Knowing Quiroga is heavily in his debt, Simoun offers him a steep discount if the former stores his massive arsenal of rifles in Quiroga's warehouses, to be used presumably for extortion activities with Manila's elite. Later on, Simoun goes to Manila and meets Quiroga, a wealthy Chinese businessman and aspiring consul-general for the Chinese empire. In a friendly game of cards with him and his cronies, Simoun raises the stakes higher and higher and half-jokingly secures blank orders for deportation, imprisonment, and summary execution from the Captain-General.
In Los Baños, Simoun joins his friend, the Captain-General, who is then taking a break from a hunting excursion. Having suffered misfortune after misfortune in recent years, Kabesang Tales is unable to resist the temptation to steal Simoun's revolver and join the bandits. Too secure of his place in the world, Basilio declines.Īt Barrio Sagpang in the town of Tiani, Simoun stays at the house of the village's cabeza de barangay, Tales. Simoun reveals his motives to Basilio and offers him a place in his plans. In the years since the death of his mother, Basilio had been serving as Capitán Tiago's servant in exchange for being allowed to study, and is now an aspiring doctor on his last year at university as well as administrator and apparent heir to Capitán Tiago's wealth. There his true identity as Crisóstomo Ibarra is discovered by a now-grown Basilio, who was also in the mausoleum visiting his mother's grave. Reaching San Diego, he detours to a forested land once owned by the Ibarras to retrieve more of his treasures buried in the mausoleum. Simoun goes from town to town presumably to sell his jewels.
After a thirteen-year absence from the country, a more revolutionary Crisóstomo has returned, having taken the identity of Simoun, a mysterious wealthy jeweler whose objective is to drive the government to commit as much abuse as possible in order to drive people into revolution. Elías, his friend who was also a reformer, sacrificed his life to give Crisóstomo a chance to regain his treasure and flee the country, and hopefully continue their crusade for reforms from abroad. In the events of the previous novel, Crisóstomo Ibarra, a reform-minded mestizo who tried to establish a modern school in his hometown of San Diego and marry his childhood sweetheart, was falsely accused of rebellion and presumed dead after a shootout following his escape from prison. Throughout the Philippines, the reading of both the novel and its predecessor is now mandatory for high school students throughout the archipelago, although it is now read using English, Filipino, and the Philippines' regional languages. These novels later on indirectly became the inspiration to start the Philippine Revolution.
Both the novel and its predecessor, along with Rizal's last poem, are now considered Rizal's literary masterpieces.īoth of Rizal's novels had a profound effect on Philippine society in terms of views about national identity, the Catholic faith and its influence on the Filipino's choice, and the government's issues in corruption, abuse of power, and discrimination, and on a larger scale, the issues related to the effect of colonization on people's lives and the cause for independence. These novels, along with Rizal's involvement in organizations that aimed to address and reform the Spanish system and its issues, led to Rizal's exile to Dapitan and eventual execution. The novel, along with its predecessor, was banned in some parts of the Philippines as a result of their portrayals of the Spanish government's abuses and corruption. The novel's dark theme departs dramatically from the previous novel's hopeful and romantic atmosphere, signifying Ibarra's resort to solving his country's issues through violent means, after his previous attempt in reforming the country's system made no effect and seemed impossible with the corrupt attitude of the Spaniards toward the Filipinos. The novel centers on the Noli-El fili duology's main character Crisóstomo Ibarra, now returning for vengeance as "Simoun". It is the sequel to Noli Me Tángere and, like the first book, was written in Spanish. The filibusterism The Subversive or The Subversion, as in the Locsín English translation, are also possible translations), also known by its alternative English title The Reign of Greed, is the second novel written by Philippine national hero José Rizal.