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18. Sleights
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 Penitente leaves class enraged and seeking revenge. Itching for a fight, he heads home, thinking of how to break the news to his mother that he is abandoning his studies. When he arrives, however, he realizes his mother has come to Manila to visit him. He explains his situation, and she attempts to dissuade him, first with rational arguments, then with appeals to emotion. She pleads with her son to be patient and endure the humiliation the priests subject him to, for his own sake as well as hers.
Plácido struggles to find a way to express his feelings of anger and humiliation caused by the colonial system, of which the physics class was only one particularly painful manifestation. His mother is unable to understand his feelings, having dedicated her life to bettering her family’s position within that system, unfair as it may be.
Themes
Plácido eventually leaves and aimlessly wanders through the city. Seeing a ship in the harbor, Plácido considers leaving for Hong Kong and making his fortune there. Spying Simoun on the shore, he begs the jeweler for a favor, asking if he can use his influence to get Plácido on the next ship for Hong Kong. Simoun asks why and, after hearing Plácido’s story, invites him to come with him.
Simoun takes Plácido to a small house in an impoverished district, where they visit a fireworks maker. Simoun and the fireworks maker discuss ammunition and bombs, which they plan to use within the week. Simoun instructs the man to leave the city and meet Cabesang Tales, who is also part of his plot. Plácido spends two hours at Simoun’s house before leaving.
Simoun’s plans have advanced significantly. He now not only has weapons stockpiled throughout the city, but has agents in place ready to use them, and he has been arming Cabesang Tales and his bandits. It is clear that when the bandits captured Simoun he didn’t only give them his weapons as ransom, he also recruited them to fight for his revolution, just as he now recruits Plácido.
Themes
Simoun, now alone, watches the walled city of Manila from his window. Talking to himself, he muses about his plan and the city’s imminent descent into violence and chaos—a purifying conflict from which a stronger, free Philippines will emerge. But Simoun, reflecting on his criminal past, wonders if he himself is not part of the poison that must be removed. He scolds himself for his weak resolve at such a critical moment. The next morning, Plácido stops arguing with his mother and offers instead to return to the provinces to run an errand for her.
With nearly every aspect of his plan ready to go, Simoun has a sudden crisis of faith. He asks himself whether the violence he is about to unleash will actually right all the wrongs that he and his people have suffered, or if it will be just another turn of a vicious cycle of oppression? Simoun refuses to explore these thoughts further, however—it is too late to turn back now. Plácido pretends to change course to please his mother, leaving Manila not to help her but presumably to join Cabesang Tales and the bandits.
Themes
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