Noli Me Tangere (English Summary)
A summary in English of the classic Philippine novel Noli Me Tangere, written in
Spanish by Filipino national hero Jose Rizal
Juan Crisostomo Ibarra is a young Filipino who, after studying for seven years in
Europe, returns to his native land to find that his father, a wealthy landowner,
has died in prison as the result of a quarrel with the parish curate, a Franciscan
friar named Padre Damaso. Ibarra is engaged to a beautiful and accomplished
girl, Maria Clara, the supposed daughter and only child of the rich Don Santiago
de los Santos, commonly known as Capitan Tiago.
Ibarra resolves to forego all quarrels and to work for the betterment of his
people. To show his good intentions, he seeks to establish, at his own expense,
a public school in his native town. He meets with ostensible support from all,
especially Padre Damasos successor, a young and gloomy Franciscan named
Padre Salvi, for whom Maria Clara confesses to an instinctive dread.
At the laying of the cornerstone for the new schoolhouse, a suspicious accident,
apparently aimed at Ibarras life, occurs, but the festivities proceed until the
dinner, where Ibarra is grossly and wantonly insulted over the memory of his
father by Fray Damaso. The young man loses control of himself and is about to
kill the friar, who is saved by the intervention of Maria Clara.
Ibarra is excommunicated, and Capitan Tiago, through his fear of the friars, is
forced to break the engagement and agree to the marriage of Maria Clara with a
young and inoffensive Spaniard provided by Padre Damaso. Obedient to her
reputed fathers command and influenced by her mysterious dread of Padre
Salvi, Maria Clara consents to this arrangement, but becomes seriously ill, only
to be saved by medicines sent secretly by Ibarra and clandestinely administered
by a girl friend.
Ibarra succeeds in having the excommunication removed, but before he can
explain matters, an uprising against the Civil Guard is secretly brought about
through agents of Padre Salvi, and the leadership is ascribed to Ibarra to ruin
him. He is warned by a mysterious friend, an outlaw called Elias, whose life he
had accidentally saved; but desiring first to see Maria Clara, he refuses to make
his escape, and when the outbreak page occurs, he is arrested as the instigator
of it and thrown into prison in Manila.
On the evening when Capitan Tiago gives a ball in his Manila house to
celebrate his supposed daughters engagement, Ibarra makes his escape from
prison and succeeds in seeing Maria Clara alone. He begins to reproach her
because it is a letter written to her before he went to Europe which forms the
basis of the charge against him, but she clears herself of treachery to him. The
letter had been secured from her by false representations and in exchange for
two others written by her mother just before her birth, which prove that Padre
Damaso is her real father. These letters had been accidentally discovered in
the convento by Padre Salvi, who made use of them to intimidate the girl and
get possession of Ibarras letter, from which he forged others to incriminate the
young man. She tells him that she will marry the young Spaniard, sacrificing
herself thus to save her mothers name and Capitan Tiagos honor and to
prevent a public scandal, but that she will always remain true to him.
Ibarras escape had been effected by Elias, who conveys him in a banka up the
Pasig to the Lake, where they are so closely beset by the Civil Guard that Elias
leaps into the water and draws the pursuers away from the boat, in which Ibarra
lies concealed.
On Christmas Eve, at the tomb of the Ibarras in a gloomy wood, Elias appears,
wounded and dying, to find there a boy named Basilio beside the corpse of his
mother, a poor woman who had been driven to insanity by her husbands
neglect and abuses on the part of the Civil Guard, her younger son having page
disappeared some time before in the convento, where he was a sacristan.
Basilio, who is ignorant of Eliass identity, helps him to build a funeral pyre, on
which his corpse and the madwomans are to be burned.
Upon learning of the reported death of Ibarra in the chase on the Lake, Maria
Clara becomes disconsolate and begs her supposed godfather, Fray Damaso,
to put her in a nunnery. Unconscious of her knowledge of their true relationship,
the friar breaks down and confesses that all the trouble he has stirred up with
the Ibarras has been to prevent her from marrying a native, which would
condemn her and her children to the oppressed and enslaved class. He finally
yields to her entreaties and she enters the nunnery of St. Clara, to which Padre
Salvi is soon assigned in a ministerial capacity.
