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1. On Deck
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
Below deck, a few well-dressed Filipino students stand out from the other passengers. Basilio and Isagani, studying medicine and poetry, respectively, go up to the bow of the ship to talk. Basilio explains how his patron, Captain Tiago, is addicted to opium and struggling to kick the habit thanks to Father Irene’s enabling. He explains that Father Irene advised Tiago to send Basilio to check up on his house in San Diego, a town in La Laguna. The two young men also discuss their plans for a Spanish-language academy that they have been petitioning the government for. The priests, however, especially Father Sibyla, are strongly opposed to their plans.
The Filipino students, Basilio and Isagani in particular, present a unique problem for the colonial racial and class caste system, highlighting how it is starting to break down. As more and more mestizo and indio Filipinos become “Europeanized,” they start to demand access to the same education and employment as the Spanish, threatening the latter’s monopoly on power in the Philippines. By asking the Spanish to structure society according to their own principles, the students expose the hypocrisy of colonial rule. Captain Tiago’s opium addiction, for its part, symbolizes the extent to which the Filipino elites lack purpose or direction and are stagnating under Spanish control.
Themes
Isagani is planning to marry Paulita Gómez. His uncle, Father Florentino, is hiding below deck to avoid Doña Victorina for fear that she will ask him about Tiburcio. Simoun joins the men and asks them about La Laguna. This offends Isagani’s local pride, but Simoun keeps up his good humor. The two young men then discuss Simoun’s influence over the captain-general. At the back of the ship, Father Florentino sits alone. Florentino was born wealthy, but his mother forced him to become a priest, and he lost his first love to a rival. He then avoided the power that priests in the Philippines typically achieve. After the failed 1872 rebellion, he retired to his country home and adopted Isagani, who some claim is his illegitimate son. The captain spies Florentino and insists he come above deck, but Florentino is able at least to send word to Isagani to avoid them so he won’t have to talk to Victorina.
Isagani and Basilio also represent a generational shift in Filipino politics. No longer ashamed of their backgrounds (and the fact that they are not Spanish), they instead take pride in their country and its culture—to them, education is not a favor they are asking from the Spanish but a human right they are entitled to. Florentino’s personal history is wrapped up in the failed revolutionary politics of a previous generation. While some were arrested and executed, and some betrayed the movement to side with the colonists, Florentino’s response was to retreat from the world, a tendency he continues to display in his response to the personal conflict between Tiburcio and Victorina.
Themes
