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23. A Corpse
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 Isagani goes to meet Paulita Gómez, observing the city around him and thinking over his poetry on the way. He muses on the relationship between the Philippines and Spain and the prospects for liberalism in the colony. He’s then interrupted by the arrival of Paulita and Doña Victorina, who asks for information about Don Tiburcio. Isagani does not divulge that the latter is still hiding with his uncle. Victorina then asks him about Juanito Peláez, whom she is scheming to marry after Don Tiburcio’s death.
Isagani’s calm, peaceful morning reveals that Simoun’s revolution was aborted at the last minute. Blissfully ignorant of the narrowly avoided bloodbath, Isagani concentrates on his romantic dream of a peaceful transition to independence, one that does not require a dramatic break with Spain. Doña Victorina makes explicit the machinations that she and Juanito had already set in place earlier, as they both scheme for each other’s wealth—if only her current husband can be gotten rid of first.
Themes
Isagani and Paulita then talk privately. Isagani tells her about his beautiful, isolated village, where he hopes to bring her after marriage. Paulita is repulsed at the thought of traveling through the mountains and forest to get there, but Isagani promises her a future of trains crisscrossing a free, enlightened Philippines. His optimism amuses but doesn’t convince her. Traveling home together by coach, Isagani falls into his reveries once again, in love with both Paulita and his country.
Isagani’s love for the natural beauty of the Philippines and his pastoral poetry place him in a global tradition of romantic nationalism; Rizal, for instance, alludes to the German Romantics of the early 19th century, among others. Rizal also suggests, however, that like the Romantics, Isagani is deeply naïve and underestimates the strength and cruelty of the forces of oppression.
Themes
