The House of the Spirits

There are numerous examples of the supernatural in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. This study will consider five such supernatural occurrences and will examine the effect that such an otherworldly tendency on the part of the characters and the author has on the overall meaning and impact of the novel. The South American novel has a tradition of magical realism, and Allende's novel is in that tradition. Like other magical realist authors, Allende uses the supernatural event---almost always intimately related to a character in the book---as a bridge between the everyday world and the world of spirits. The supernatural serves as a connector between the old and the new, the common and the strange, the known and the unknown. It gives both meaning and mystery to the lives of the people in the novel. The people in the novel are generally poor, generally religious, and generally at the mercy of a social, political and economic system which abuses and exploits them. The supernatural gives them the belief that there is something special about their lives which gives them hope in both this world and the next.

The supernatural in this novel also serves as the source of much humor, both ironic and blatant. It starkly sets itself against the mundane, especially when the people witnessing it are concerned with seemingly petty matters in the face of such strange mystery. In other words, the supernatural is in part seen as a part of life, but it is also seen as something which

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and Clara is "completely oblivious to the warnings of the spirits that gestured desperately at her from the curtains" (Allende 90). The murder of the great dog Barrabas was occurring at that very moment, but so swept up in the festivities is Clara that she is temporarily beyond the reach of the supernatural warning being sent her way. In a number of instances, the supernatural has little if any effect on the people it touches. For example, Clara predicts that a man was going to cheat her father in a business deal, but her father ignores the prediction and is indeed swindled. The suggestion here seems to be that human beings will usually do what they are going to do, supernatural intervention or not. These instances of the supernatural add to the meaning and impact of the novel because they are finally a part of the author's celebration of the mystery and abundance of natural, spiritual and human life. She loves her characters, her country, the turbulence, joy and even the suffering of her culture. The message of the supernatural in this regard is finally not merely a matter of entertainment but of hope and assurance. When Clara appears to Alba it is to encourage her "not to die, since death came anyway, but to survive, which w

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