Who is Ben Zayb in El Filibusterismo?

Ben Zayb is a Manila newspaper writer and self-styled thinker who appears among the colony’s talkers — on the steamer, in salons, and in chapters that mock his “afflictions.” He performs science and art criticism while missing the political violence under his nose.

He is not a hero of the plot’s bomb. He is how Rizal stages the public sphere: opinion without courage. Searchers asking “who is Ben Zayb” usually meet him in school lists; point them to the colonial-hypocrisy concept and to Simoun’s contrasting silence.