noil me Tangere marks the first time realism as a literary concept entered Philippine writing. Previous poetry and drama drew heavily from Spanish ballads for their subject matter,presenting their audience with images of a society belonging to the long ago and the far away. In paterno's Ninay, the locales and the characters were Philippine but have been so romanticized that they might as well have been foreign. when Noil me Tangere portrayed contemporary Philippine society, it was with the end of analyzing the problems of the colony so that something could be done to solve them. What gives it power and worth, in spite of its formal weaknesses, is Rizal's searing indictment of the Spanish colonial regime and his devastating portraits of colonialists and their tools.