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5. A Coachman’s Christmas Eve
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
At midnight, Basilio leaves the house for the Ibarra woods, which Captain Tiago bought after Ibarra’s demise. Basilio walks through the pitch-black woods alone, recalling what happened the woods 13 years earlier: as a child, he had followed his wounded mother to the woods, where she died. A wounded man told him to bring wood for a funeral pyre, but that man was also dead by the time Basilio returned. A second man then helped Basilio burn the man’s body and bury his mother’s.
Basilio’s recollections recount the conclusion of Noli Me Tángere from a different perspective; in that book, Basilio was only a small child. Basilio’s mother, Sisa, was driven mad and eventually killed by her husband’s abuse and the death of her other son at the hands of Father Salví. The first man Basilio recalls was the revolutionary Eliás, who was shot and mortally wounded in the pursuit on the lake—and mistakenly assumed by all to be Ibarra. The second man was none other than Ibarra himself.
Themes
Basilio then traveled to Manila and worked as a servant for Captain Tiago, studying in his free time. Basilio persevered through the hostile environment of the religious schools, eventually transferring to the municipal school and finding academic success studying medicine. Soon he will graduate, become a doctor, and return to San Diego to marry Julí, and he is already dreaming of his graduation speech, in which he will call out the elite’s hypocrisy for the sake of all future students in the Philippines.
Basilio’s journey to Manila is representative of the combination of grit and pure luck required for a smart, talented indio like him to get an education. There are many others out there who have worked just as hard but have failed to find his success, a wrong that he seeks to right or at least to name publicly in his graduation speech.
Themes
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