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33. Final Council
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
Basilio is unsure what to do with himself for the next few hours before Simoun’s plan is set into motion. Obsessed with the lamp, he muses on the wedding, pitying Isagani. Basilio heads to Captain Tiago’s old home and observes the guests arriving. Don Timoteo has completely redecorated in a tasteless manner, combining all kinds of clashing expensive décor, as long as it isn’t native Filipino art. The redecorating, along with the other wedding preparations, has been extremely costly and wasteful, reflecting the spectacular heights of Don Timoteo’s new and increased wealth.
Basilio, having suffered so much at the hands of the powers that be, almost can’t believe it is possible to do away with them in such an abrupt and spectacular fashion. Still, this violence is so abstract that he struggles to truly grasp its implications. Don Timoteo’s house, like Quiroga’s much earlier, indicates how culturally unmoored the powerful but not dominant mestizo elites feel. Shut out of European culture, they nevertheless cannot turn to Indigenous culture, which they scorn and despise.
Themes
