preview

The Cyclical Nature of Life as Demonstrated in the Novel the House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Decent Essays

Life is cyclical. It has no beginning, no end, just a long list of causes and effects, repeating patterns and cycles as it stretches through time. Isabel Allende, in the novel The House of the Spirits demonstrates how history repeats itself and that everything is connected through the repetition of events, the inter-generational storyline and the ending of cycles.
Throughout the novel, events, motifs, and characteristics are mirrored, bringing attention to the cyclic nature of the novel, as well as connecting characters and ideas together. Rosa and Alba’s green hair, for example, is a seemingly minor trait that is shared between two very different characters. Alba is”the only one who had inherited something from Rosa...”p296 While …show more content…

Names can say much about the character and Allende uses this well, using them as a device in the novel to explore the relations between the characters with out to much explaining. These cycles and connections are made possible by Allende’s long, inter-generational storyline as the past, the present and the future all mix into one, letting us see a small part of a long story that happened and continues to happen. We do not start at the beginning of the story, but somewhere in the middle, where life grows and ends, and we see a merging of the past, present and future though the narration of Alba as she talk about “50 years later...” p.1which continues on with the heavy foreshadowing through the book, not only by the psychic characters, who show this connection in the world of the story, but also by the narrators, Esteban and Alba who show the connection through their writing, that there is no past, present or future, everything “happens simultaneously”p.432. This view allows us to see “the relationships between events”, we can see what led people to do what they do, the importance of events between seemingly random characters, why they are who they are, and all of the consequences of their actions. The book itself bears

Get Access