JRS CHILDHOOD

His Birth, Ancestors, and Family Name Rizal

Moonlight night of Wednesday,June 19,1861

Calamba Laguna Province
Big head
Blood of both East and West
Negrito, Indonesian, Malay,Chinese,Japanese, and Spanish
Mercado (real) from paternal great great grandfather
Rizal (from Spanish Alcalde Mayor)

Economic, Social, and Political Conditions

 Typical middle class family
Life of comfort and affluence
Principalia
Stone house of adobe and hardwood
Ownership of carriages and horses
Home library
Presence of personal servants
Private tutoring of children
Business in rice and sugar
Ability to send their children to attend school in Manila
Later referred as principals, leading class
Tenants in the Dominican Estate

Intense care for Rizal

Was born sickly

Education

Mastered the alphabet at the age of 3

Showed great interest in reading
Showed his knack in sketching, painting, sculpture and literature
Able to write first poem at the age of 8 Sa Aking Mga Kabata
Nationalism
Desire for freedom
Love for native language
National identity

Experiences that Molded Rizal as a Hero

1. Devotion to religion
Rizal grew up a devoted Catholic.
At an early age, he began to take part in the family and Catholic prayers.
Manong Jose

2. Heros First Teacher

Jose Rizals first teacher was his mother, Doa Teodora.
As he grew older, his parents employed private tutors to give him lessons
at home.
Maestro Celestino
Maestro Lucas Padua
Leon Monroy
3. Close Relatives
Hereditary Influence: The qualities which a person inherits from his
ancestors and parents.
Malayan and Chinese ancestors
Environmental Influence: nurture is nature
The role of Paciano and his sisters to his well-being.
His three uncles: Tio Jose Alberto, Tio Manuel and Tio Gregorio
Father Leoncio Lopez
Aid of Divine Providence

4. Artistic Talents
Sketches with his pencil, mould in clay, and wax objects
Turned a spoiled religious banner into a better one
Appreciates the art in this world
The incident about his clay and wax images
First poem by Rizal
Wrote a Tagalog comedy

5. Death of his sister

Died of sickness in 1865

6. In his solitude
Listened to the birds
Happy moonlit nights at the azotea
Reflect on the mistreats of Spaniards
Misdeeds awakened his boyish heart to fight tyranny
Daily life in Binan

7. His brother Paciano

Paciano (1851-1930), the heros only brother, became an agriculturist
though, like his father, he had a college education in Manila. He was a second
father to his younger brother Jose and gave him wise counsel. People who knew
him opined that he was the Pilosopo Tasio in Noli Me Tangere. Immediately
after the heros execution, Paciano joined Gen. Aguinaldos revolutionary army,
where he rose to the rank of Major General. He returned to his extensive farm in
Los Banos after the restoration of peace and led the life of gentleman-farmer and
exemplary citizen. In 1930, he died quietly, almost unwept, unhonoured, and
unsung and was buried in Manila.
Jose Rizal had a very high regard for his brother, second in the family and
ten years older, whom he described as a most noble man and an Indio.
Paciano was a favourite student of Fr. Jose Burgos. After the Gomburza
executions, Paciano was enraged and quit his studies for he believed that it was
a strategy employed by the friars to silence the leaders and spokesmen of the
secularization movement. Paciano was extremely hurt by the execution of Fr.
Burgos.
Paciano had been inculcating in Jose an intense love for their motherland
until the younger brother was ready to enter into a secret covenant with him. The
covenant required the younger brother to promise to study in Europe whatever
was necessary to promote the welfare of the Filipino people and to liberate them
from oppression. The older brother pledged to look after their aging parents and
to finance Joses mission abroad. Included in their agreement was that only one
of them would get married.

8. Fight for the sake of Justice

One of the earliest instances of Rizals dedication to justice was evident in
the tale his mother told him, that of the moth. Recounting the experience of
listening to his mothers story, Rizal recalls that he saw the insect in a new light
after that. In the death of the moth, Jose Rizal realized that to die for something
you believe in, to die for your ideals, is a worthwhile endeavor. Here it is evident
that the foundations for his heroism were set even though he had yet to realize
what it was that he would fight for.
The year 1872 brought great turmoil and change to Jose Rizal and his
family. It was in February of that year that the priests Gomez, Burgos, and
Zamora, or Gom-Bur-Za, were executed. Paciano Rizal, being extremely close to
Fr. Burgos, was so enraged that he abandonded his studies to return to
Calamba. It was there that he told his younger brother Jose the story of Fr.
Burgos heroism. It was here that the boy realized the cruelty of Spanish rule and
vowed to redeem his people.
Furthermore, before June of that year, Dona Teodora was wrongfully
imprisoned by the Guardia Civil. Under false accusations that she and her
brother had conspired to poison his unfaithful wife, and with the involvement of
the corrupt lieutenant and the gobernadorcillo, they were both imprisoned. As
further punishment, Dona Teodora was forced to walk 50 km from Calamba to
Santa Cruz. She was held there at the provincial prison for two and a half years
before being acquitted by the Manila Royal Audiencia. This experience served to
impress even further upon Jose Rizal the degree to which the people were being
oppressed by the Spaniards and to strengthen his resolve in his pursuit of justice.

Sa Aking Mga Kabata

Kapagka ang bayay sadyang umiibig
Sa kanyang salitang kaloob ng langit,
Sanlang kalayaan nasa ring masapit
Katulad ng ibong nasa himpapawid.

Pagkat ang salitay isang kahatulan

Sa bayan, sa nayot mga kaharian,
At ang isang taoy katulad, kabagay
Ng alin mang likha noong kalayaan.

Ang hindi magmahal sa kanyang salita

Mahigit sa hayop at malansang isda,
Kaya ang marapat pagyamaning kusa
Na tulad sa inang tunay na nagpala.

Ang wikang Tagalog tulad din sa Latin

Sa Ingles, Kastila at salitang anghel,
Sapagkat ang Poong maalam tumingin
Ang siyang naggawad, nagbigay sa atin.

Ang salita natiy huwad din sa iba

Na may alfabeto at sariling letra,
Na kaya nawalay dinatnan ng sigwa
Ang lunday sa lawa noong dakong una.

To My Fellow Children

Whenever people of a country truly love

The language which by heaven they were taught to use
That country also surely liberty pursue
As does the bird which soars to freer space above.

For language is the final judge and referee

Upon the people in the land where it holds sway;
In truth our human race resembles in this way
The other living beings born in liberty.

Whoever knows not how to love his native tongue

Is worse than any beast or evil smelling fish.
To make our language richer ought to be our wish
The same as any mother loves to feed her young.

Tagalog and the Latin language are the same

And English and Castilian and the Angels tongue
And God, whose watchful care oer all is flung
Has given us His blessing in the speech we claim.
Our mother tongue, like all the highest that we know
Had alphabet and letters of its very own;
But these were lost by furious waves were overthrown
Like bancas in the stormy sea, long years ago.

Background
From an early age, Jose Rizal displayed a great talent for various forms of
art such as sketching and sculpturing. It was also apparent early on that he had a
great skill for writing and literature. He practiced by writing verses on loose
pieces of paper and the textbooks of his sisters. He was also encouraged in his
poetic pursuits by his mother. Rizals first poem was Sa Aking Mga Kabata
which he wrote at the age of eight.

Message
This poem is a display of Rizals nationalism and love for his country. He
uses the poem to extol the virtues of the native tongue. He also uses his verses
as an opportunity to voice his concerns for the Filipino people, particularly asking
them to pursue liberty as well as admonishing those who feel no love for their
mother language.

Analysis
a) Stanza 1
Rizal praises language here as he calls the language of a country
as something heaven-sent. He goes on to say that loving ones native
tongue goes hand-in-hand with a desire for liberty and freedom for their
nation. He then uses the imagery of a bird flying into the sky as a symbol
for the pursuit of independence.

b) Stanza 2
Here Rizal places the highest degree of importance on language,
calling it the final judge of a nations people. What Rizal is trying to
impart here is that the true value of a people can be derived from its
language. He sees this power of language in all the people of the world
who were born free and aspires to the same freedom for his fellow
Filipinos who were oppressed by Spain at the time.

c) Stanza 3
Rizal uses this stanza as a rebuke and as a challenge. One of his
most famous quotations, he brands those who do not love their native
language as a smelly fish, or malansang isda. He looks down upon those
who feel this way, seeing them as less than human. He proposes that all
people should strive to enrich their native tongue. He emphasizes the
magnitude of this responsibility by using the image of a mother feeding her
infant to demonstrate his point. Like mothers to their young, we, the
people, must devote our time and efforts towards developing our native
tongue in order for it to flourish.

d) Stanza 4
 Rizal defends Tagalog, his native language, as the equal to any
other, whether it may be Latin, English, Spanish, or even the language of
the angels. Here Rizal reiterates his ideas from the first stanza, how
language is a gift from heaven. He sees all languages as a blessing from
God and as such, they must all be valued equally.