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English 3 IB/ HN, Period 8

Kober

17 November 2010

Analysis of Allende’s Use of Animals to Represent Women in The House of the Spirits

           In The House of the Spirits, author Isabel Allende illustrates the love, meekness, fierceness, spirit, and magic of her female characters by comparing them to animals. She uses creatures to transcend the power of words and plant an image in the reader’s mind, not just of a girl, but a seal, snake, or bird. Allende’s use of animal imagery helps the reader understand and empathize with the woman in question. She classifies her characters based on their most important personality traits and actions.

            Allende foreshadows Blanca Trueba’s fate by using a horse. Blanca’s primary purpose to further the plot in The House of the Spirits is to fall in love with Pedro Tercero and become pregnant with his child, Alba. Blanca’s future intimacy with Pedro is foreshadowed by a sunrise she sees as she is walking to meet him. The imagery of “rays of light... cutting the peaks of the cordillera like thrusts of a saber,” (Allende l45) is a simile for Blanca’s sexual awakening. This symbolism is fortified when she finds Pedro and he shows her “a beautiful bay mare in the process of giving birth alone on the hillside.” (149) The image gives Blanca hope, foreshadowing that motherhood is both her destiny and her delight. Blanca names her daughter Alba, the Spanish word for sun. This is foreshadowed when the mother “neighs a greeting to the morning sun” (149).

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            Alba is again compared to an animal later in her life. In this instance, Allende uses animals to characterize the empathy and fortitude of women. Alba and Ana Díaz are captiveS in a torture camp. There, “Ana Díaz helped her to resist while they were together” (464). The girls find strength in solidarity and comfort each other. Alba realized that “she needed Ana Díaz” (466) to survive the terrible conditions of the prison camp. Although they were independently weak, together the women felt stronger. Their friendship would ultimately sustain Alba. Allende foreshadows this when she describes how “dawn found ...

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