Major Characters
Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin, commonly referred to the novel as Ibarra or Crisóstomo, is the protagonist in the story. Son of a Filipino businessman, Don Rafael Ibarra, he studied in Europe for seven years. Ibarra is also María Clara's fiancé. Several sources claim that Ibarra is also Rizal's reflection: both studied in Europe and both persons believe in the same ideas. Upon his return, Ibarra requested the local government of San Diego to construct a public school to promote education in the town.
In the sequel of Noli, El filibusterismo, Ibarra returned with different character and name: he called himself as Simoun, the English mestizo.
María Clara de los Santos y Alba, commonly referred to as María Clara, is Ibarra's fiancée. She was raised by Capitán Tiago, San Diego's cabeza de barangay and is the most beautiful and widely celebrated girl in San Diego. In the later parts of the novel, María Clara's identity was revealed as an illegitimate daughter of Father Dámaso, former parish curate of the town, and Doña Pía Alba, wife of Capitán Tiago. In the end she entered local covenant for nuns Beaterio de Santa Clara. In the epilogue dealing with the fate of the characters, Rizal stated that it is unknown if María Clara is still living within the walls of the covenant or she is already dead.
The character of María Clara was patterned after Leonor Rivera, Rizal's first cousin and childhood sweetheart.
Don Santiago de los Santos, known by his nickname Tiago and political title Capitán Tiago is a Filipino businessman and the cabeza de barangay or head of barangay of the town of San Diego. He is also the known father of María Clara.[8]
In the novel, it is said that Capitán Tiago is the richest man in the region of Binondo and he possessed real properties in Pampanga and Laguna de Bay. He is also said to be a good Catholic, friend of the Spanish government and was considered as a Spanish by colonialists. Capitán Tiago never attended school, so he became a domestic helper of a Dominican friar who taught him informal education. He married Pía Alba from Santa Cruz.
Dámaso Verdolagas, or Padre Dámaso is a Franciscan friar and the former parish curate of San Diego. He is best known as a notorious character who speaks with harsh words and has been a cruel priest during his stay in the town. He is the real father of María Clara and an enemy of Crisóstomo's father, Rafael Ibarra. Later, he and María Clara had bitter arguments whether she would marry Alfonso Linares or go to a convent. At the end of the novel, he is again re-assigned to a distant town and is found dead one day.
In popular culture, when a priest was said to be like Padre Dámaso, it means that he is a cruel but respectable individual. When one says a child is "anak ni Padre Damaso" (child of Padre Dámaso), it means that the child's father's identity is unknown.
Elías is Ibarra's mysterious friend and ally. Elías made his first appearance as a pilot during a picnic of Ibarra and María Clara and her friends. He wants to revolutionize the country and to be freed from Spanish oppression.
The 50th chapter of the novel explores the past of Elías and history of his family. In the past, Ibarra's great-grandfather condemned Elías' grandfather of burning a warehouse which led into misfortune for Elías' family. His father was refused to be married by his mother because his father's past and family lineage was discovered by his mother's family. In the long run, Elías and his twin sister was raised by their maternal grandfather. When they were teenagers, their distant relatives called them hijos de bastardo or illegitimate children. One day, his sister disappeared which led him to search for her. His search led him into different places, and finally, he became a fugitive and subversive.
Filosofo Tacio, known by his Filipinized name Pilosopo Tasyo is another major character in the story. Seeking for reforms from the government, he expresses his ideals in paper written in a cryptographic alphabet similar from hieroglyphs and Coptic figures hoping "that the future generations may be able to decipher it" and realized the abuse and oppression done by the conquerors.
His full name is only known as Don Anastacio. The educated inhabitants of San Diego labeled him as Filosofo Tacio (Tacio the Sage) while others called him as Tacio el Loco (Insane Tacio) due to his exceptional talent for reasoning.
Doña Victorina de Espadaña, commonly known as Doña Victorina, is an ambitious Filipina who classifies herself as a Spanish and mimics Spanish ladies by putting on heavy make-up. The novel narrates Doña Victorina's younger days: she had lots of admirers, but she didn't choose any of them because nobody was a Spaniard. Later on, she met and married Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, an official of the customs bureau who is about ten years her junior. However, their marriage is childless.
Her husband assumes the title of medical doctor even though he never attended medical school; using fake documents and certificates, Tiburcio practices illegal medicine. Tiburcio's usage of the title Dr. consequently makes Victorina assume the title Dra. (doctora, female doctor). Apparently, she uses the whole name Doña Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadaña, with double de to emphasize her marriage surname. She seems to feel that this awkward titling makes her more "sophisticated."
Sisa, Crispin, and Basilio represent a Filipino family persecuted by the Spanish authorities. Narcisa or Sisa is the deranged mother of Basilio and Crispin. Described as beautiful and young, although she loves her children very much, she cannot protect them from the beatings of her husband, Pedro.
Crispín is Sisa's 7-year-old son. An altar boy, he was unjustly accused of stealing money from the church. After failing to force Crispín to return the money he allegedly stole, Father Salví and the head sacristan killed him. Although it was not directly written that he was killed, the way that Rizal carried the novel out, such as the dream of Basilio suggests that he died during his encounter with Padre Salvi and his minion.
Meanwhile, Basilio is Sisa's 10-year-old son. An acolyte tasked to ring the church bells for the Angelus, he faced the dread of losing his younger brother and falling of his mother into insanity. At the end of the novel, Elías wished Basilio to bury him by burning in exchange of chest of gold located on his death ground. He will later play a major role in El Filibusterismo.
Summary
Having completed his studies in Europe, young Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin comes back to the Philippines after a 7-year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos, a family friend commonly known as Captain Tiago, threw a get-together party, which was attended by friars and other prominent figures. One of the guests, former San Diego curate Fray Dámaso Vardolagas belittled and slandered Ibarra. Ibarra brushed off the insults and took no offense; he instead politely excused himself and left the party because of an allegedly important task.
The next day, Ibarra visits María Clara, his betrothed, the beautiful daughter of Captain Tiago and affluent resident of Binondo. Their long-standing love was clearly manifested in this meeting, and María Clara cannot help but reread the letters her sweetheart had written her before he went to Europe. Before Ibarra left for San Diego, Lieutenant Guevara, a Civil Guard, reveals to him the incidents preceding the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich hacendero of the town.
According to Guevara, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of being a heretic, in addition to being a subservient — an allegation brought forth by Dámaso because of Don Rafael's non-participation in the Sacraments, such as Confession and Mass. Dámaso's animosity against Ibarra's father is aggravated by another incident when Don Rafael helped out on a fight between a tax collector and a child fighting, and the former's death was blamed on him, although it was not deliberate. Suddenly, all of those who thought ill of him surfaced with additional complaints. He was imprisoned, and just when the matter was almost settled, he died of sickness in jail. Still not content with what he had done, Dámaso arranged for Don Rafael's corpse to be dug up from the Catholic church and brought to a Chinese cemetery, because he thought it inappropriate to allow a heretic a Catholic burial ground. Unfortunately, it was raining and because of the bothersome weight of the body, the undertakers decide to throw the corpse into a nearby lake.
Revenge was not in Ibarra's plans, instead he carried through his father's plan of putting up a school, since he believed that education would pave the way to his country's progress (all over the novel the author refers to both Spain and the Philippines as two different countries as part of a same nation or family, with Spain seen as the mother and the Philippines as the daughter). During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a sabotage had Elías — a mysterious man who had warned Ibarra earlier of a plot to assassinate him — not saved him. Instead the hired killer met an unfortunate incident and died. The sequence of events proved to be too traumatic for María Clara who got seriously ill but was luckily cured by the medicine Ibarra sent.
After the inauguration, Ibarra hosted a luncheon during which Dámaso, gate-crashing the luncheon, again insulted him. Ibarra ignored the priest's insolence, but when the latter slandered the memory of his dead father, he was no longer able to restrain himself and lunged at Dámaso, prepared to stab him for his impudence. As a consequence, Dámaso excommunicated Ibarra, taking this opportunity to persuade the already-hesitant Tiago to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra. The friar wished María Clara to marry Linares, a Peninsular who had just arrived from Spain.
With the help of the Governor-General, Ibarra's excommunication was nullified and the Archbishop decided to accept him as a member of the Church once again. But, as fate would have it, some incident of which Ibarra had known nothing about was blamed on him, and he is wrongly arrested and imprisoned. The accusation against him was then overruled because during the litigation that followed, nobody could testify that he was indeed involved. Unfortunately, his letter to María Clara somehow got into the hands of the jury and is manipulated such that it then became evidence against him by the parish priest, Fray Salví. With Machiavellian precision, Salví framed Ibarra and ruined his life just so he could stop him from marrying María Clara and making the latter his concubine.
Meanwhile, in Capitan Tiago's residence, a party was being held to announce the upcoming wedding of María Clara and Linares. Ibarra, with the help of Elías, took this opportunity to escape from prison. Before leaving, Ibarra spoke to María Clara and accused her of betraying him, thinking that she gave the letter he wrote her to the jury. María Clara explained that she would never conspire against him, but that she was forced to surrender Ibarra's letter to Father Salvi, in exchange for the letters written by her mother even before she, María Clara, was born. The letters were from her mother, Pía Alba, to Dámaso alluding to their unborn child; and that María Clara was therefore not Captain Tiago's biological daughter, but Dámaso's.
Afterwards, Ibarra and Elías fled by boat. Elías instructed Ibarra to lie down, covering him with grass to conceal his presence. As luck would have it, they were spotted by their enemies. Elías, thinking he could outsmart them, jumped into the water. The guards rained shots on him, all the while not knowing that they were aiming at the wrong man.
María Clara, thinking that Ibarra had been killed in the shooting incident, was greatly overcome with grief. Robbed of hope and severely disillusioned, she asked Dámaso to confine her into a nunnery. Dámaso reluctantly agreed when she threatened to take her own life, demanding, "the nunnery or death!" Unbeknownst to her, Ibarra was still alive and able to escape. It was Elías who had taken the shots.
It was Christmas Eve when Elías woke up in the forest fatally wounded, as it is here where he instructed Ibarra to meet him. Instead, Elías found the altar boy Basilio cradling his already-dead mother, Sisa. The latter lost her mind when she learned that her two sons, Crispín and Basilio, were chased out of the convent by the sacristan mayor on suspicions of stealing sacred objects. (The truth is that, it was the sacristan mayor who stole the objects and only pinned the blame on the two boys. The said sacristan mayor actually killed Crispín while interrogating him on the supposed location of the sacred objects. It was implied that the body was never found and the incident was covered-up by Salví).
Elías, convinced that he would die soon, instructs Basilio to build a funeral pyre and burn his and Sisa's bodies to ashes. He tells Basilio that, if nobody reaches the place, he come back later on and dig for he will find gold. He also tells him (Basilio) to take the gold he finds and go to school. In his dying breath, he instructed Basilio to continue dreaming about freedom for his motherland with the words:
“ I shall die without seeing the dawn break upon my homeland. You. Who shall see it, salute it! Do not forget those who have fallen during the night. ”
Elías died thereafter.
In the epilogue, it was explained that Tiago became addicted to opium and was seen to frequent the opium house in Binondo to satiate his addiction. María Clara became a nun where Salví, who has lusted over her from the beginning of the novel, regularly used her to fulfill his lust. One stormy evening, a beautiful crazy woman was seen at the top of the convent crying and cursing the heavens for the fate it has handed her. While the woman was never identified, it is suggested that the said woman was María Clara.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noli_Me_Tangere_%28novel%29
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