Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) by José Rizal

4 reviews

skele_queen's review

reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Slow paced and serious satire that constantly made me gasp with the audacity of the call-outs. I understand why the author was executed for this.

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bookbelle5_17's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Review of Noli Me Tangere (Touch me Not)

By: Soledad Lacson-Locsin

Crisostomo Ibarra returns to the Philippines after he hears his father has died in prison. He’s ready to learn about his Mother Land after being away for so long and wants to marry his childhood sweetheart Maria Clara. Things get complicated when the Indigenous people of the Philippines want Ibarra’s help to fight against the Spanish Government, who are currently running the Philippine Islands.

Reading Noli Me Tangere was my first step to immersing myself in my Filipino culture and I had a good time with it, though it is a tragic story. Rizal explores what happened when the Spaniards took charge of the Philippines and how there was a group of oppressed natives of the Philippines who weren’t fairly treated by the government. For the Philippines their Catholic religion is important and rules them. We have three Padres who run things, Padre Damaso, Padre Siblya, and Padre Sibya and each is corrupt and tyrannical in different ways. Damaso rules with an iron fist but hides behind God. Crisostomo Ibarra’s journey is relatable in the sense that he wants to understand where he comes from and naively believes that his government is what is good for the people. The Elias points out his privilege and how fortunate he is when Crisostomo argues for the government. He doesn’t have the same experiences Elias has had. I admire Maria Clara’s loyalty to Ibarra and her decision to join the convent while he was in Europe. The extra subplots show the problems between the Filipino people and the Spaniards. Rizal addresses the reader sporadically explaining things to them such as the chapter explaining a holiday known as the Fiesta, which happens in November. He also wrote the novel in present tense, which is a tense that is normally awkward for me to read but worked for me in this case. This addressing to the audience and present tense immersed me in the world and brings the reader into this time in history.

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alesseia's review

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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sherbertwells's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“‘You are master of your own will, señor, and your future,’ he said to Crisóstomo, who was silent. ‘But if you allow me an observation, I will give it to you. Look well to what you are going to do. You are going to set off a war” (402).

What does it take for a novel to spark a revolution?

Must it adopt the digressions and diatribes of its nonfiction brethren, the Communist Manifestos and Common Senses of the world? Should it contain a revolution, successful or unsuccessful, within its pages? How broad must its scope be?

Does it even have to be good?

Maybe not. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most famous novel of 19th-century American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, is credited with sparking the Civil War, but modern writers from James Baldwin to John Green regard it merely as “terrible but very important.” I don’t have to read it for English or APUSH, and I suspect that’s a blessing. But in the Philippines, it’s another story.

José Rizal’s novel Noli me Tangere, partially inspired by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is a staple in Phillipine classrooms. In fact, the 1956 “Rizal Law” made it required reading for its role in “shap[ing] the national character,” and the back of my Penguin Classics edition calls it “the novel that sparked the Philippine revolution.” This impressive pedigree, a result of posthumous idolization by Filipino and American politicians, initially made the novel a little intimidating. What was so revolutionary about it? Would it be better than Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Would it even be good?

“Combat begins in the sphere of ideas, to descend into the arena, which will be covered with blood. I hear the voice of God, woe to those who resist it! For them, history has not been written” (333)

Noli me Tangere’s most stirring, revolutionary content is espoused by two characters: Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin (henceforth “Ibarra”) and Elías. Ibarra is the protagonist, a European-educated aristocrat of mixed ancestry who sets the novel in motion by returning to his hometown of San Diego and seeking to improve the lives of his fellow Filipinos. After failing to open a school and being excommunicated by the corrupt clergymen Father Dámaso, he grows closer to Elías. The mysterious laborer introduces Ibarra, and by extension the novel-reading Phillipine pubic, to a growing peasant movement.

The interactions between the two men are the best parts of Noli me Tangere: even after more than a century, obscured by the film of academic translation, the passion they feel for their homeland and their countrymen is palpable. I loved watching Ibarra and Elías, who from different walks of life and espouse different philosophies, reach an understanding surrounded by the gorgeous wildlife that “had not yet been given their Latin names” (50). I shuddered when the Civil Guard burned Ibarra’s ambitions, and cheered when Elías helped him escape. By the end of the novel, I understood why Spanish authorities had banned this book: even with 21st-century hindsight, I was rooting for the Philippine Revolution.

But what about the non-revolutionary parts of Noli me Tangere—the social satire, the love story, the criticism of clerical bigotry which an English-speaking audience might associate with Dickens or Austen?

Well, it’s not great. The translation by Harold Augenbraum is perfectly competent and mimics the style of Noli me Tangere’s English contemporaries. Maria Clara, Ibarra’s love interest, is noble and pretty but hardly as deep as her male counterparts (this was a problem in Les Miserables too). Sisa, the mother of two Dickensian waifs, suffers from typical Victorian hysteria. Women don’t seem to have a place in Ibarra’s revolution at all. Other female characters embody the cultural ills of the colonial period, but while it might have been funny to watch a catfight in 1887 it’s uncomfortable today. The bureaucrats are indistinguishable, the priests are ridiculously evil, and the children exist mostly to suffer.

Admittedly, I haven’t read enough 19th-century fiction to determine whether these features are competently-executed or not; I merely observed them and don’t enjoy them. I suffered through similar situations in Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities, which had stronger characters, but I suspect Rizal’s era just isn’t for me. Comedy doesn’t age well anyway, and the genteel parts of the book aren’t what made it famous.

Noli me Tangere’s political discussions made it famous. Its tangents about cockfighting and indulgences (hello again, Hugo) made it famous. Its thrilling and poignant final chapters made it famous and infamous too.

I guess a book doesn’t have to be a great novel to be an important one. But Noli me Tangere wasn’t even bad. If I were a student in the Philippines assigned to read this, I wouldn’t mind it.

Then again, I wouldn’t have a choice.

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