If you are given the opportunity to change what happened in Don Rafael's life so that no trouble happened and the tax collector did not die and he was not imprisoned. What is it and why?
Answers
The Social Cancer, original title Noli me tangere, novel by Filipino political activist and author José Rizal, published in 1887. The book, written in Spanish, is a sweeping and passionate unmasking of the brutality and corruption of Spanish rule in the Philippines (1565–1898).
The story begins at a party to welcome Crisóstomo Ibarra back to the Philippines after seven years of studying in Europe. His father, Don Rafael, passed away shortly before his return, and Crisóstomo soon learns that he died in prison after accidentally killing a tax collector and being falsely accused of other crimes by Father Dámaso, the longtime curate of the church in Crisóstomo’s hometown of San Diego. Crisóstomo returns to San Diego, and his fiancée, María Clara, joins him there. After the schoolmaster tells him that Father Dámaso and the new curate, Father Salví, interfere with his teaching, Crisóstomo decides to build a new modern school in San Diego.
On a picnic with María Clara, Crisóstomo goes on a fishing boat and helps the pilot, Elías, kill a crocodile. Elías later warns Crisóstomo that there is a plot to murder him at the ceremony for the laying of the school’s cornerstone, and indeed, as Crisóstomo is placing mortar for the cornerstone, the derrick holding the stone collapses. Although Crisóstomo escapes injury, the derrick operator is killed. At a dinner later, Father Dámaso insults the new school, Filipinos in general, Crisóstomo, and Don Rafael. An enraged Crisóstomo attacks him, but María Clara stops him from killing the priest. Later her father breaks off her engagement to Crisóstomo and arranges for her betrothal to a young Spanish man, Linares.