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7. Simoun
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
Julí wakes up on Christmas Day without the miracle she had prayed for coming to pass. Aggrieved, she leaves Tandang Selo and her childhood home to enter into domestic service. Tandang Selo watches the Christmas festivities, an exhausting series of rituals that bring little pleasure to most Filipinos. Receiving Christmas visitors, Tandang Selo discovers that he can no longer speak.
As Rizal emphasizes again and again through the novel, the appeal to religion from oppressed Filipinos only results in constant disappointment. Christmas in the Philippines, Rizal suggests, is not an organic celebration but a ritualized performance that the church has forced on people. Rather than an escape from colonial oppression, it is simply another example of it. Tandang Selo’s sudden muteness is the result of the extreme strain placed on him and his family of late, with his son abducted by bandits, his grandson drafted into the army, and his granddaughter sold into servitude.
Themes
