Narration in ‘The House of the Spirits’



THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

by

Isabel Allende

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STYLE: NARRATION AND POINT OF VIEW

There is more than one narrator in this complex novel. Can you identify the different narrators? There are three distinct narrative voices in the novel.

✓ The first voice is that of an unnamed first person ("I") narrator.

✓ The majority of reconstruction is told in the third person, with all characters referred to as "he" or "she." This second narrative voice is omniscient, or "all-knowing," able to relate what the various characters are thinking or feeling. This narrative voice wouldn’t be so unusual if it wasn’t interrupted by another narrative voice.

✓ The third voice belongs to Esteban Trueba, whose first person ("I") accounts serve to express either his intense passion or his acute suffering.

1.

2.

TASK

Find and make a note of five quotations for each narrator. Discuss, with use of subject-specific terminology, what each narrator reveals and why they have been used.

STYLE: NARRATIVE VOICES

✓ Each narrator has a distinct style and personality.

TASK

1. How consistent is this personality with the character as described in the book?

2. What does this tell us about the reliability of narrators?

3. Look back at your previous comments. Why do you think that Allende uses such a complex narrative approach?

STYLE: FORESHADOWING

✓ Allende frequently uses foreshadowing in The House of the Spirits to hint at the fate facing her characters.

TASK

Explain how the following quotations show foreshadowing.

As early as Chapter 1, the narrator remarks that Rosa's poisoning is just: "the first of many acts of violence that marked the fate of the del Valle family."

A more specific remark comes in Chapter 7 when, after reuniting with her brother Miguel after his first day of school, Amanda impulsively tells him that she would sacrifice herself for him. The narrator adds that "she did not know then that one day she would have to, …"

Another instance of foreshadowing occurs at the end of Chapter 12 when the last surviving Mora sister comes to warn Alba that she is in danger. Esteban dismisses her words as crazy but, the narrator notes,: “later he would recall Luisa Mora's prophetic words, when they took Alba away in the middle of the night, while the curfew was in force."

TASK

How does the frequent use of foreshadowing throughout the novel helps create a sense of fate at work and reinforce the violence of the political system?

STYLE: MAGICAL REALISM

Magical realism is a style of writing which treats myth and magic with the same acceptance and objectivity as "truth."

TASK

1. Find and make a note of five examples of magic realism which happen in the novel.

2. Is this magic realism consistent throughout the course of the novel? Pay particular reference to the later parts of the novel.

3. Discuss how the tone of the novel changes through the course of the book. Why do you think this is?

4. Is there a sense of humor in this novel? Support with quotations.

The author seems to be asking whether a woman with psychic abilities or a government that tortures and murders thousands of its citizens is more unbelievable. DISCUSS.

STYLE: SYMBOLISM

TASK

1. How can the relationships in and among the Trueba family be seen as a microcosm of the larger society: Explain how the following examples show this idea.

2. Esteban Trueba's rape of Pancha García is a reflection –

3. Esteban García's rape of Alba reflects –

4. What does the sharing of writing and stories among the various generations of females symbolize?

5. In the novel the famous poet’s funeral becomes "the symbolic burial of freedom." Explain why.

6. Esteban Trueba gradually shrinks to Clara's height. What can this symbolize?

STYLE: SPIRITUALITY AND SYMBOLISM

1. What other symbols do people see in the novel?

2. What is the significance of green hair (Rosa, Alba)?

3. Women are spiritual centers, men are concerned with physical. Why did she present the world this way?

4. What is the significance of Clara’s periods of silence?

Allende's novel ends with Alba's recognition that "the past, existing only as memory and hence open to transformation, loses its grip over the present as well as its power to effectively predetermine the future."

➢ In vowing to love her unborn daughter as she has been loved, even though that daughter may be the result of a rape, what is Alba essentially trying to change in Chile and with future generations?

Social and Historical Context

TASK

Look for facts that indicate where (in what country) and when (in what time period) the action occurs.

Although the setting of the novel is never explicitly named as Chile, the history of that country forms an important part of the plot.

➢ Why do you think the country is never identified in the text?

The political turmoil that engulfed Chile in the 1970s after the election of "the Candidate" Salvador Allende is reflected in the increasing impact that political events have in the lives of the characters.

TASK

1. What theme does the Tres Marías hacienda help to show?

2. Write down 10 facts about the political history of Chile.

Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda was not Chile's first Nobel laureate - poet Gabriela Mistral won the accolade in 1945 - but he is considered one of the most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century

|English |

|Sandino duerme en la selva hasta ese día, |Sandino sleeps in the forest to this day, |

|su fusil se ha llenado de lianas y de lluvia, |his rifle has filled with vines and rain, |

|su rostro no tiene párpados, |his face has no eyelids, |

|pero las heridas con que lo matasteis están vivas |but the wounds with which you killed him are alive |

|como las manos de Puerto Rico que esperan |like the hands of Puerto Rico which await |

|la luz de los cuchillos. |the light of knives. |

Censorship

The House of the Spirits can be seen to expose some of the brutal political regimes that existed in Chile until the late 1980s. It has been suggested that it escaped censorship because of the magic realist approach, with which the brutality is touched upon.

TASK

1. What is censorship?

2. Research how censorship has been shown in Latin American countries.

3. Why do you think the government would have considered censoring the novel?

4. Why do you think the magic realism allowed social commentary to be expressed in places?

5. Write down a list of issues it discusses which could have been censored.

6. What points do you think Allende was making through her social commentary?

Feminism

"… the battle of the sexes is cleverly manifested in the continuous struggle for space in the house, …"

➢ Esteban has designed the "big house on the corner" to demonstrate his own wealth and power, but it more accurately reflects the personality of his wife, Clara. Even when he is turning the salon of the house into a political meeting place, Clara manages to continue her spiritualist meetings and charity work by adding rooms and staircases to the back of the house. The split between the couple caused by Esteban's violence also becomes evident in the house, as "an invisible border arose between the parts of the house occupied by Esteban Trueba and those occupied by his wife." Little Alba recognizes that "her grandmother was the soul of the big house on the corner," and the loss Esteban feels after her death is mirrored in a similar decline of the house.

➢ Few women writers emerged from the Boom, however, and so when the translation of Allende's House of the Spirits was published 1985, it was justly hailed for bringing a fresh, feminine perspective to the portrayal of Latin American life.

CLASS

In the novel we see a growing conflict between classes. This conflict is between the Marxists / Communists / Socialists and the Conservatives.

TASK

Explain how the following characters can be seen to represent each party. Support your ideas with quotations.

❖ Pedro Tercero – Marxists / Communists / Socialists

❖ Esteban – Conservatives

Useful points to remember, as the political aspect of the novel can become a little complicated.

➢ There is little division between the Marxists / Socialists / Communists

➢ The Catholic church tended to be on the side of the Socialists

➢ A Socialist government comes to power

➢ The Conservatives ask for aid from abroad to try to overthrow the Socialists. These would be conservative, or rightwing governments such as the USA.

➢ A military dictatorship then comes into power.

TASK

1. How is the political unrest of the society paralleled with happenings in nature?

2. How does the re-emergence of Nicolas and Jaime into the De Valle House hold increase the focus around the family’s involvement in political events?

DEATH

Whereas other texts may approach death in an dark and depressing fashion, Allende deals with death in a slightly different way. This is shown particularly through the character of Clara.

TASK

What are Clara’s beliefs about death?

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Allende chose the names of her characters carefully.

❖ CLARA – CLEAR

❖ BIANCA – WHITE

❖ ALBA - DAWN

TASK

1. Look at the names and their meanings. Explain why these names have been chosen.

2. What do all three meanings have in common?

3. Draw a family tree to see how all the characters are linked together.

THE HOUSE ON THE CORNER – A METAPHOR

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TASK

1. Write a description of the house on the corner. Remember to include how it changes as the novel progresses.

2. What do you think the house can be seen to be a metaphor of?

Later on the novel we see that the house is divided up.

3. Describe this division and explain what you think it could be seen to represent? What do you think the division of the house and Tres Marias shows?

4. How does the character of Clara change when living in Tres Marias? Why has Allende shown this?

Framework for analysing extracts / POEMS

***ALL POINTS SHOULD BE SUPPORTED WITH QUOTES AND ANALYSIS IF APPLICABLE.***

Overview of extract

➢ Very Briefly - What happens in the extract?

Themes and Ideas

➢ What main themes does this extract deal with?

➢ How are these themes developed?

➢ How do characters help to present the themes?

Form

➢ Narrative technique – first, third, implied reader

➢ Order – chronological, flashback, paragraphs, sentence lengths

➢ Use of interior monologue/ dialogue

➢ Register used throughout – fomal/ colloquial/ childlike

➢ Tense

➢ For poetry think about stanza length, free verse, rhyme, emjambment

Characters

➢ What information is revealed about characters?

➢ What is revealed about characters’ feelings, motivations etc?

Imagery and Symbols

➢ What images and symbols appear in this extract?

➢ Why have these images/ symbols been used?

➢ What do they represent?

➢ Why are they relevant to the social and historical context in which they were written?

➢

Language/ literary devices

These should also be discussed throughout essay

➢ Discuss the meter used. What does it show? Blank verse/ Prose

➢ Discuss rhymes schemes, why used if at all?

➢ Has dramatic irony been used? If so how?

➢ Figurative language

➢ Any relevant linguistic techniques

Phonology

➢ Alliteration – plosive, fricative, sibilance

➢ Assonance

➢ Euphonic v Cacophonic

Conclusion

What is significant about the passage? What can we learn from it? What important ideas does it suggest?

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