. Millón mocks Plácido as a “budding metaphysician.” Plácido, who has finally had enough, storms out. He declares that the teacher can give him a bad grade but has no right to insult him. The outburst stuns both the rest of the class and Millón, who spends the rest of the lesson denigrating his students and the Filipino people.
Millón’s terrorization of Plácido offers another demonstration of the cruel and arbitrary nature of colonial authority. Relishing his power over the students, Millón punishes Plácido for the logically impossible simultaneous offenses of being absent and scoring poorly. In doing so, he reveals how uninterested he is in whether or not his students actually learn from him. When Plácido challenges Millón, Millón mocks him viciously; to Millón, Plácido and other Filipinos are incapable of rational thinking, which is why he is so amused by Plácido’s criticism. Ultimately it is Millón’s racism that motivates and justifies his treatment of his students—a microcosm of colonialism writ large.
Themes
