This particular work of literature features the History of the Philippines, for the most part spanning the twentieth century, through the eyes of the "amoral" Don Carlos Cobello, a wealthy patriarch also known by the moniker "C.C.".

The novel is a narrative that challenges the well-established moral codes in the Philippines through the literary use of storylines equipped with adulterous and incestuous affairs, a genre that creates an artifice of sexual tension within the pages of the book.

From a larger perspective, José’s Sin is a novel that galvanises the call to mass consciousness due to its exposé of vanity and greed entrenched in the elite configuration of supremacy and control in countries worldwide.

[3] José also presented in Sin the contrasting inequity between the wealthy and the poverty-stricken, making the book an assault on the unending control of wealth, resources, and social capital by Filipino aristocrats.

It also assails on the theme of racial discrimination committed by the landed, mestizo gentry against the Indios, or the indigenous Malay race of Filipino society, who were victims of the same prejudice beginning with the arrival of the Spanish in 1521.