"The House of the Spirits"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the book, "The House of the Spirits" written by Isabelle Allende. The writer points out that, although the book is a novel and is set in a nameless magical reality of the author's imagination rather than a specific place and time, the heavily symbolic nature of Allende's prose renders the book almost like a philosophical, as opposed to an analytical, critique of Chilean politics and society.

From the Paper:

"The book tells the story of the coming of age, of the boyhood and manhood of the patriarch of the Trueba family during the political upheaval that cumulates in the rise of a dictatorial era. It also stresses the struggles of the patriarch's wife to come to terms with her own gifts of prognostication and the impact of the sins and hopes of the fathers and mothers of the Trueba family upon their offspring's lives in a larger political context. Ultimately, Estaban Trueba lives in frustration at his inability to control the women in his life or the politics of the world in which he dwells logic and masculine power are futile in the arbitrary world of the novel. The man's first love, his fiance dies. He cannot fully possess his wife Clara on an emotional level, as she becomes involved with a relationship with another woman. His daughter becomes pregnant by a lower class man. His granddaughter is raped."

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