In the novel 'The House of the Spirits' by Isabel Allende the epilogue is a conclusion to all that has happening in the novel.

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Commentary – House of the Spirits: Epilogue                Nathalie Hopchet

In the novel ‘The House of the Spirits’ by Isabel Allende the epilogue is a conclusion to all that has happening in the novel. In demonstrates the overall themes of recurring cycles throughout the lives of the characters, and also of the importance of the past and memories. The cycles run throughout the book, but in the epilogue we see how they are beginning to be broken and new cycles are being formed. The tone of the final chapter is both hopeful and cheerful at the beginning, and melancholic almost to depression by the end. The symbol of the old house on the corner is powerfully portrayed in this final chapter, representing both Clara’s presence and spirituality, but also Esteban’s fading wealth and power. Magical realism is used to help distort the distinction between reality and fiction. Finally we see the growth of the central character of this chapter, and the narrators of the book, Alba and Esteban.

In the epilogue of the novel, Alba has returned from being held in a concentration camp. She and her grandfather Esteban Trueba restore the old house on the corner. Esteban dies peacefully in Alba’s arms Alba is revealed to be pregnant  and she begins to read her grandmother Clara’s diaries and her mother Blanca’s letters and begin to piece together the story the was just told.

The one of the main themes in the epilogue, and in the entire novel is that of cycles, history repeating itself and fate. Alba has become pregnant, and is renewing the cycle by continuing life, making the end of the story the beginning of another one, the tale of her daughter. It also tells how the novel was written, as it is now revealed that Alba is the unknown narrator telling the story in the third person. This relates the end of the novel back to the start. Another connection between the finish and start of the novel is that at the last paragraph states, ‘Clara wrote them so they would help me now to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own. The first is an ordinary school copybook with twenty pages, written in a child’s delicate calligraphy. It begins like this: Barrabas came to us by sea…’ while on the first page is begins ‘Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own.’ This completes the cycle of the novel, by coming full circle back to the beginning.

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However, although Alba is continuing the cycles, she is also breaking them. The most important cycle she is stopping is the cycle of revenge that is ongoing through the book. Even though she would like to get even with Esteban Garcia for raping and torturing her, she realizes that he only did it to get revenge for what her grandfather did to his grandmother. Alba states ‘The day my grandfather tumbled his grandmother, Pancha Garcia, among the rushes of the riverbank, he added another link to the chain of events that had to complete itself. Afterward the grandson of ...

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