Noli Me Tángere
42 pages • 1 hour read
Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not)
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-6
Chapters 7-12
Chapters 13-18
Chapters 19-24
Chapters 25-30
Chapters 31-36
Chapters 37-42
Chapters 43-48
Chapters 49-54
Chapters 55-60
Chapters 61-63
Character Analysis
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Discussion Questions
Summary and Study Guide
Noli Me Tángere (1887)—which translates to “Touch Me Not” in Latin—is a novel written by Filipino writer José Rizal. The novel tells the story of Don Crisóstomo Ibarra , a young man of Filipino and Spanish descent who returns to the Philippines after a seven-year trip to Europe. Upon his return, and because he is now old enough to better understand the world, Ibarra sees the oppression wrought on the Indigenous population by Spanish colonialism. As Ibarra attempts to do something about this, he finds himself confronting forces that view him as a direct threat to their power—and who will do whatever it takes to retain it. A sequel to the novel, El Filibusterismo , was published in 1891.
Noli Me Tángere is predominantly narrated in the third person, with occasional shifts to first-person plural. The narrative follows a generally linear plot with occasional shifts that provide historical context . It also tends toward the satirical, especially when the narrator describes members of the wealthy ruling class. At times, the novel depicts the brutality of oppression realistically, hence it is sometimes graphic.
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This guide is based on the Kindle edition of the novel, translated by Harold Augenbraum and published by Penguin Books in 2006.
Content warning: This guide contains references to violence, which is depicted in the source text.
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Plot Summary
Noli Me Tángere begins at a dinner party hosted by Captain Don Santiago (Tiago), a wealthy resident of Manila. Guests assembled at the party include other members of the upper class as well as friars of both the Dominican and Franciscan orders. During dinner, Don Crisóstomo Ibarra arrives—the party being his first stop post-returning from Europe. He is there to visit his fiancée María-Clara , Santiago’s daughter. However, the celebratory atmosphere soon turns tense as one of the friars, Father Dámaso , becomes angry at Ibarra’s arrival. After the party, Ibarra learns that his father, Don Rafael, died while in prison and Father Dámaso had his corpse exhumed and removed from the Christian cemetery (i.e., dumped into a river). The dramatic tension between Ibarra and Dámaso forms the central conflict.
As Ibarra reacclimates himself to his homeland, he looks to apply his progressive ideals to make life better for the citizens of San Diego. After meeting with a school teacher, Ibarra’s first act is to build a school. While he gains support from the local government, the religious order within the town views the project with suspicion. They begin to see Ibarra as a threat to their power—with Dámaso in particular seeing him as a rival who must be put in his place.
Ibarra and María-Clara’s relationship dates back to childhood. However, Dámaso is the godfather of María-Clara and opposes the marriage. He wishes to drive the two apart and eventually achieves. He arrives uninvited to a dinner party hosted by Ibarra and dishonors the memory of his late father, which baits the latter into retaliation. Ibarra physically attacks Dámaso, holding him at knife point and threatening to kill him. María-Clara intervenes and prevents Ibarra from completing the deed, but the damage is done. As punishment for the assault, Ibarra is excommunicated and thus, the couple’s engagement is annulled.
The Captain General, the King’s representative in the Philippines, intercedes on Ibarra’s behalf. Once again, Dámaso and his colleague Father Salví are disgruntled and see the Captain General’s respect for Ibarra as a threat to their power. Salví’s role in the novel becomes more prominent after this incident, as he works on a scheme to take down Ibarra once and for all.
Ibarra befriends Elías , a fellow Filipino who is involved with a subversive group planning an uprising. Because Elías is knowledgeable of the town’s underground, he is able to warn Ibarra of the attempts to have him framed and killed. Their friendship is unusual as they are not of the same class, but they have mutual respect for each other—and this respect enables them to strengthen their alliance.
Through no fault of his own, Ibarra’s life is turned upside down by the same forces that claimed the life of his father. As the novel comes to a close, the progress that Ibarra advocated for is put on hold. However, Dámaso suffers a private defeat as María-Clara holds a secret against him, one that would destroy his reputation in town. Dámaso is eventually moved out of San Diego and with him out of the way, the possibility of reform is made more possible than ever.
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Noli Me Tangere
Noli Me Tangere takes place in the Philippines during the time of Spanish colonization. In the opening scene, a wealthy and influential Filipino man named Captain Tiago hosts a dinner party to welcome Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin back to the Philippines. Ibarra has spent the last seven years studying in Europe. In talking to the various guests at Captain Tiago’s dinner party, he discovers that his father, Don Rafael , recently died, though he doesn’t know why or how. During the dinner, Father Dámaso , a loud-mouthed friar Ibarra has known since childhood, stands up and insults Ibarra, disparaging him for having traveled to Europe to pursue an education he could have obtained in the Philippines. In response, Ibarra swallows his pride and refrains from directing insults at the half-drunk friar. Instead, he leaves the dinner early, ignoring Captain Tiago’s plea that he stay a little longer in order to see his fiancée (and Captain Tiago’s daughter), María Clara .
On his way home, Ibarra walks with Señor Guevara , a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, Spain’s colonial armed forces that police the Philippines. The lieutenant explains that a few months after Ibarra left, Father Dámaso accused Don Rafael of not going to confession. Don Rafael was a very powerful man, which meant he had many enemies in both the Spanish government and in the church. The lieutenant tells Ibarra that one day Don Rafael came upon a government tax collector beating a boy in the street. When Rafael interfered, he accidentally pushed the man too hard, causing the tax collector to hit his head on a rock. This injury eventually led to the man’s death, and Ibarra’s father was thrown in jail and accused of subversion and heresy. At this point, Father Dámaso heaped new accusations on him and everybody abandoned him. By the time he was finally proven innocent, Guevara explains, Don Rafael had already died in prison.
Ibarra goes to his hometown, San Diego, where the unfortunate events of his father’s death took place. Since Captain Tiago owns multiple properties there, María Clara also relocates to San Diego. November is approaching, a time the town celebrates with a large festival. This festival is surrounded by various religious holidays, such as All Souls’ Day, which commemorates dead people in purgatory waiting for their souls to be cleansed before ascending to heaven. Taking advantage of this, San Diego’s priests implore the villagers to purchase indulgences, which they claim shorten the length of time a soul must languish in purgatory. Ibarra quickly sees that the power of the Catholic friars in the Philippines has greatly increased since he left for Europe, a fact made clear by their control over even governmental officials. For instance, Father Salví , San Diego’s new priest, is constantly at odds with the military ensign in charge of the village’s faction of the Civil Guard. Salví uses his important religious position to spite the ensign, fining the man for missing church services and delivering purposefully boring sermons when he does attend.
The friars interfere with other elements of everyday life in San Diego too, which Ibarra learns after speaking with the schoolmaster . The schoolmaster tells him that Father Dámaso actively meddles with his educational techniques by demanding that he teach only in the country’s native language, Tagalog, instead of instructing the children to speak Spanish. Dámaso also insists that the schoolmaster beat the children, creating a hostile environment that doesn’t lend itself to productive learning. Hearing this, Ibarra decides to build a secular school in San Diego, a project his father dreamed about before his death. On the advice of the town’s old philosopher, Tasio , Ibarra presents his ideas to the town’s religious and civic leaders, making it seem as if he wants them to be involved with the school, even though he plans to ignore their influence after it is built.
Meanwhile, two poor boys named Crispín and Basilio study to be sextons, or people who take care of the church. They do so in order to financially help their mother, Sisa , but Crispín is unfairly accused of theft and thus must work constantly with his brother to pay off the absurd amounts the chief sexton claims that Crispín owes the church. When he protests this injustice one night, Crispín is hauled away and severely beaten. Scared for his brother’s life, Basilio searches him out before running home during a storm and waiting in vain with his mother for Crispín to appear. This never materializes, and the next day Basilio goes back into town. Frightened, Sisa looks for both her boys and is told that the Civil Guard has been ordered to arrest them for theft, though nobody can find them. She herself is arrested and then released, at which point she searches throughout the night for her boys, working herself into permanent insanity and destitution as she wanders the town and the surrounding woods.
Visiting the Catholic cemetery, Ibarra speaks to a gravedigger and learns that, upon Father Dámaso’s orders, he dug up Don Rafael’s body. Although the friar had instructed the gravedigger to take Rafael’s body to the Chinese cemetery—a less respected cemetery—the gravedigger threw Don Rafael into the lake, thinking it a more honorable resting place.
Ibarra and the town’s influential religious and government leaders decide to celebrate the new school on the same day as the town’s fiesta. The church makes plans to bless the new educational building (though it is not yet completed) directly after a long sermon by Father Dámaso. During this sermon, a mysterious figure approaches Ibarra. His name is Elías , a man whose life Ibarra recently saved on an eventful fishing trip. Elías tells Ibarra that there is a plan to kill him during the school’s benediction ceremony, warning him not to walk beneath a certain large stone suspended by a pulley system. Ibarra ignores this advice, and sure enough, the stone hurdles toward him. Luckily Elías takes action and covertly puts the criminal—the man plotting against Ibarra—in the way of the stone, killing him instead of Ibarra. The festivities go on, but Ibarra now knows he has enemies.
That night, during a celebratory dinner hosted by Ibarra, Father Dámaso arrives uninvited. All of San Diego’s most respected individuals are in attendance, including the governor and the town’s other friars. Dámaso loudly insults the school and its architecture while also making callous remarks about “indios,” a racial slur for native Filipinos. He flippantly speaks about how “indios” abandon their country because they think they’re superior, traveling to Europe instead. “In this life the fathers of such vipers are punished,” he says. “They die in jail, eh, eh, or rather, they have no place…” When Ibarra hears Dámaso make this crude reference to his father’s unfair death, he jumps up and pins the priest down, holding a knife in his free hand and publicly accusing Dámaso of exhuming his father’s body. Ibarra says he won’t kill Dámaso, but his actions say otherwise, and as he lifts the knife to bury it in the friar’s body, María Clara snatches it from his hand.
In the aftermath of this scandalous event, Ibarra is excommunicated from the church. Captain Tiago proves himself a spineless socialite by calling off the wedding between Ibarra and María Clara, instead betrothing his daughter to Linares , a young man from Spain. Linares is the nephew of Don Tiburcio de Espadaña , a fraudulent doctor who treats María Clara for a sudden illness that incapacitates her for several days after the incident between Ibarra and Father Dámaso. Meanwhile, the Captain General —the topmost government official representing Spain—visits San Diego. The friars implore him to punish Ibarra, but because his priorities are more civic than religious and because he supports Ibarra’s mission to build a school, he pulls strings to have the young man’s excommunication lifted.
While Ibarra continues his project, Father Salví makes arrangements with a man named Lucas , the brother of the man hired to kill Ibarra with the large stone. Because his brother died, Lucas wants revenge on Ibarra. Father Salví—who secretly loves María Clara and who believes Ibarra is a heretic—hatches a plot with Lucas to frame Ibarra. With Lucas’s help, he organizes a band of rebels to attack the Civil Guard’s military barracks, telling them that Ibarra is the ringleader. Hours before the attack takes place, Father Salví rushes to the ensign and warns him of the plan, making sure to request that the ensign let it be known that he—Salví—was the one to save the town by discovering the plot and issuing a warning.
The attack goes according to Salví and Lucas’s plan, and Ibarra is arrested. He is imprisoned and found guilty, a verdict based on an ambiguous line in a letter he sent to María Clara. Once again Elías comes to the rescue, breaking him out of prison and taking him away in a boat. Before they leave town, Ibarra stops at María Clara’s house, climbs onto her patio, and says goodbye to her. She explains that she only parted with his letter—which led to his guilty sentencing—because she was blackmailed. Apparently, a man came to her and told her that her real father is Fray Dámaso, not Captain Tiago. The man threatened to spread this information if she didn’t give him Ibarra’s letter. Feeling that she must protect Captain Tiago’s honor and the memory of her deceased mother, she handed over Ibarra’s letter. Nonetheless, she tells Ibarra that she will always love him and that she is deeply sorry for having betrayed him.
After saying goodbye to María Clara, Ibarra gets into Elías’s boat. As the two men row into the night, they continue a heated discussion they’ve already begun about the nature of revolution and reform, debating the merits of working within a corrupt system to change it rather than overthrowing the system completely. As they talk, they realize they’re being chased by another boat. Elías tries to out-row their pursuers, but quickly realizes they’ll eventually catch up. As bullets whip by, he tells Ibarra to row, deciding to jump off the boat to confuse the people behind them. Before diving, he tells Ibarra to meet him on Christmas Eve in the woods near San Diego, where Ibarra’s grandfather is buried with the family’s riches. When Elías plunges into the water, the boat follows him instead of Ibarra. Elías throws them off by diving deep into the water, only surfacing periodically. Soon, though, the people chasing him don’t see him come back up. They even think they see a bit of blood in the water.
Back in San Diego, Father Dámaso visits María Clara, who tells him she can’t marry Linares because she doesn’t love him. She references a newspaper, which falsely reported that Ibarra was found dead on the banks of the lake. She tells the friar that this news has given her no reason to live and, as such, she can’t go through with the wedding, instead deciding to enter a convent.
On Christmas Eve, the young Basilio wanders forth from a cabin in the woods, where he’s been living with a kind family ever since the Civil Guard started looking for him. He goes into San Diego in search of Sisa, his mother. When he finds her, she doesn’t recognize him and runs away, leading him back to the woods, where she goes to the old tomb that contains Ibarra’s grandfather. Once he finally catches up to his mother, though, Basilio faints. Seeing finally that he is her son, Sisa covers him with kisses. When Basilio wakes up, he finds that she has died by his side. At that moment, Elías appears. He is wounded, and seeing that Ibarra has not arrived, he tells Basilio he is about to die, instructing the boy to burn his and Sisa’s bodies on a pyre. Looking up at the sky, he utters his final words: “I die without seeing dawn’s light shining on my country…You, who will see it, welcome it for me…don’t forget those who fell during the nighttime.” The book ends without mention of Ibarra’s fate.
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Noli Me Tangere
By josé rizal.
- Noli Me Tangere Summary
Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin, commonly referred to as Ibarra, has been studying in Europe for the past seven years, though he is a mestizo Filipino. As he arrives back in the Philippines, his friend, a prominent man named Captain Tiago, hosts a reunion dinner. Ibarra had been in Europe for such a long time that he doesn’t know what has been going on in the country. At dinner, Father Dámaso, who Ibarra thought was friends with his father, treats him badly, which surprises Ibarra.
As Ibarra is walking home from the dinner, another family friend, Señor Guevara, follows him and tells him that Ibarra’s father died in prison after a campaign of slander against him, and that Father Dámaso had a hand in his death. Father Dámaso had accused the elder Ibarra of not going to confession, and after Rafael Ibarra inadvertently killed a man who beat a young boy, he was imprisoned and attacked with accusations of subversion and heresy. Guevara tried to clear his name, but he died in prison before he could be freed. The younger Ibarra is shocked, but unsure of what to do. He goes to visit his old lover, Maria Clara, but as Maria mentions Ibarra’s family, Ibarra is put off.
Instead of seeking revenge, Ibarra tries to follow his father’s footsteps of peace. After meeting with a schoolmaster who knew his father, he plans on establishing a public school to help his hometown. Yet the schoolmaster warns him that Father Dámaso meddles in the school system, preventing students from learning Spanish and demanding that he beat the students. Ibarra pitches the idea of the school to town officials, pretending that he wants to work with them on it, and they agree.
Meanwhile, two young boys, Crispín and Basilio, work as sextons to support their impoverished mother, Sisa, who is abused by their father. When Crispín is falsely accused of theft, the brothers must work even more. When he protests, Crispín is severely beaten, while Basilio escapes. He returns the next day to look for his brother, but can't find him. Sisa looks for both her sons, losing her mind as she wanders the area in search of them.
Ibarra goes to his father’s grave, seeking peace. He is shocked to discover that his father’s corpse was removed and supposedly put into a Chinese cemetery at the order of the town's curate—Father Dámaso.
During the town's festivities, Ibarra and the officials plan to celebrate the new school, hoping to bless it after a sermon by Father Dámaso. During the sermon, a mysterious man named Elías approaches Ibarra, warning him of a plot to kill him. Elías had been the boatman on an earlier excursion Ibarra took with friends, but after the excursion, Ibarra discovered he was a wanted fugitive.
That night, Father Dámaso invites himself to a dinner Ibarra is hosting. He insults both indigenous Filipinos and Ibarra’s father specifically. He punches Father Dámaso, but before he can kill him, he is stopped by María Clara.
Ibarra is excommunicated, and María Clara falls ill, then is reengaged to a new man after her spineless father calls off her wedding to Ibarra. Meanwhile, the Captain General, the highest Spanish official in the novel, manages to lift Ibarra's excommunication, angering the clergy. Ibarra continues working on the school, and Father Salvi, who is in love with María Clara, plots with Lucas, the brother of a man killed by the plot intended to kill Ibarra at the festival, to frame Ibarra for a rebellion, organizing people with grievances against the colonial government and telling them that Ibarra is leading the revolt. Right before the attack happens, Father Salvi warns everyone, claiming someone told him about it in confession.
Ibarra is thrown into prison, having been found guilty based on a letter he wrote to María Clara before leaving for Europe years ago. Again, Elías rescues him, breaking him out of prison and taking him to María Clara. She explains that she gave Father Salvi the letter that led to Ibarra being found guilty because he blackmailed her: he knew that her real father is Father Dámaso, and threatened to reveal this information. She apologizes to Ibarra, profoundly sorry.
Elías and Ibarra row away, but they quickly realize they're being followed by another boat, which will soon catch up. Elías jumps off the boat to confuse their pursuers, who think he is Ibarra and try to shoot him while the real Ibarra escapes. They appear to kill him, but they never see his body.
María Clara tells Father Dámaso that she can't marry Linares, the man she is now engaged to, and threatens to commit suicide if she is not allowed to enter a convent. Because a newspaper reported Ibarra is dead, she cannot bear the thought of being married to another man. Father Dámaso reluctantly agrees.
On Christmas Eve, Basilio wanders away from the cabin where he's been staying with an adoptive family and looks for Sisa, his mother. He finds her, but she doesn't recognize him and runs away. Finally, he catches her and faints, and she dies of shock, having finally recognized him. Elías appears, telling Basilio that he is about to die, and asks Basilio to put his body with Sisa's on a funeral pyre. "I die without seeing dawn’s light shining on my country…You, who will see it, welcome it for me…don’t forget those who fell during the nighttime," he says.
Noli Me Tangere Questions and Answers
The Question and Answer section for Noli Me Tangere is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
What do the guards take from Sisa? * 1 point a. a cow b. her sons c. a hen d. a horse
Rushing home, Sisa found Basilio missing and was arrested by the Guardia Civil in order to get her sons to surrender.
Binanggit ni Don Rafael sa kanyang huling ipinadalang liham sa kanyang anak na nag-aaral noon sa Europa na huwag itong mag-alala at magtaka kung hindi na raw ito makakasulat sa kanya dahil magiging abala ito sa mga gawain. Ano ang tunay na dahilan kung
I'm sorry, you will need to post your question in English.
Bakit pinuntahan ni Elias SI crisostomo ibarra sa kanyang laboratoryo
Pumunta si Elias kay Ibarra para balaan siya na may pakana laban sa kanyang buhay.
Study Guide for Noli Me Tangere
Noli Me Tangere study guide contains a biography of José Rizal, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
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