Jude Vincent B.

Macalos BSEd- Social Studies 3-2 GE 9

Lesson 8: The Second Novel: El Filibusterismo

Craft your own view after differentiating the two novels of Rizal on their relevance to the
nationalistic fervor of Filipinos. This is good for 20 points at least three paragraphs.

One of Rizal’s legacies was his highly popular novels Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo. The said literay pieces were Rizal’s way of These novels were
published in the more crucial points of Rizal’s life. We can see that both novels, though
connected do have their own distinctions and motivation when it was written.

Noli Me Tangere or The Social Cancer was written in Rizal’s first stay in Europe.
It was started in 1884 at Madrid, Spain and was finished in 1887 at Berlin, Germany.
Rizal dedicated the 64 chapter novel to the Motherland, the Philippines. Another special
feature of the novel is that it was inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin”. The Noli was more of a romantic novel about love, loss, and society. It reflects
the various issues in the Philippines at that time where some of the characters
experience it in the story. The fleshed-out characters also represent the different players
in the society at that time.

On the other hand, El Filibusterismo or The Reign of Greed was written in Rizal’s
second trip to Europe, this was after he was told to flee the Philippines due to the
controversy that the previous novel brought. Rizal started writing the El Fili in the year
1890 in London, England and finished it the next year in Brussels, Belgium containing
only 39 chapters. It was actually dedicated to the GomBurZa and the idea that their
deaths were the result of Spanish cruelty. Unlike the Noli, this novel is political in its
core for it has themes of corruption, injustices and dissent. The events of this novel is
much more darker than the first one and features some recurring characters with
development.

With these novels, Rizal was under fire for said reasons of dissent and
insurrection against the government. But through these, Rizal shows his nationalism
and his cry for change was expressed in these pieces of literature. These novels were
fuel to the ever growing revolutionary consciousness that the Filipinos were brewing
back then.