Chapter 1 - Rosa the Beautiful

The story opens on Holy Thursday during the time of Lent in the Chilean countryside. A ten-year-old girl named Clara del Valle sits in church with her family while the priest, the bombastic Father Restrepo, leads services. Clara's parents are not avid churchgoers; Severo del Valle is an atheist and Nívea del Valle prefers personal communion with God, yet they must attend church to keep up appearances. Nívea and Severo have eleven living children. Their eldest daughter, Rosa, attracts attention wherever she goes, church being no exception. She was born with a strange and mermaid-like beauty, having green hair, yellow eyes, and almost translucent skin. She is engaged to a young miner named Esteban Trueba, who is trying to make his fortune in a faraway mine. Suddenly Clara breaks the silence in the church by saying: "Psst! Father Restrepo! If that story about hell is a lie, we're all fucked, aren't we..." Father Restrepo pronounces Clara possessed by the devil. While severe, Father Restrepo's pronouncement about Clara is not entirely off-base, because Clara is clairvoyant and can move objects with her mind. After church, the body of the eccentric Uncle Marcos is dropped off at the del Valle household. Uncle Marcos was an eccentric traveler who resembled a pirate. His most famous expedition was into the mountains on an airplane he made himself. After he disappeared for much longer than expected, he was presumed dead and a funeral was held, but then he made a grand return, after which he became a mentor for Clara. She was enthralled by his stories and his collection of books and magical objects. When Uncle Marcos's corpse is delivered to the del Valle household, Clara insists on keeping a decrepit puppy that is among his belongings. She names him Barrabas and he grows into a gargantuan dog that eats or knocks over everything in sight.

We switch to the perspective of Esteban Trueba, who narrates much of The House of the Spirits. He remembers being twenty-five years old, working in the mine to raise enough money to give Rosa a proper life. Esteban recalls how he first saw Rosa on the street and became obsessed with her. When he finally gathered the courage to go to the del Valle household and ask for her hand, he found it uncontested. Rosa was so beautiful that no man wanted to take on the responsibility of protecting her from other men. After Esteban and Rosa became engaged, Esteban obtained the concession for the mine, and left his sister Férula behind to tend to their aging and ailing mother, Doña Ester.

Severo del Valle becomes the Liberal Party candidate for the upcoming Congressional elections. On the same day Clara announces that a family member will die by accident, a gift of a jug of brandy arrives on the del Valle doorstep. Rosa becomes ill, and Severo gives her some brandy for her fever. The next morning, she is dead. The family doctor, Dr. Cuevas, determines that the brandy was poisoned by Severo's political adversaries. Severo is overcome with grief that his daughter has died in his place. Clara sneaks out of bed and, through the dining-room window, watches Dr. Cuevas and his assistant perform an autopsy on Rosa. After Dr. Cuevas leaves, his assistant fondles Rosa's corpse. From that moment on, Clara resolves not to speak, and keeps her resolution until nine years later when she announces that she will soon be married.

Chapter 2 - The Three Marías

We enter the lives of Esteban and Férula Trueba. Their mother, Doña Ester, is so crippled by arthritis that she can do practically nothing for herself. Férula has taken on the burden of caring for her mother; she makes Esteban feel guilty for having personal goals and wanting material things. He disdains Férula's guilt trips and wants to escape from her, but promises that he will always provide for her. Esteban decides to make a living by restoring their ruined family estate, Tres Marías. When Esteban arrives, he finds that the master house is just as it was when he was a child, but is now weathered and filthy. Generations of servants live on the property in squalor. Pedro Segundo García, a man about the same age as Esteban, has been acting as their leader in the absence of a patrón. The servants immediately accept Esteban as their new patrón and he begins a "new life that, in time, would make him forget Rosa." As an old man, Esteban is adamant that he was a good patrón because he improved the standard of life at Tres Marías, even though he treated the servants badly in many ways.

Esteban soon feels at home at Tres Marías, but he is "slowly becoming a barbarian," overcome by his sexual urges. One day, he rapes Pedro Segundo García's sister, Pancha García. Afterwards, he allows her to work in the house as his mistress instead of in the fields. At the same time, he begins to work more furiously on restoring Tres Marías. Esteban and Pedro Segundo García develop a camaraderie, although Pedro Segundo García despises his patrón for raping his sister and looking down on his people. Soon Pancha García becomes pregnant with a son, named Esteban after his father, whom Esteban refuses to acknowledge as his own. He ceases his relationship with Pancha after this, and continues to rape other young girls on the estate. Esteban becomes the most respected patrón in the region, raising the standard of living at Tres Marías many times over. Yet he expects his workers to exhaust themselves completely every day, and pays them with vouchers instead of money. He insists that paying his workers a salary or giving them more rights are "Communist" ideas and tells anyone who complains that "this isn't Europe." In his free time, Esteban visits a brothel called the Red Lantern, where he favors a prostitute named Transito Soto. One day, he lends her fifty pesos so that she can travel to the capital and try her luck at wealth and fame. She promises that she will repay him. Soon after, he receives a letter from Férula telling him that his mother is dying. He puts Pedro Segundo in charge of Tres Marías and leaves for his mother's house.

Analysis

The novel's first two chapters acquaint us with the first of several generations whose lives the book will record, examine, and intertwine. The oldest generation is comprised of Severo and Nívea del Valle, and Doña Ester. Although Allende offers a great many details of their lives, their true importance as characters lies in the ideas they bestow upon their children's generation. Clara and Esteban become the main characters of the novel, and as we will see, are shaped greatly by their parents' attitudes and deaths. Clara's importance is evident from the book's very first words, which are spoken in her voice: "Barrabas came to us by sea..." We know immediately that Clara is an unusual creature: she is a writer and much more, an outspoken individual; she is unafraid of speaking her mind even to a priest, on the holiest day of the year, in the middle of a sermon. Clearly, her greatest power lies in her ability to inform others about what is happening around her. Because of this, her silence in the nine years following Rosa's death is the ultimate expression of grief. Clara knows the power her words hold for others, and uses the same technique of silence to punish her husband later on in life.

The short story of Rosa the Beautiful gives us a first insight into the unusual, mystical qualities that surround the novel's main characters. Rosa is born looking like a mermaid, a creature of fantasy. The fact that she is born with her ethereal traits makes it clear that an otherworldly nature is ingrained in the characters, not just visited upon them. Rosa's story also introduces the theme of violence and suffering. In the world of the novel, "sorrow, blood, and love" are inseparable and interdependent. Accordingly, Esteban Trueba's first love is surrounded by death, both his lover's and his mother's. In the same vein, Rosa's beauty is marred by the violence of her autopsy and subsequent molestation by the assistant. Rosa's death marks the first time in the novel that one family member pays for another's crimes. Rosa dies in place of Severo, killed by his political adversaries. Later in the novel, Esteban García will rape Alba to avenge his own grandmother's rape by Esteban Trueba - a cycle of love and violence that Alba understands will continue for eternity.

These chapters also introduce us to Esteban Trueba, who we see develop from a young man with few prospects into a beloved and hated politician and patriarch. Here we witness his humble beginnings as the downtrodden young man who must endure his mother's and lover's deaths as well as hard labor and poverty. As we will see, Esteban's tough experiences as a young man make him feel entitled to engage in the outrageous and often violent behaviors that characterize the rest of his life. This includes his first recorded act of violence, the rape of young Pancha García and subsequent denial of paternal responsibility. Despite his violent and stubborn nature, Esteban Trueba is very generous by nature. He is willing to give Transito Soto, a mere prostitute, money so that she may better her future. He continues this trend of generosity throughout his life; even as he completely rejects members of his family, including Férula and his son, Nícolas, he makes sure that they are materially comfortable. Something in Esteban Trueba cannot bear to see his family suffer. As a character, his bark is generally worse than his bite.

Allende introduces us to the novel's two major narrators, the adult Alba and the elderly Esteban Trueba. Let us examine the adult Alba, as it is she who tells most of the novel's story. On the novel's first page, the adult Alba confides: "I would use [Clara's] notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own." Even though we do not discover Alba's identity as the narrator until later, her language makes it clear that she is emotionally invested in the stories she tells. Alba explains that she does not merely reconstruct the past; she "reclaims" it. The word "reclaim" suggests that the past has been taken away from Alba. As we learn, political strife has robbed Alba of many of her family's belongings, and her grandmother's death robbed her of tales and wisdom. When she found Clara's notebooks, she could "reclaim" her family's true wealth-its stories. Alba also tells us that Clara's writing helps her "overcome terrors of [her] own." This statement gives us insight into the novel's message about the power of storytelling and the role of the storyteller. For Alba, and for many other characters, storytelling is not just entertainment or a way of preserving history - it is a tool that helps them surmount major challenges and even "terrors," as well as the lesser challenges of daily life. Stories provide the characters with a sense of perspective, connecting generations and giving them the strength to survive.

Chapter 3 - Clara the Clairvoyant

Clara's parents desperately want her to speak, but she is resolved to silence. Dr. Cuevas confirms that she is silent by choice, not because she cannot speak. Nana dresses up in scary costumes to try to frighten Clara into speaking, but succeeds in scaring only Barrabas. Instead of going to the convent school like her sisters, Clara is tutored privately at home. Although she has no friends save for Barrabas, she amuses herself by reading dreams, predicting the future, and moving objects with her mind. She also accompanies her mother and her suffragette friends on their missions to enlighten poor female workers. Although Clara is an adolescent, Nana dotes on her as though she is still a child. On her nineteenth birthday, Clara speaks for the first time since Rosa's death; she announces that she will soon be married to Rosa's fiancé. Sure enough, soon after, Esteban Trueba arrives to ask for Clara's hand.

When Esteban Trueba returns to his native town, he can barely believe what a "shithole" it is. Férula has lost her splendor and become an old woman from the strain of caring for Doña Ester. Esteban is struck by his mother's abominable condition; she is almost completely paralyzed by arthritis, and her flesh is rotting alive. Esteban promises to give her legitimate grandchildren. For this reason, soon after his mother's death, he goes to ask Nívea and Severo del Valle if they have a daughter he can marry. Clara accepts readily, having predicted the proposal. Their engagement party is splendid until Clara notices that Barrabas is missing. To her horror, he appears with a butcher knife stuck in his back, and dies in her arms. Despite this tragedy in Clara's life, preparations for the wedding continue. Esteban builds their stately, extravagant home, which becomes known as "the big house on the corner." During this time, Férula and Clara take tea together for the first time. Férula wants to come live with Esteban and Clara, because she has no purpose after her mother's death. Clara reads her mind and assures Férula that her wish will come true. This meeting seals a strong pact of friendship between the two women. After their wedding and honeymoon, Clara and Esteban settle into their house. Clara deems it "very lovely," but is horrified to find that Esteban has, in a misfired attempt at pleasing his wife, had Barrabas made into a rug.

Clara announces that she is pregnant, and that the child will be a little girl named Blanca. Blanca is born late, by caesarean section. She is very ugly and hairy from having spent so long in her mother's body. Clara becomes enraptured with her child, not letting anyone interfere with their special relationship. Blanca's arrival gives Férula something on which to focus her seemingly bottomless good will. Before, she was obsessed with thoughts of crawling into bed with Clara.

Chapter 4 - The Time of the Spirits

This chapter focuses on Blanca's childhood. Clara treats Blanca as though she is an adult from the time she is born. When she becomes a precocious toddler, the family takes a vacation to Tres Marías. As soon as they arrive, Blanca meets Pedro Tercero García, a young boy her age and the son of Pedro Segundo García. The two are instantly drawn to one another and form a strong bond of friendship. Clara takes charge of the hacienda, improving the inhabitants' living conditions and teaching them various skills. Férula hates the countryside, but there she is able to express her deep love for Clara by helping her run the household and doting on her. A plague of ants descends on the hacienda, which no one can remedy until Old Pedro García uses some native wisdom. He simply picks up a handful of ants and shows them the way out of the grounds of Tres Marías. Even though the others ridicule him, the method works and even Esteban Trueba develops a newfound respect for the old man. After Clara becomes pregnant again, the family returns to "the big house on the corner."

Clara sinks into one of her long silences, detaching herself from Esteban and everyone else. Then one day, she begins speaking again and permits Dr. Cuevas to examine her. Even though he longs to name an heir after himself, Clara announces that she is having twin boys named Jaime and Nícolas. Distraught, Esteban retreats to the Christopher Columbus brothel, where he sleeps with Transito Soto.

Just before Clara is due, her parents die in a car accident. Although Esteban tries to hide the news from Clara, she sees their death in a dream and knows it is true. She knows that her mother has been decapitated and enlists Férula's help to find the missing head. Because the bodies have already been buried, Nívea del Valle's head ends up temporarily in Clara and Esteban's room, unbeknownst to the latter. Because of these circumstances, Nívea "watches on" as Jaime and Nícolas are born. After the birth, Clara joyously resigns herself to living in the spiritual world. Others similarly inclined begin to arrive at her house, including the three Mora sisters, with whom Clara forms a particularly close bond. In the absence of their mother's attention, Jaime and Nícolas begin to become very practical, "manly" boys. Clara's distraction drives Esteban mad, and he becomes jealous of Férula, who is close to Clara in a way he cannot be. Finally, when Esteban finds Férula curled up in bed with Clara, he banishes his sister from the household. In turn, she sets a curse on him. Although he intends never to see Férula again, Esteban makes sure that she is materially comfortable by sending her money through the local priest. Clara tries to communicate with Férula spiritually, but soon realizes that her friend does not want to be contacted.

Now we focus our attention on the growing love between Blanca and Pedro Tercero García. The two see one another whenever the family vacations at Tres Marías, and spend the time between visits thinking about one another. Esteban Trueba does not know about their love, but hates Pedro Tercero García because he is insolent and circulates revolutionary ideas amongst the other peasants.

Analysis

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the theme of motherhood, which is connected to a dichotomy between "male" practicality and "female" mysticism. Esteban Trueba exemplifies the former half of this dichotomy. Except for when he speaks directly to us as an old, dying man, he seems to be an emotionless and calculating character. He is interested in practical, material things like the estate of Tres Marías, money, and worldly luxuries. For the most part, Esteban shows his love through money, buying gifts for Clara and ignoring the fact that they do not interest her. Even when he renounces Férula emotionally, he still insists on taking care of her materially (he does this later on with Nícolas, as well). Esteban considers women's emotional and spiritual investments ridiculous, saying in Chapter 4: "I didn't dare leave my house, where there was clearly a need for a man among so many hysterical women."

Esteban's approach to sex is also material; when he does not get it from his wife, he uses his money to buy it from Transito Soto as though this is an everyday transaction. The fate of Barrabas encapsulates Esteban's materialism. Completely misunderstanding Clara's deep, human love for the dog, he thinks that having Barrabas turned into a rug will please her. Esteban is thinking practically: in his mind, Barrabas is a belonging that Clara is sad to lose; therefore, she will be happy to have him in the form of another possession, a rug. To Clara, his gesture is tantamount to making a rug out of her best friend. This is because, in sharp contrast to her husband, Clara has a mystical nature and is all but completely oblivious to the material state of things. Throughout their marriage, Clara dismisses the finery Esteban provides her as "lovely" because her interest lies in human and spiritual relationships and communication.

Clara's spiritual nature is integral to her strong identity as a mother. Being pregnant sends her into the private pleasures of her spiritual realm, and she ignores most everything and everyone around her. Even though not all of her children are spiritually inclined, they all respect the spiritual world. She is also able to reassure them with her predictions. Yet Clara's attitude as a mother is different with respect to her male and female children. She is so wrapped up in her spiritual endeavors that she misses much of Jaime and Nícolas's childhoods, resulting in their becoming "manly," practical, and more or less conventional young men. Still they retain enough of their mother's influence to become sensitive individuals, and follow abstinent paths quite opposite to their father's proud materialism. Unlike her relationship to her sons, Clara is involved in Blanca's life from the very moment she discovers she is pregnant. In doing so, she continues her family's tradition of extremely close bonds between mothers and daughters.

Allende is constantly reminding us of the inviolability of connections between the generations by using symbolic naming. The names Nívea ("snow"), Clara ("clear"), Blanca ("white"), and Alba ("dawn") all connect to the idea of brightness and purity - a luminous spiritual quality. The male characters' names are also connected, but in a way that refers to generic heredity rather than spirituality. Esteban García is named after his true grandfather, Esteban Trueba. It is no doubt his name that makes him so conscious of his ancestor's wrongdoings and so eager to claim what is rightfully his by name. Meanwhile, Trueba is furious that his legitimate sons are not named after him. He considers it an insult to tradition; after all, were he to share his full name with them, he would receive automatic recognition for their triumphs. Ironically, Jaime and Nícolas's achievements end up embarrassing Esteban Trueba rather than making him proud. At Tres Marías, Old Pedro García, Pedro Segundo García, and Pedro Tercero García are all connected to one another by their first and last names. In their society, individualism is balanced by a strong commitment to honoring the past.

Violent deaths provide foreshadowing in these chapters, specifically the deaths of Barrabas, Doña Ester, and Nívea del Valle. Barrabas's murder interrupts Clara and Esteban's wedding festivities when the dying dog stumbles in to die in his mistress's arms. Beyond Esteban's insensitivity to Barrabas's death, the event foreshadows the couple's, and the family's, troubles. By bringing violence and loss into what should be their happiest day, Barrabas's death suggests that Clara and Esteban's joys will always be tinged with fear and the pain of loss. Doña Ester's death foreshadows the symbolic death of spirit that Esteban suffers throughout his life, though he redeems himself spiritually somewhat as he dies. Doña Ester is rotting, literally, from the inside out, and she is paralyzed. Esteban is rotting too, but on a moral level; he goes on from his mother's deathbed to rape many women at Tres Marías and terrorize his family whenever he sees fit. At the same time, Esteban is paralyzed emotionally like his mother is physically. Even his great love for his granddaughter is stifled by an unrelenting unwillingness to feel. This is what allows Esteban to "rot" morally. Lastly, Nívea's accidental beheading and the events proceeding symbolizes the ongoing connection between the generations throughout the story. Clara intuits her mother's death and finds her severed head by sheer instinct. Even in death, she and her mother share an unbreakable connection. Then, Nívea's severed head looks on as Jaime and Nícolas are born. Even in death, the grandmother is there to "witness" her grandchildren's birth. Nívea's death, though tragic, carries an inspirational message: families' connections not only span generations, but traverse dimensions.

Chapter 5 - The Lovers

The family declares Blanca "the only normal person for many generations." She is not interested in her mother's spiritual ventures, and does all the things expected of an adolescent girl. Blanca awaits her latest visit to Tres Marías with great anticipation, because she is falling more deeply in love with Pedro Tercero García. They begin a nightly ritual of meeting at the riverbank to spend time together, and the two young lovers "come to love each other with the ecstatic passion that [torments] them for the rest of their lives." Back at "the big house on the corner," Férula interrupts the family's dinner by entering unannounced. She ignores everyone but Clara, whom she kisses before disappearing. Everyone is spooked. Clara announces that Férula has died and that it was her ghost that visited them. Clara, Esteban, and Father Restrepo go to collect Férula's body from the filthy tenement where she was living. Despite receiving a monthly allowance from her brother, it seems that she had continued to live as though she was poor until her death. The next summer at Tres Marías, Blanca and Pedro Tercero García meet each other as adults. That night, they make love for the first time. Soon after, Clara predicts an earthquake of great proportions. As usual, her premonitions are correct. The quake flattens the main house of the hacienda, crushing Esteban Trueba. He is extracted from the ruins with great care. Despite the severity of his injuries, Old Pedro García is able to mend him completely. While Esteban is recovering, Clara develops a friendship with Pedro Segundo García, who is put in charge of the hacienda. One day, Clara is summoned to Blanca's convent school because her daughter has fallen ill. She takes Blanca to Tres Marías, where Esteban banishes Pedro Tercero García from the property for circulating revolutionary ideas amongst the peasants. He and Blanca continue to meet in secret. Because she is loathe to return to school, Blanca feigns illness and is allowed to remain at home. Old Pedro García teaches her the craft of pottery, and she begins to make crèches that become somewhat of a commodity in the area. All the while, Pedro Tercero García continues his revolutionary work in secret, sneaking about Tres Marías in various disguises.

Chapter 6 - Revenge

Esteban Trueba's recovery from being crushed in the earthquake is slow and painful. He hates how Clara and Blanca separate themselves from him, although he concedes of Clara: "She was the only woman for me. She still is." One day, Clara installs a lock on her bedroom door and will let him in no longer. From that moment on, his desire for her becomes maddeningly strong.

Esteban Trueba becomes friends with Count Jean de Satigny, a French aristocrat who lives a life of luxury through his inherited wealth. The two men go in on a chinchilla fur business together, which fails miserably. One night, Jean de Satigny sees Blanca sneak out of her window, but does not follow her. The next day, he asks for her hand in marriage. Blanca refuses, but Esteban is sure he will get Blanca to agree. Jaime and Nícolas arrive at the hacienda. Jaime has become a robust and practical young man, to whom the peasants go when they have problems. In contrast, Nícolas is frail and impractical, devoting himself to artsy and supernatural pursuits. Nícolas meets a girl named Amanda, who soon becomes his girlfriend. Pedro García dies, and because he is so thankful to the old man for healing him, Esteban gives him a lavish funeral. We learn that Esteban has an illegitimate grandson, Esteban García, who will later "be the instrument of a tragedy that befall[s] [the] family." One night, Jean de Satigny follows Blanca to the riverbank, where he sees her lying naked with Pedro Tercero García. Jean de Satigny tells Esteban Trueba that Blanca is having an affair, and the patrón quickly deduces her lover's identity. A furious Esteban whips and screams at Blanca. When Clara tries to defend her daughter, Esteban punches her in the mouth so hard that he knocks out several teeth. Clara and Blanca renounce Esteban and retreat to "the big house on the corner." Clara never utters a word to her husband again. Pedro Segundo García leaves Tres Marías.

After Clara, Blanca, and Pedro Segundo García "desert" Esteban, he focuses all his energy and rage on making Pedro Tercero García pay for ruining his life. One day, little Esteban García tells Esteban Trueba that he knows where Pedro Tercero is hiding, in a German sawmill close to Tres Marías. Esteban Trueba promises the young boy a reward, and the two set out to find Pedro Tercero. Esteban fires a bullet at the sleeping fugitive, who miraculously dodges it. However, Esteban manages to cut off several of Pedro Tercero's fingers with an axe before the fugitive escapes. When the two Estebans return to Tres Marías, the older slaps the younger, calls him a traitor, and denies him the promised reward.

Analysis

Férula is one of several characters in the novel who bases her life around selflessness and devotion to helping those less fortunate. Like Nana, who thanklessly raises generations of children, Férula helps the poor even though they spit on her and yell curses at her. Even after he banishes her from his property, Esteban sends her enough money to live luxuriously, yet her nature, strengthened by the experience of caring for Doña Ester, makes her live in the squalor and poverty of the very people she is trying to raise out of those conditions. The only way Férula indulges herself is by doting on Clara with a fervor that is certainly romantic and possibly sexual.

One generation later, Jaime and Nícolas devote their lives to helping others. Both brothers renounce physical belongings: Jaime spends all his energy in helping heal the less fortunate as a doctor, while Nícolas ends up as a spiritual seeker and teacher. The twins lack Clara's spiritual intuition, although they emulate her disinterest in luxury, and their selflessness is fueled in a large part by hippie trends. Yet to their father's disappointment, they spend their lives uninterested in material gains; they are interested rather in spiritual and humanitarian investment.

The idea of forbidden love is planted in these chapters, as Blanca and Pedro Tercero García's romance blossoms wildly. Their union is forbidden from the moment they first lay eyes on each other as toddlers. Blanca belongs to the upper middle class, the realm of the patrón, and Pedro Tercero to the peasant class, whose members are expected to serve and obey their superiors. Yet their attraction is instant and enduring, as if predestined. In the story, such a love can develop and flourish only in the countryside. There, emotions are as unbound as the nature that surrounds and suffuses the hacienda. There, class differences are perhaps the starkest because of the proximity of the patrón and his workers, yet this proximity to each other and to nature can turn even the stoniest of hearts. In the countryside, even someone as skeptical and conventional as Esteban Trueba can be convinced of the value of old wisdom by Old Pedro García. Even though Clara makes sure that "the big house on the corner" is full of magic, it is still in the realm of the bourgeois, with all its accompanying restrictions on behavior. A generation later, their daughter, Alba, will find herself confronted with these restrictions as she continues her parents' tradition of forbidden love with Miguel.

In sharp opposition to Blanca and Pedro Tercero, Jean de Satigny seems to be devoid of passion for others, loving only books and luxuries. His union with Bianca is the only thing in his life that is practical. While Esteban Trueba cut his teeth in the real world by working in a mine, Jean de Satigny specializes in such odd and useless talents as "eating artichokes with tongs" and "peeling an orange with a knife and fork, never touching it with his fingers, and cutting the peel in the shape of a flower." He represents a world even more eccentric than Clara's, but totally opposed to hers because of its unrelenting materialism.

In these chapters, love is again woven through with threads of violence. Esteban injures his daughter temporarily and his wife permanently when he finds out about Blanca's affair. Once again the pain of disapproval and loss becomes inextricable from the passion and love of romance. When Esteban knocks out Clara's teeth, he is symbolically silencing her and saying that her opinion does not matter to him. Accordingly, she doles out her harshest punishment: eternal silence. Unwilling to be told when she can and cannot speak her mind, Clara opts never to utter another word to Esteban as long as she lives. The symbolism is similar when Esteban's cuts off Pedro Tercero's fingers, although the patrón actually intends to kill his daughter's lover. By cutting his hand, Esteban is telling Pedro Tercero that he cannot touch Blanca. Like Clara, Pedro Tercero comes to defy Esteban's violence by remaining Blanca's lover for decades to come. Although violence and suffering are married to love in the novel, violence never quite triumphs.

Chapter 7 - The Brothers

When Clara and Blanca arrive back at "the big house on the corner," Clara sees to it that the household's former liveliness is restored, filling the house with guests. Jaime is studying at the university, and Nícolas is trying to "find himself." The twins buy a car, which they name Covadonga. Soon it becomes evident that Blanca is pregnant. When Esteban finds out, he finds the perfect scapegoat for his daughter's illegitimate pregnancy; he accuses Jean de Satigny of being the baby's father and secures the count's engagement to Blanca. The wedding is especially lavish to cover the scandal underlying it, and Blanca cries throughout the proceedings. Clara mollifies her by telling her that she knows Pedro Tercero is alive.

Both Jaime and Nícolas disappoint their father in different ways. Jaime becomes saintly, wanting no possessions save his numerous books and resolving to help those less fortunate. Nícolas involves himself in the scandalous habits of dancing, drinking, and doing drugs, and spends most of his time with Amanda. Jaime is in love with Amanda, but is too good at heart to attempt to steal her from his brother. Amanda herself is an orphan and the sole caregiver of her younger brother, Miguel. Clara helps get the boy into school and tries to look after both sister and brother. The narrator tells us that someday Amanda will have to give her life for Miguel.

When Esteban Trueba is elected Senator of the Republic, he and Clara come to a mild reconciliation. She still refuses to speak to him, but attends social and political functions with him to keep up appearances. At the same time, Pedro Tercero García finally regains his will to survive and overthrow political conservatism. He moves to the capital, where he continues to sing revolutionary folk songs and gather support for his cause. Back at "the big house on the corner," Nícolas tries to build a giant balloon in hopes of finding fame and fortune, but his attempt fails. After the din dies down, he goes looking for Amanda, who has disappeared. He is surprised to find her living in poverty with Miguel, because previously he had never visited her home nor suspected her financial situation. Amanda is pregnant. After much coercing (and out of his secret love for Amanda), Jaime agrees to perform an abortion on her. He has never performed any procedure, much less surgical - and much less alone - but he succeeds. While Nícolas is weak and useless in the face of the abortion, Jaime cares for Amanda heroically. Amanda and Miguel move into "the big house on the corner," and become part of the daily life there.

Chapter 8 - The Count

This chapter focuses on the beginning of Blanca and Jean de Satigny's marriage. Despite the uncomfortable and loveless circumstances of their union, the pair work well together. They are financially comfortable, and Jean does not wish to have sex with his wife, much to her relief. They move far north to hide Blanca's pregnancy from public view, and settle in a large mansion, where Blanca is quite uncomfortable among the Indian servants and strange, ostentatious decorations. She begins to hallucinate. Jean has a photography studio that he forbids Blanca to enter. He begins a business hiring Indians to excavate Incan tombs in the desert and selling the artifacts found there illegally. After several hallucinations that the mummies Jean traffics through the house are crawling around the rooms, Blanca decides to take action: after making sure that she is alone, she breaks into Jean's photography studio. There she finds the products of his obsession: photographs of the indigenous servants posed naked with each other and strange props. Blanca is shocked beyond belief, but suddenly understands that her husband is not "inclined to married life" because his sexual outlet is this strange, kinky private life. She also suspects that he is having a gay relationship with his most faithful male servant. At that moment, Blanca goes into labor. Unwilling to have her child born in the household that has been making a mockery of her, she hurries to the train station, where she waits for the train home.

Analysis

Chapters 7 and 8 revolve around two major scandalous pregnancies, Blanca's and Amanda's. The pregnancies are handled very differently because of the nature of their conception. While Blanca's baby is illegitimate, it is conceived in the most passionate of love affairs and wanted very much by its mother. For this reason - among others - she never considers an abortion, and the greatest pains are taken to ensure that the scandal does not mar Senator Trueba's name. Amanda's baby is also illegitimate, but is conceived in an immature, although frantic, love affair. Amanda acknowledges that she and Nícolas do not love one another enough to keep the child, nor does she think Nícolas mature enough to take on the role of father. For these reasons, the couple opts for an abortion, bringing us back to the theme of violence and suffering.

Although Jaime is the gentlest of doctors, the abortion is an act of violence visited upon both fetus and mother, and quickly destroys the relationship between the baby's would-be parents. Not only the abortion itself, but the circumstances surrounding it remind us how love can result in pain, and how pain can discourage love's growth. Jaime loves Amanda, but is forbidden to have her because of his greater love for his brother. He can express his love for Amanda only in the necessarily violent language of surgery, and in helping her recover. Jaime's forbidden love for Amanda torments him just as Blanca's love for Pedro Tercero torments her.

In contrast with the other characters' passionate love affairs, Blanca and Jean de Satigny's marriage is frigid and stunted. It is the first in a series of events that turn Blanca's life into a hard and unremarkable one until her escape to Canada with Pedro Tercero. Blanca finds herself trapped, although to her relief, Jean does not want to have sex with her. He pays her virtually no attention and conducts a secret life that he forbids her to bear witness to. The awkwardness and silence of their relationship is echoed in the bizarre atmosphere of the house. The servants seem subversive, mocking, even violent; Blanca thinks she sees mummies roaming the house. The mood at the house is so bizarre that the reader may begin to wonder whether Blanca is indeed hallucinating everything, but when she discovers Jean de Satigny's secret, we are reminded of Allende's message that reality itself is sometimes beyond explanation.

Ironically, the discovery of her husband's infidelity and gay identity are sources of great relief for Blanca. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Blanca is concerned above all with her daughter's well-being. She would rather endure the terrible discomfort of traveling back home while in labor than give birth to Alba in a house that has disgraced her. "The big house on the corner" is not only a center of life in this family's history, but a haven for life. It is where Amanda can be safely nursed back to health and the only place Blanca sees fit to introduce her beloved Alba to life outside the womb. As a symbolic gesture, Blanca's return to the house reminds us that even though she is not spiritual like her mother, she is part of her family's courageous maternal line. It is only appropriate for her to welcome this line's newest descendent within the walls of the family house.

Chapter 9 - Little Alba

This chapter focuses on the birth and childhood of Blanca's daughter, Alba. She is born feet-first in "the big house on the corner" moments after Blanca barrels through the door and directly into the room Clara has been preparing for her. She is born under the best possible astrological conditions, much to her grandmother's delight. Blanca names her Alba, or "dawn," when Clara refuses to have the child named after her for superstitious reasons. She has her great aunt Rosa's dark green hair and Pedro Tercero García's black "old man's eyes." Her legal father, Jean de Satigny, disappears completely from the Truebas' lives. Alba is told that her father was a noble aristocrat who died in the desert, and she dreams of his death frequently until the day when, as an adult, she goes to identify Jean de Satigny's corpse in the morgue. Other than the lie about her father's identity, Alba is brought up in a very straightforward manner by the whole household. She has a special kinship with her uncle Jaime, and is the only person granted access to his library. During her childhood, she witnesses Amanda's departure and watches Clara sharpening her spiritual abilities. Alba has no formal education, but is extremely smart and learns quickly. Despite himself, Esteban Trueba loves his granddaughter passionately.

Meanwhile, Nícolas's wanderings take him on a pilgrimage to India. He returns an emaciated vegan who refuses to wear clothing and spends all his time writing a huge spiritual treatise. The published treatise is a failure, although Nícolas gains a fair number of followers, including Alba. He teaches her his ascetic ways until Esteban orders him to stop. As for Esteban, he derives all his joy from Alba while his relationships with all the other family members disintegrate. Blanca hits the peak of her beauty, and men begin to court her and lavish attention on Alba. A Jewish man and Holocaust survivor known as The King of the Pressure Cookers comes closest to winning Blanca, but Esteban frightens him off. One day, Blanca dresses her daughter finely and takes her to a garden, where she meets Pedro Tercero, whom she does not know is her real father. Thereafter, Blanca goes alone to see him on weekends. Other than her continuing romance with Pedro Tercero, she has a hard life. Then one day, after a visit from a friend with a mentally disabled grandson, Blanca begins a weekly pottery class for "mongoloids," which she finds exhausting but rewarding.

As for Alba, "the most important person in the house and the strongest presence in her life" is Clara. At the age of six, her life is marked by her first encounter with Esteban García. He arrives at the main house of Tres Marías during one of Esteban Trueba and Alba's visits. Alba comes upon him as he burns with hatred, surveying the grandeur that he feels is rightfully his as a grandson of the patrón. He is aroused by Alba, and he places her hand on his erect penis. He is startled when she knows the word "penis" from her Uncle Jaime's anatomy books, and jumps away from her just before Esteban Trueba arrives. Esteban García asks the patrón for a recommendation to the police academy and a government subsidy for his education. Remembering how he cheated Esteban García out of his reward as a child, the patrón grants his request. As the young man leaves, the patrón asks him why his name is Esteban, and Esteban García replies, "Because of you, sir." Esteban Trueba has no idea that the young man is his illegitimate grandson and hates him passionately. Clara dies on Alba's seventh birthday, after making all the necessary preparations. She has decided to die, and no one can stop her. Esteban is wracked with pain as Clara dies, and the rest of the household is equally distraught. Only little Alba is calm, believing her grandmother's earlier explanations that death is "just a change" and nothing to fear or mourn. Clara dies with little Alba holding her hand.

Chapter 10 - The Epoch of Decline

This chapter opens from the perspective of Esteban, who tells us that he is almost ninety and still convinced that he is shrinking, although doctors think he is imagining it. When Clara died, he recalls, he was inconsolable, although he felt that the two of them were finally at peace with one another. He also understood that Clara had died simply because she had fulfilled her purpose on Earth, and had "escaped to another dimension." He lay with her on the bed one last time and prepared her for the funeral. Clara was buried along with Nívea's head, which had been long forgotten in the basement. He designed a mausoleum for himself with statues of Clara and Rosa, the two loves of his life. Esteban says that at first he wanted to die as soon as possible, but soon realized that "Clara the clearest" was still with him.

As the chapter's title suggests, Clara's death begins a period of decline in the Trueba family's history. Overnight, Esteban Trueba turns into a shrunken old man constantly wearing mourning clothes, and begins carrying Clara's false teeth in a little bag around his neck. The house and garden go to ruin, and there are no more visitors - human or otherwise. Only Clara's room remains intact, which is where the narrator found Clara's "notebooks that bore witness to life" and constructed the family's story from them out of pure fascination. Jaime continues helping the poor while Nícolas organizes the I.U.N., the Institute for Union with Nothingness, and teaches a growing number of disciples. When the press catches hold of the fact that the Senator's son is leading such an endeavor, they try to use it to smear Esteban Trueba's name. One day, Esteban finds Alba meditating with her head shaved like the rest of Nícolas's disciples. He marches over to the I.U.N., where he has thugs destroy all of the furniture. In response, Nícolas leads his followers to the gates of Congress, where they stage a peaceful protest culminating in his lying naked in the street. Esteban Trueba falls into a swoon that almost kills him. When he comes to, he sends Nícolas out of the country, although he provides him with enough money to live comfortably. Nícolas ends up continuing his mission in North America, where he becomes rich and gains wide respect for his spiritual endeavors.

Esteban Trueba enrolls Alba in a British school because he is convinced that she will have to make a living "like a man." Alba does not take easily to formal education, but manages to endure it for the ten years she attends the school. After Clara's death she becomes closer to Blanca, but emulates Clara by recording events in a notebook. After Esteban Trueba's mausoleum is complete, he enlists Jaime's help to steal Rosa the Beautiful's corpse so that he can bury it alongside Clara's.

Esteban Trueba gains great respect and also ridicule as the country's champion of conservatism and an enemy of Marxism. Pedro Tercero becomes a famous folk singer. Blanca and Pedro Tercero's relationship is limited to weekend visits, although they are each other's true loves. Alba is never told that Pedro Tercero is her real father even though they spend memorable times together - not even when she and Blanca bury Jean de Satigny's body. Esteban Trueba visits the Christopher Columbus brothel, where he again sleeps with Transito Soto. Afterwards, the prostitute consoles him while he weeps with grief for Clara.

Analysis

Alba's birth revives the Trueba family. Alba is not only born under the luckiest astrological conditions, but feet first, as though ready to "hit the ground running" in life. Indeed, she is a very gifted child and is given many different tools to deal with life's experiences by the various people living in "the big house on the corner." She is a perfect balance between her Uncle Jaime's academic contributions, her Uncle Nícolas's anti-materialism and endurance training, her grandfather Esteban's rare love, and most importantly, her grandmother Clara's teachings about the spiritual world. Ironically, Alba's mother is the person who plays the smallest part in raising her. In this way, Blanca breaks the generations-old tradition of developing the strongest possible bond between mother and daughter. In accordance with the novel's link between motherhood and spirituality, this is not surprising: Blanca is not very spiritual and, accordingly, not very motherly.

Chapter 9 highlights the contrast between two types of passion: love and hate. Esteban is more accustomed to hatred, but he cannot help but love little Alba. He places all the faith he saw dashed by his children in his young granddaughter. Esteban has a habit of injuring those closest to him, such as Clara and Blanca, yet he does not lay a hand on Alba. Even though Alba represents a new "dawn" for the Trueba family, she still cannot change or escape its pattern of mingling love with suffering. While Esteban Trueba does not visit any of his customary violence upon her, she becomes the target of Esteban García's revenge from an early age. As Alba explains later, Esteban García visits his hatred of Esteban Trueba upon Alba because of fate. Trueba raped Pancha García two generations earlier, unknowingly setting in motion Alba's own future pain, and Trueba's vicarious suffering.

Clara's death marks the Trueba family's slow descent into infamy and ruin. Clara is quite literally the family's "clear light," illuminating their futures and filling their lives with joy and excitement. Once her nurturing presence is gone, Esteban's destructive presence takes over, and thus begins the "epoch of decline." In this chapter, Allende takes a moment to highlight the contrast between the unlikely couple of Esteban and Clara. She uses each person's effect on plants to symbolize their effect on the people around them. When Esteban enters a room, the flowers and plants in it wither, whereas Clara makes them thrive. When she dies, so do the plants. If flowers represent not only people but also the joy and fullness of life, these things too disappear along with Clara. At the end of Chapter 10, we begin to see that Esteban is no exception: in Clara's absence, he begins to wither both literally and spiritually. He is convinced he is shrinking, and is unable to keep up his former, domineering persona. We see the latter of these two effects most clearly during Esteban's visit to Transito Soto. He is in what should be a powerful position, paying a woman to please him sexually, and yet he dissolves into a helpless boy who needs to be rocked at Transito's bosom.

True to her belief in the existence of other dimensions, Clara approaches her death calmly and without fear. She tells Alba that death is "just a change" and not to fear it. However, she will later reappear in spirit form to urge her granddaughter to cheat death and continue living. The way Esteban reacts to Clara's death highlights more clearly the essential difference between them. Whereas Clara views life and death as two parts of something larger, Esteban understands them in a conventional way. He makes his view evident by constructing the mausoleum with his two loves' likenesses sculpted from stone. Up to this point, Esteban has seen life and death as things, concrete and definite as the stone itself. The construction of the mausoleum another example of Esteban's materialism; he wants to be surrounded by opulence even in death, and even at the price of disrespecting Rosa by exhuming her corpse.

Despite his enduring materialism, Esteban finds himself becoming more spiritual in the wake of Clara's death. While he formerly considered the existence of the spiritual world nonsense, Esteban now believes that Clara's spirit remains nearby. Indeed, he even begins to see her spirit roaming the rooms of "the big house on the corner." Clara's spirit brings Esteban comfort. However, there is also a repentant element in his newfound spirituality. Of all the objects Clara left behind, Esteban chooses to wear her teeth around his neck. They are reminders of his former cruelty as much as they are reminders of her. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner wears the Albatross around his neck as a mark of his irreverence towards the spiritual world. Even after the Albatross drops into the sea, the Ancient Mariner still bears its weight symbolically - his error haunts him. Esteban wears Clara's teeth around his neck as if acknowledging his own errors. Just as the Ancient Mariner is never free of the memory of the Albatross, Esteban is never free of the memory of Clara. The essential difference is that Esteban considers Clara's haunting a blessing instead of a curse.

Despite his small spiritual awakening, Esteban Trueba remains a materialistic and practical man. For example, his need to protect his own career eclipses his love for Nícolas. Instead of negotiating with his son and trying to understand his choices, he discourages Nícolas until the latter tries to publicly shame him. Esteban is still selfish enough to send his own son into exile. However, as he did with Férula, he gives Nícolas enough money to live comfortably. In another gesture, Esteban Trueba puts Alba through a strict formal education. Even though such an education is not what Alba wants and not necessarily what is best for her, Esteban's intentions are good. He wants to make Alba strong, practical, and self-sufficient like he is, because he believes that these qualities are the keys to a good life. As he has in the past with Clara, Rosa, and Férula, Esteban shows what love he has for Nícolas and Alba in a material way.

Chapter 11 - The Awakening

When she is eighteen, Alba falls in love with a leftist law student named Miguel. She hides her identity as a Trueba from him, but boasts that she knows the leftist singer Pedro Tercero García. She ends up at his side in the heart of a leftist encampment at the university. Also leading the sit-in is Professor Sebastian Gomez, who fascinates Alba. He calls her Countess because of her surname, Satigny. When Alba is struck by an unusually strong menstrual flow accompanied by great pains, she is sent out of the encampment. She is met by a pistol-toting Esteban García, who is with the police force. He unmasks her as Esteban Trueba's granddaughter, causing Miguel to turn his back on her. Jaime finds Alba to be perfectly healthy, but she is haunted by memories of Esteban García from when he first molested her as a young girl and from her fourteenth birthday, when he forced himself on her again. She has a premonition that he will be waiting to torment her at every stage of life.

Miguel forgives Alba and the two become passionate lovers, romping secretly in the ruined basement of "the big house on the corner." As the country's next elections near and a catastrophic political atmosphere develops, Jaime moves out of his father's home and into the hospital. He is unable to reconcile his Socialist beliefs with his father's eternal conservatism or with the extremist views of Alba's Miguel, whom he has not met. One night, Alba asks Jaime to accompany her to help Miguel's sister, who is very ill. Jaime is shocked to find that this is the same Miguel he knew as a little boy, and whose sister is Amanda. Amanda is now emaciated and has countless infected punctures in her arms and thighs from injecting narcotics. Jaime is tortured by the sight of his tormented old love, and declares that she must be hospitalized for detoxification.

Chapter 12 - The Conspiracy

In a massive political upset, the Socialists win the presidency. Food and supply shortages begin, and people find themselves standing in endless lines to buy provisions. Pedro Tercero García and Blanca's relationship deteriorates, and they part angrily. Pedro Tercero takes a job with the government, and Blanca starts an underground network of supplies. Esteban Trueba stores weapons in the house, which Alba and Jaime steal and bury in the mountains. Meanwhile Amanda, having overcome her drug addiction, falls in love with Jaime, but he no longer returns the sentiment.

When Esteban Trueba finds out that Tres Marías is being taken away from him, he grabs a machine gun and drives to the property, where he is taken hostage by his former servants. The situation becomes a national scandal, and Blanca takes Alba to Pedro Tercero's office to ask for help. There Alba finally discovers her father's identity. They drive to Tres Marías, where Pedro Tercero rescues his former patrón, who cut off his fingers so many years before. One day, Luisa Mora, the last of the Mora sisters, visits Esteban. The spirit of Clara accompanies her. Luisa tells Esteban that a bloodbath of unprecedented scale will ensue in the country. He will be victorious, but miserable. Then she gives Alba a message from Clara: death is following Alba, and she best cross the ocean to escape it. Esteban is furious and sends Luisa away, but will recall her prediction about a year later, when Alba is taken away in the middle of the night.

Analysis

Until Chapters 11 and 12, the characters seem to be more or less in control over the events in their lives. When the political atmosphere in the country comes to a head, even Esteban Trueba, the most controlling character of all, becomes a victim to chance and the actions of others. Even he is no longer able to ignore the fact that ruin lies ahead. It is at this point in the novel that the family's history becomes inseparable from the country's. As the novel nears completion, the reader can view the characters' stories with a wider perspective. Instead of seeing the characters as individuals, we see the way they fit into the larger sphere of existence.

The novel's growing aura of inevitability stems from the fact that several relationships are now coming full-circle. Alba brings Jaime and Amanda together again, but this time it is Amanda who falls in love with Jaime. Having awaited her affection so long, Jaime is ironically no longer interested in being with her. He sees her as a patient: someone to rescue, but not someone to love. In another ironic twist, Esteban Trueba finds himself being rescued by the man he despises most, Pedro Tercero García. He later saves the fugitive singer, whom he once came close to murdering, and arranges his escape to Canada with Blanca. As the title of Chapter 11 suggests, the characters begin to awaken to the fact that as the country becomes increasingly dangerous and divided, they must put aside their differences and work together in order to survive.

Despite Esteban Trueba's spiritual awakening in Chapter 10, he returns to his practical, materialistic ways. Even though Clara's spirit accompanies Luisa Mora on her visit to Esteban, he refuses to heed her warnings. As we see, Esteban's physical belongings are not enough to protect him or Alba once the Terror begins. In fact, before her kidnapping, even Alba undermines Esteban Trueba by hiding fugitives within his four walls. Still, as long as Esteban feels as though he has control over his property and his titles, he allows himself to enjoy the illusion of safety.

Alba emerges as Allende's vehicle for exploring the issue of identity. Alba is biologically a García/Trueba, legally a Satigny, and raised as a Trueba. However, she must hide her identity as a Trueba from her leftist friends, especially Miguel. When they discover that she is the granddaughter of the enemy, even though she has allied herself with them, they turn their backs on her. In Chapter 12, Esteban García also unfairly punishes Alba for being a Trueba, simply because he feels that he has been robbed of the title. As we see in the next two chapters, his thirst for revenge is so overwhelming that it almost destroys Alba. Even though in her own lifetime, Alba has done nothing to deserve hatred and violence, she is a constant target. She is the family martyr, paying for the sins of the generations before her.

Chapter 13 - The Terror

When the coup occurs, Jaime is with the President, who summoned him to his palace. After a bombing raid destroys the palace, soldiers swarm the premises, beating and seizing everyone in sight. Jaime is taken to a chamber where men are being interrogated and tortured. When he refuses to state publicly that the President committed suicide, he is tortured and taken to a holding area with other political prisoners where they are shot and their bodies are dynamited. Meanwhile, unaware of his son's demise, Esteban Trueba celebrates his party's victory with champagne.

No one is allowed to leave the house because of a curfew. Esteban finds the new government disorganized and shaky, and worries that things are not turning out as planned. He also learns of Jaime's death. Alba works hard to contribute all she can to helping the persecuted. Slowly, the country is cleaned up and the fascists begin repressive measures, including forbidding "revolutionary" words or propaganda and altering the country's maps and historical records to their liking. Even Esteban Trueba thinks they are going too far. The middle class is rolling in luxury at first, but soon its members find themselves unemployed and all mourning at least one family member.

In the early days of the coup, Esteban Trueba regains Tres Marías legally, and then secures it from the peasants by force. He banishes them all from the property. Soon after, the Poet dies. He was the most famous icon of the revolution, and was often a guest at "the big house on the corner" during Alba's youth despite his ideological differences with Esteban Trueba. The Senator and Alba accompany his coffin. Soon it becomes clear that the military is forming its own destructive dictatorship instead of handing power over to the right as planned. Esteban Trueba realizes he has made a mistake and weeps for his country. All the while, Blanca has been hiding Pedro Tercero in a room of the house. She begs her father to save him. Esteban Trueba secures Pedro Tercero and Blanca's escape to Canada, and is finally reconciled with them both.

Alba hides fugitives in the house, unbeknownst to Esteban Trueba. One day Miguel arrives, and she decides to help him. She tells him about her grandfather's arms, which she and Jaime hid in the desert, and they organize a trip to recover them. She also sells the luxuries in the house until her grandfather forbids her from continuing to do so. One night, the police storm the house. They burn all the family's remaining belongings in a huge bonfire and then kidnap Alba. They take her to Esteban García.

Chapter 14 - The Hour of Truth

Alba is blindfolded nearly the entire time she spends in captivity. When she refuses to tell Esteban García where Miguel is, she is beaten, raped, and tortured. One person who helps her through her struggle is Ana Diaz, a former student who had mistrusted her during the university encampment. The women buoy each other's spirits as much as possible. Alba is eventually thrown in "the doghouse," a terrible isolation chamber where she resolves to die. Then the spirit of Clara appears and encourages her not only to survive, but to keep herself alive by writing in her memory. In the darkness, Alba busies herself with this task and overcomes her agony.

Esteban Trueba goes to the Christopher Columbus to visit Transito Soto. She is now a rich woman, and he is a shriveled old man. The place is no longer a brothel, because according to Transito, a new atmosphere of free love and safe sex has made prostitution all but obsolete. The place has been transformed into a special hotel for romantic getaways, and has a good relationship with the government. Esteban Trueba begs Transito Soto to use her political connections to find Alba. He tells her everything about his tormented existence, including the arrival of three human fingers - supposedly Alba's - in his mailbox. Two days later, Transito calls Esteban Trueba to tell him she has found Alba.

Epilogue

The epilogue is told in Alba's voice. Suddenly it is clear that she has been narrating the story all along. She tells us that Esteban Trueba died the night before, and then describes how she returned to "the big house on the corner" after spending time in the concentration camp and finally being released. When she returned, she discovered that Miguel had formed an unlikely alliance with her grandfather in order to rescue her; it was even Miguel's idea for the Senator to visit Transito Soto. Esteban and Alba fixed up the house together, and he decided that they should record the family's history on paper. He wrote a number of pages in his own hand, as we have read, and then Alba took over. As he died, Clara appeared beside him in all her previous glory, and he died happy, whispering her name.

Alba postulates that fate caused her suffering in the "doghouse." She suffered rape at the hands of Esteban García, whose grandmother Esteban Trueba had raped generations before. She supposes that this story of "sorrow, blood, and love" will continue forever, and that only writing helps us see the lives of connecting generations with this kind of perspective and clarity. Alba tells us she is pregnant with a child, perhaps the product of her numerous rapes, or perhaps Miguel's child. It does not matter to Alba, who says that regardless of the father's identity, the baby is "her own daughter." Alba leaves us with the image of Clara's notebooks at her feet, the very notebooks that she has been using to piece together the story. The first of them begins just as the novel does, with the words: "Barrabas came to us by sea..."

Analysis

As much as the last chapters are about destruction, they are also about reconciliation. The destruction itself is on an unprecedented scale, culminating in Jaime's especially violent death. His murder gives a clear picture of violence's senselessness; he has devoted his life to mending others, but is literally blown to pieces to pay for the actions of others. Whereas Alba is tortured for being Esteban Trueba's granddaughter, Jaime is tortured and killed for going against his father's beliefs. Esteban and Jaime's experiences of the Terror are completely opposite. Allende embodies this difference in a single moment, in the midst of the Terror: "Senator Trueba opened a bottle of French champagne to celebrate the overthrow of the regime that he had fought against so ferociously, never suspecting that at that very moment his son Jaime's testicles were being burned by an imported cigarette." Despite the fact that he is at the center of the country's political strife, Esteban is oblivious to the suffering around him because he is too busy reveling in his own sense of victory and security. Although he does not pay heed to Jaime's activities, Alba's experience finally brings Esteban around. Only when her life is in danger does he feel the full weight of the Terror.

While lives, property, and security are being destroyed, many relationships are also being reconciled. Foremost is the relationship between Esteban Trueba and Pedro Tercero García. Once the men have saved one another, they can no longer be enemies. Before, they stood on opposite sides of a clear political rift. Now, in the face of a third, unpredictable, and extremist government, they can be allies. They can also see that they both have Blanca's best interests at heart, and so they part ways for the last time in peace. Another reconciliation occurs in the concentration camp. Alba comes together with Ana Diaz, a student and co-protester from the university who mistrusted her during the encampment. The women help keep up each other's will to live. Transito Soto finally repays Esteban for loaning her fifty pesos so many years before by finding Alba. The novel's final reconciliation is between Clara and Esteban. Now that Clara is dead and Esteban is close to death, their souls can finally stop struggling.

Allende underscores the power of writing through Alba's experience in the "doghouse." Alba is able to keep herself alive and relatively sane by writing even though she has no paper - the writing takes place entirely in her mind. She creates an invisible cohort of the people she once knew to keep her company in the most wretched of situations. At the novel's end we realize that it is Alba herself who has been narrating the story, who has been piecing it together from Clara's "notebooks that bore witness to life." She has the gift of being able to view her family's history and future from a wide and enlightened perspective.

It is no coincidence that Alba's name means "dawn." She rings in a new era for the Truebas, hopefully one that will see them return from their lowest point to a newfound glory. This hope is carried in Alba's unborn child, whom she already knows is a daughter. Like the women before her, she loves her daughter unconditionally from the moment conception. Alba's unborn girl is very likely the product of one of her numerous rapes in the concentration camp, and may even be the daughter of the horrible Esteban García, but her daughter's paternal origins are of no concern to Alba, who knows that the power in her family lies in the maternal line.

In an earlier chapter, Allende writes that Alba's name supposedly ended the Trueba women's tradition of naming. This was because when Blanca named Alba, she took her name from the end of a list of words in the dictionary referring to light and purity. Alba later lamented having no synonym left to name her daughter. However, in the epilogue we realize that Alba's powers of naming are not limited by something as simple as the dictionary. This is because she has immense creative power. She realizes the infinity of names, words, and possibilities for life. She knows that where there is no light, she must create it, where there is no hope, she must summon it, and when existing words are insufficient, she must make new ones. Alba is the harbinger of her family's return to a state of illumination and joy, the sort that reigned during Clara's heyday. She harnesses the power of language to ensure that the Trueba family's tale survives, and the power of love and motherhood to ensure that the story continues.

• Biography of Isabel Allende
• About The House of the Spirits
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Glossary of Terms
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1-2
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 3-4
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 5-6
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 7-8
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 9-10
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 11-12
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 13-14 and Epilogue
• Related Links on The House of the Spirits
• Suggested Essay Questions
• The Military Coup of 1973-1975
• Author of ClassicNote and Sources
• Purchase The House of the Spirits and Other Works
• Test Yourself! Quiz 1
• Test Yourself! Quiz 2
• Test Yourself! Quiz 3
• Test Yourself! Quiz 4
• Essays on The House of the Spirits
• Message Board on The House of the Spirits