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42 pages 1 hour read

José Rizal

Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not)

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1887

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Chapters 37-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 37 Summary

The Captain General arrives amid the controversy surrounding Ibarra’s violence toward Father Dámaso. He speaks with Ibarra and is immediately impressed with him. He takes Ibarra’s side, pledging that his penalty will be vetoed and Dámaso will be moved to another town.

Chapter 38 Summary

The Captain General insists on attending the theater and witnessing the procession to it. Along the way, commoners are brutally beaten back by civil guards, which Ibarra asserts should be banned; the Captain General agrees.

Chapter 39 Summary

This chapter focuses on Doña Consolación, the ensign’s wife. The ensign prevents her from going to church because he is presumably embarrassed by the way she dresses. As an act of rage and spite, she orders the guards to bring Sisa to her. There is a language gap, and Sisa cannot understand Consolación—which enrages the latter even more. Consolación orders Sisa to start dancing, but the ensign returns and puts a stop to it. Once Sisa leaves, the ensign and his wife fight—which quickly turns physically violent.

Chapter 40 Summary

The town residents attend a late performance at the theater. Two civil guardsmen approach Don Filipo and tell him to call off the performances because the ensign and his wife cannot sleep. Filipo refuses and soon after, there is a chaotic scene. The guardsmen attack members of the orchestra, taking it upon themselves to end the performances. Enraged, the crowd retaliates. Ibarra implores Elías to see if he can calm the crowd, and the latter manages to do so. María-Clara has been removed from the scene and is apparently sick. The chapter ends with a newspaper account of the night, with Father Salví being framed as a hero for stopping the mayhem.

Chapter 41 Summary

Elías visits Ibarra and informs him that María-Clara is sick. He also explains that he was able to calm the crowd by imploring two brothers who had been at the center of the skirmish. The father of the brothers was killed by the civil guard. Elías tells Ibarra that the two men will likely end up like their father—beaten to death. After Elías leaves, Ibarra also heads out and runs into a man named Lucas, who claims to be the brother of the yellow man killed at the school. He requests monetary settlement on behalf of his deceased brother, suggesting that there is a historical feud between his and Ibarra’s family.

Chapter 42 Summary

The narrator introduces new characters: the de Espadañas (guests of Tiago’s) and Linares (a prospective fiancé for María-Clara). Victorina de Espadaña is a former love interest of Tiago, but because of her obsession with social status, she refused him in favor of a Spanish husband. However, she ended up with Tiburcio, a common, passive man. Driven by her thirst for status, Victorina has him pretend to be a doctor. Tiburcio is brought to Tiago’s house to treat María-Clara.

Chapters 37-42 Analysis

After threatening Father Dámaso, Ibarra is excommunicated—which results in the end of his engagement to María-Clara. The Captain General coincidentally arrives for his planned visit and shows sympathy for Ibarra. He vetoes Ibarra’s excommunication, as he aligns more with his progressive tendencies than Dámaso’s conservatism. When Ibarra sees people beaten in the street during a procession, he says to the mayor, “do they hand out these blows as punishment for one’s sins or merely because they enjoy it?”—to which the Captain General responds “this spectacle [...] a barbarity everyone who comes from other countries finds strange. It would be better to ban it” (251). The alliance between Ibarra and the Captain General is further proof of the church’s waning power. The Captain General even resolves to send Dámaso to another district, thereby removing his influence in town politics.

The social dynamics of the Philippines under Spanish colonialism is one of the novel’s recurring themes. In this section, two aspects of social dynamics are examined. First is the way that envy consumes the “middle class.” The ensign’s wife, Doña Consolación, is a loathsome character whose treatment of the disadvantaged Sisa is shocking. Envy is at the root of this behavior, resulting from the existence of a small ruling class. Consolación exists in an ill-defined space in San Diego’s social structure. She is the wife of the military ensign, so she has some power, but its limit makes her want more. She is a cautionary tale about the excess of envy. Secondly, the dynamic between men and women is brought to light. The novel portrays this type of relationship as a battle for power. The fight that takes place between the ensign and his wife is physically violent—however, the civil guards’ reaction to the fight indicates that it happens frequently. Doctor de Espadaña (Tiburcio) and his wife Doña Victorina have a similarly abusive relationship in which the latter openly mocks the former and uses him as a means of climbing the social ladder. Dynamics between men and women are an extension of the concurrent power struggle in the Philippines.

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Related Titles

By José Rizal