Death,+Decay+and+Corruption

=Death, Decay and Corruption= Death and decay is closely related with the text because the Del Valle family and the Trueba family experience a lot of gruesome deaths.

__Gothic imagery__
 * The idea of death and decay is brought about by gothic imagery. Dark is repeated numerous times throughout the text.
 * It is quite ironic that the author associates death and decay with the church because the church should ideally be a happy place with contented religious people. Probably the influence of the “zealous” priest who was always negative is rubbing off on the church. He always talked about “the sins of the flesh” which relates to the idea of **moral** decay.
 * “Terrifying dark bundles … influenza pale expression… someone long dead, its rubies, pearls and emeralds…aristocrat” starts us off on the dark death and decay imagery. They describe saints and since they are dead the imagery is quite apt. (the point that you are making here is unclear)
 * There is irony in the fact that Clara is described with dark imagery like gothic imagery. Any gothic thing generally dealt with death and the past but it is often associated with Clara who actually can see future and deals with the future. This irony is to highlight the eccentricity of Clara and in general the Del Valle family who all have an unusual trait. (how??? -the point that you are making here is unclear)

__Rosa's Death__
 * The first death is of Rosa.
 * The corruption of the political scenario is synonymous with the violation of the pure Rosa by the assistant.

__Corruption__
 * This is the first time poison had been resorted to. “In those days political assassinations were unknown” and “poison was a method only whores and fishwives would resort to”. This suggested that the politicians had been corrupted by their desire for power; **they would stoop to any level**.
 * Necrophilia- the assistant has a perverse desires; he looks at the dead Rosa with evident lust. He caresses her and touches her everywhere .(evidence??) These corrupted thoughts are a symbol of the political corruption/strife that occurs later on in the novel. A victim of the political strife Alba also had green hair just like Rosa and it is significant that Alba is victimized by the chaotic scenario. Thus we see that the corrupted view of the assistant is like a symbol for the political strife and its corruption.
 * The death of Rosa was symbolic of the death of the innocence. That is why the corruption of the political scenario is comparable to Rosa’s death. Rosa’s death foreshadows and sets the scene for violence in the novel. The violation of the peasants in Chapters 2 and 3 is paralleled with Rosa's violation.

// Death of Barrabas: // Barrabas is a character that dies in the third chapter, Clara the Clairvoyant, in the book The House of Spirits.Barrabas is a ‘creature’ that is like Clara’s “sheep” sized dog, who doesn’t seem to stop growing until he dies. When Clara goes into her phase of “muteness”, her main companion is Barrabas. Uncle Marcos sent him after his death, and Clara, unlike the rest of the house, wanted to keep him claiming, “If you take him away, I’ll stop breathing”. Barrabas is Clara’s companion through her ‘muteness’, and through different instances in the book, “Barrabas accompanied the child day and night” (page 77). We also saw that his personality was as “distracted” (78) as Clara, and they accompanied each other on different escapades. Barrabas died a “staggering” death (91), when he had a “butcher’s knife stuck in his back…bleeding to death like an ox”. He showed up at Clara’s and Esteban Trueba’s wedding, “dying in not any hurry”, and on page 91, the love shown between Clara and Barrabas evokes great sympathy in the reader. We see the loyalty and true friendliness in his character, when he comes and “laid his huge, millennial animal head in her lap, and looked up at her with lovesick eyes”, “staggering” with a knife in his back, just to see Clara on her wedding day and before he dies. The significance of having him die, on her wedding day, could possibly be because she was finally moving on to be in the care of someone else, and his job was over, taking care of her, and “following” her. (page 78) Barrabas plays a significant role in determining Clara’s character. We see that he died on her wedding day, possibly to hand her over to Esteban Trueba, but we see that after Barrabas dies, we never see Clara that close to anyone else in the novel, especially Esteban Trueba. Therefore the significance of Barrabas’s death could be to show the ending of a true friendship, a bond that will never again be present again in Clara’s life. The closest she seems to get to that relationship, is with Blanca.

// Death and Decay of Dona Ester: // Dona Ester is Ferula and Esteban Trueba’s mother. She has arthritis, which has been troubling her since she was in her 30’s. Firstly, Allende describes the decay of Dona Ester vividly. But before the decay of Dona Ester is described, we see the decay of her house. As soon as Esteban opened the door, the house was “dark”. (85), there was a “odor” of “medicine” and “sweat, dampness”, and finally, “decomposing flesh”. Allende blatantly and explicitly describes the house to create a dark, morbid and foreboding tone to prepare the reader for something bad which is about to happen.Also, since the house is in this kind of condition, the reader can foreshadow the possible state of Dona Ester with her “decomposing flesh”.Allende then goes on to describe the “bed on which his father died” which was carved in “black wood” and had a “canopy of angels”. The “black” wood has a dark connotation, and can help foreshadow something bad, along with the “angels” which could possibly signify death. Allende describes Dona Ester as “a block of solid flesh” and “surprisingly alive” (85). Allende describes how the house along with Dona Ester’s state had decayed over time, which in general foreshadows something morbid. Dona Ester dies when Esteban Trueba has gone to the del Valle family to “inquire if they might still have an unmarried daughter”, she “died quietly in her bed of pain.” Esteban and Ferula found their “mother dead in bad She was smiling peacefully”. She had told Esteban that “get married and settle down so I can die in peace”. Now that Esteban finally found a “bride”, his mother died “smiling peacefully” therefore she could have possibly died after she got what she wanted.

// Death of Uncle Marcos: // Uncle Marcos was a “honey-voiced man dressed in black, with a frock coat and a hat that was too big for him”. He was an eccentric character who had been “buried once before”, and travelled around the world. He was strange and tried many different things such as “alchemy experiments in the kitchen”, and he built a “bird of prehistoric dimensions” and attempted to fly. His death shows how the society at that time could not accept such a maverick character. His character went against the formal norms of society and his death possibly foreshadows the “fate of the del Valle family”, as many of them were nearly as peculiar as he was.