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Alec Joachim D.L.T Quintanilla

Z-3, B.S. Management Engineering

Jose Rizal: An Anti-Hero?

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda is the most dominant, most important,
and most controversial figure in Philippine history. Images and iconography of Rizal can be
seen all over our archipelago. From our currency, statues, streets, laws and even provinces are
named to commemorate our national hero. The life and death of Rizal is embedded in our
society and psyche of our race. Even asking normal Filipinos in the streets of Manila who our
Pambansang Bayani is, they will all say in unison Jose Rizal. Without Rizal’s biography and
achievements written in our history books half of it would be empty. We could even say that
our very identity as a nation and people was created by Rizal himself. We as nation cannot
fathom the idea of a Philippines without Rizal, it would be an existential crisis for the Filipino
race. Rizal laid the ground works of our understanding of being a Filipino. He was even the
first person to popularize the term Filipino, to show the world that we are a member of a
Filipino nation. Rizal was the first person to sought and envision a “united archipelago” and
“compact and homogenous society” (Guerrero, 1963) from the tip of Luzon to the seas of
Mindanao.

Rizal’s importance in the growth of our national identity cannot be overstated enough.
The everlasting impact of his contribution to the birth of Filipino nationalism and the Filipino
identity is still felt to this day. His works of literature is an important part of the history of our
nation. Rizal's two masterpieces: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo were dedicated to the
three martyred priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora whose deaths,
especially of Jose Burgos who was a close friend of Rizal’s brother Paciano Rizal, left a mark
in his mind. These two novels were designed to enlighten the Filipino people to the abuse and
neglect of Spain. Emphasizing the presence of a social cancer present in Philippine society at
the time. Rizal’s accomplishments and contribution to the building of our national identity is
an essential part of the identity of us Filipinos. But behind the façade of the Great Malayan,
lies insecurities fear and uncertainty. Does Rizal, the founder of the Filipino Nation deserve
the semi-mythical status that we Filipinos attribute to him?

Dissecting the complexity of a character such as Rizal is a daunting task for any
historian. However, our modern perception and understanding of Rizal are mostly based on the
book by Leon Maria Guerrero “The First Filipino”. Leon Maria Guerrero works are
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internationally acclaimed, his translations of José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El

Filibusterismo which up to today are being used by student and academes alike. Guerreros
interpretations of Jose Rizal is the “very embodiment of the intelligentsia and the petite
bourgeoise” (Guerrero, 1963) and the ideal Victorian hero. Emphasizing that Rizal was the first
person to use the term Filipino in its present sense, and he stresses the important role he played
in the revolution (Joaquin, 2005). “Rizal,” says Guerrero, “believed in the gradual and natural
evolution of the Filipino Nation in the course of years and foresaw the international
developments that would make eventual independence an inevitable conclusion on which
metropolis and colony would peaceable agree” (Joaquin, 2005).

Nick Joaquin on the other paints a more humane picture of Rizal. Nick Joaquin
deconstructs the personality of Rizal, showing the readers in his book A Question of Heroes
Rizal’s talents, his insecurities, his passions, and his struggles. in short, what made Rizal into
the man and hero that he was. It is necessary to do for Rizal what Socrates did for philosophy,
bring it down from heaven to earth, not to degrade it but to understand it better (Joaquin, 2005).
Nick Joaquin presents his own version of Rizal as the "anti-hero" by marshalling and replaying
the ideas of both Ante Radaic and Leon Maria Guerrero. Radaic's psychoanalytic diagnosis of
Rizal as a victim of an inferiority complex, if taken as the decisive key to his life, strikes many
as mechanical and even trivializing if not a symptom of Radaic's own obsessions: "Because of
an excess of spirit, Rizal saw his body as inadequate, and this, in turn, influenced his complex
psychological structure." For Guerrero, the causal sequence has to do with the social and
economic context: Rizal's schizophrenic temperament derives from his petty bourgeois class
background (San Juan, 1997).

Compared to the magnus opus of Guerrero’s “The First Filipino”, Ante Radaic’s work
on the other hand is an essay written in Spanish entitled, An “Introduction to the Study of
Rizal’s Inferiority Complex” which talks about the inferiority complex of our national hero
which Radaic calls “Complejos de Rizal”. Radaic’s analysis dwells mainly, first, on the hero’s
height inadequacy that he claims is the source of an inferiority complex so overwhelming in its
effects that, second, it caused his impotence as manifested by his unconsummated liaisons
with several women starting with Segunda Katigbak; third, he is so consumed by his feelings
of inferiority that it creates, in Radaic’s words borrowed from Unamuno, Rizal’s “Hamlet
disposition” characterized by repeated vacillation displayed in his dealings with women and
in some of his other important decisions; and, last, that it is the enormous burden of his
inferiority that catapults him to the apex of his accomplishments (Suarez, 2010).
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Another controversy surrounding Rizal is his status as our National Hero because some
argue that Bonifacio deserves this title because he advocated complete severance while Rizal
on the contrary was not really for Philippine independence, rather for more freedom, more
rights, and more attention from Spain. Rizal and his fellow propagandist are what we call
“eventualists” believing that through time with sufficient propaganda, Spain would eventually
be forced to enact reforms to benefit the country. Rizal presented his idea in a metaphor: woe
to a woman who refuses to give birth when her time has come. In essence Rizal and his fellow
Illustrados wanted political change not social or economic reform. And these proposed reforms
of the propaganda movement would only heavily benefit one social class, the landed bourgeois.
There lies the reason for some to question the heroism of Rizal, for Rizal a man of property did
not want a bloody and antagonistic war with Spain. Because he, like his fellow colleagues had
property to lose and would be ruined if a destructive and bloody revolution erupted in the
country.

Here surfaces the upbringing of Rizal, which based on the accounts of Rizal himself,
he was brought up even in today standards, can be classified as privileged. Rizal’s father
became one of the towns wealthiest men, the first to build a stone house and buy another, keep
a carriage, own a library, and send his children to school in Manila (Joaquin, 2005). It was the
perfect environment to raise and educate a middle-class intellectual. Thus, Rizal became an
idealist bourgeois basing their arguments on reason and logic like any normal Victorian thinker,
preferring reform rather than bloody revolution thus advocating “reform from above” than
“revolution from below” (Joaquin, 2005). In Rizal’s mind the Filipinos of his generation were
not ready for revolution because they were not ready for independence, and they were not ready
for independence because they were still unworthy of it (Guerrero, 1963). This sentiment of
Rizal is emphasized in the novel El Filibusterismo. We can see it in the final chapter of the
book when Padre Florentino told Simoun: “Why Independence, if the slaves of today shall be
the tyrants of tomorrow?”.

Aside from this there were many instances of Jose Rizal showing his unheroic nature,
a good example would be his actions towards the revolution of 1896. Because when the
revolution started, and he was being blamed and then was eventually arrested for it, Rizal was
immediately offended calling the whole ordeal “absurd”. Rizal’s trial, says Guerrero, presents
us with a dilemma. Rizal passionately defended himself from the charge that he was involved
in or even sympathize with the revolution- hardly an attitude we would honor him for (Joaquin,
2005). And after the revolution had broken out, Rizal would volunteer his services as a doctor
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in Cuba and was even given leave by Governor-General Ramón Blanco. He was not only
offering his service to the Spanish government but also tried to flee from his country when he
felt trouble was brewing. There can be no argument he was against Bonifacio’s revolution. Not
only had he offered his “unconditional” services to suppress it he had indited a manifesto
condemning the revolution (Guerrero, 1963). But it is important to note that he detested
Bonifacio’s peasant revolution but not Bonifacio’s aim of independence for the country.
Because Rizal himself is the spirit of contradiction, a soul that dreads the revolution, although
deep within himself he consummately desires it (San Juan, 1997). We can see this plainly in
his books. In the Noli Me Tangere where he was still an eventualist, believing that logic, reason,
and education will eventually usher in reform. This idea is encapsulated in the character of
Crisostomo Ibarra. But the transition to the darker more complex novel such as the El
Filibusterismo where we are introduced to Simoun that is no longer a propagandist and a
Victorian idealist but an agent of anarchy that craves not only the fall of Spain but the fall of
the Hispanization movement. He had flirted, in his fiction, with revolution; but when faced by
the fact of it, he called it absurd and retreated to Reason, Reform, Evolution, Inevitable
Progress, and all the other Victorian catchwords (Joaquin, 2005). Rizal was a nationalist who
did not recognize his Nation when it suddenly rose before him, a bloody apparition in arms
(Guerrero, 1963).

So, the question arises, does Rizal deserve the criticism and accusation these authors
label him with? Yes and No. Yes, because as students of history, analyzing and discerning a
monumental figure such as Rizal is critical so that we may better understand and grasp the
more humanistic side of the Great Malayan. And No, because the sacrifices and contribution
of Jose Rizal for the betterment of our people and the price he paid for it outweigh every
instance of his unpatriotic nature. Rizal forever is a man of the pen, his battle was never in a
muddy trench in some distant battlefield but with pen and paper. We can see this blatantly in
his farewell message “El sitio nada importa”- the place matters not, “Cadalso o campo
abierto”- on a plank or open field, “Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar”- Others give
you their lives, without doubt, without regret. Which means, all deaths hold the same honor if
it is given freely for home and country.
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Bibliography

Guerrero León Ma. The First Filipino: A Biography of José Rizal: (3. Print.). Manila:
Guerrero Publishing, 1963.

Joaquin, Nick. A Question of Heroes. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Published and

exclusively distributed by Anvil Publishing, 2005.

Lozada Edwin Agustín. Sueños anónimos = Anonymous Dreams. San Francisco, CA:
Carayan Press, 2001.

San Juan, E. Rizal in Our Time: Essays in Interpretation. Manila: Published and exclusively
distributed by Anvil, 1997.

Suarez, A. C. “Counter Analysis of Ante Radaic's Adlerian Psychoanalysis of Dr. Jose

Rizal.” All About Rizal, June 12, 2011.
https://faultyradaicanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/counter-analysis-of-ante-
radaic%E2%80%99s-adlerian-psychoanalysis-of-dr-jose-rizal/.