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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 day of the wedding, Simoun stays home to organize his weapons and jewels. He is indeed leaving Manila soon with the captain-general, who will no longer be able to protect him. Basilio visits Simoun, who has been expecting him. Simoun looks worn out by recent events, but Basilio looks even worse for the wear, frightening Simoun. Basilio feels utterly defeated and now seeks only revenge; he apologizes for refusing to participate in Simoun’s failed revolution and asks for another chance. Simoun is moved and tells Basilio that he too was having doubts but now feels reassured. Simoun takes Basilio to his laboratory and shows him a device. It is a pomegranate-shaped lamp, part of the wedding decorations for Juanito Peláez and Paulita Gómez. Simoun disassembles the lamp, revealing the inside to be full of nitroglycerin—the lamp is a bomb.
Basilio, having lost everything—his future in medicine, Julí, and his belief that hard work and dedication would allow him to overcome the obstacles the system placed in his way—finally resolves to join Simoun in a quasi-suicidal quest for revenge. Simoun continues to be troubled by his own plans, and it takes seeing himself in Basilio, another person who has had everything taken from him, to reassure himself and carry on with his plot. Though Simoun is scheduled to depart with the captain-general, he has no intention of ever leaving the Philippines. There is nothing for him in Spain, and one way or another he intends to make his final move at home.
Themes
Basilio becomes afraid once again as he watches Simoun reassemble the lamp. Simoun explains that the lamp will burn down and go out. When it is relit, it will trigger an explosion. The room is already mined with gunpowder, ensuring the death of all the guests. Simoun has another task for Basilio, however. Rather than a simple seizure of power, this plot of Simoun’s expects total chaos to break out in Manila. Cabesang Tales and his bandits will seize the central city, but Simoun wants Basilio to control the poor neighborhoods and suppress any opposition with lethal force.
Despite his resolution, Basilio has to struggle against his own nature to commit to Simoun’s violent plans. He is deeply uneasy with the idea of bombing a wedding and is even more reluctant to assume a leadership position in both combatting and suppressing counterrevolutionary forces. Simoun’s plans have become even more aimlessly violent. Without the positive goal of rescuing María Clara, he has given up on establishing a postrevolutionary order and instead simply aims to destroy the government and initiate a free-for-all battle.
Themes
Simoun waxes poetic again about purifying violence, but this time Basilio, after his traumatic and disorienting prison sentence, is no longer willing or able to argue against him. He can only ask how the outside world will react, and Simoun suggests they will approve, pointing out the horrific violence done by European and American states in their colonies and at home. Simoun gives Basilio a gun and a meeting place, instructing him to stay far away from the wedding.
Instead of coming up with a plan for a free postrevolutionary Philippines, Simoun trusts in what he believes is the cleansing power of violence. Perhaps, having lost hope, he no longer truly believes in the possibility of a free and equal Philippines. Simoun correctly skewers the hypocritical pretensions of the so-called civilized world, which builds modern states on violent colonialist regimes. Still, Simoun’s vision for the future has become increasingly incoherent, bent on destruction to the exclusion of everything else.
Themes
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