House of the Spirits | Literature as Survival: Allende's The House of the Spirits
In the following article, Earle discusses the tradition of Latin American literature as demonstrated in Allende's House of the Spirits.
The story began urgently, if unpretentiously, after a long-distance telephone call from Santiago de Chile to Caracas. Isabel Allende's grandfather, in his ninety-ninth year, was about to die. More precisely, he'd decided his time had come. Despite opposing ideologies, their family relationship had been close; and now, although from the remote region he was about to enter she couldn't expect a reply, she sat down to write him a long letter. Her purpose was to keep him living, in conformity with his own idea of immortality. "My grandfather theorized that death didn't really exist. Oblivion...
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