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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
From the beginning of Noli Me Tangere, the narrator engages in what seems to be a friendly if erudite conversation with the reader, which defines the style of most of the novel. The novel, in English translation by Harold Augenbraum, has a brisk style at the sentence level. The sentences generally are supported by strong, simple nouns. Take, for example, these sentences from the perspective of Sisa:
Had the soldiers set fire to her house but let her sons go free, she would have covered them with blessings. Grateful, she looked again to heaven, which was furrowed by a flock of herons, those wispy clouds in the Philippine sky; her heart reawakened with confidence, she continued down the path.
The novel's style is generally very concrete, reflecting Rizal's secular, modernist worldview. The figurative language in the book tends to rely on special knowledge about the Philippines, either its locations or people. This serves to ground the story in the Philippines in particular, drawing the focus toward it. Take, for example, this passage describing Malapad-na-bató, a prominent cliff on the Pasig River, at which Ibarra and Elías have an argument late in the novel:
People who have at one time cruised the Pasig at night, on one of those magic nights the Philippines offers, when the moon spills a melancholy poetry from a limpid blue, when shadows hide the misery of men and silence snuffs the rotten timbre of their voices, when nature alone speaks, they will understand what was going through the minds of those two young men.
The figurative language, here and often in the book, is particularly oriented toward "People who have at one time cruised the Pasig at night," that is, Filipinos. This is emblematic of Rizal's revolutionary project, as his metaphors and similes also argue for the value of the Philippines and the injustice of Spanish oppression.
Related Themes:
