99 pages • 3 hours read
Isabel AllendeThe House of the Spirits
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 13-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Terror”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to sexual assault and graphic violence
Jaime is summoned to the presidential palace, where the President informs him that the navy has revolted. Jaime calls Alba and asks her to stay home and to inform Amanda. Over the course of the day the military takes over, and the guardsmen at the palace abandon their posts to join their commander. The President refuses an offer from the leader of the coup to escape the country with his family, saying, “The people put me here and the only way I’ll leave is dead” (409). Airplanes bomb the palace, leaving it in ruins and killing and wounding many in the process. Eventually an officer asks the people remaining there to surrender and exit the building; the President goes last and is never seen alive again.
The soldiers capture and beat Jaime. At the barracks where he is held, a soldier whose mother Jaime treated is kind to him. However, his captors eventually leave him to starve for days alongside the rest of the prisoners; they then shoot the prisoners, Jaime included, dynamiting their bodies to remove all evidence.
Esteban celebrates the coup, unaware of what is happening to Jaime. Meanwhile, Alba worriedly tries to contact her loved ones—Miguel, Jaime, Pedro Tercero, and Amanda, among others. Miguel eventually contacts her and tells her not to look for him and to destroy all evidence of their relationship. The military imposes a two-day curfew, after which people flock to the shops to find that all manner of produce has miraculously appeared. The President is said to have committed suicide, but no one believes this.
Esteban is surprised that he has not been invited to form the new government. A few days after the coup, he goes to the ministry of defense to extend his cooperation. However, they receive him with disrespect, do not give him a chance to enquire about Jaime, and seize his car (on account of congressional privileges being suspended). Another military man recognizes Esteban and courteously drops him off back home; the soldier expresses discomfort over the growing chaos following the coup.
Two weeks later, the soldier who was kind to Jaime arrives to inform the Truebas about Jaime’s death. Esteban does not believe him until months later, when Jaime appears before him as a bloody apparition. Similarly, he does not believe in the tyranny of the military regime for a long time. Alba, having inherited Clara’s intuition, recognizes the true nature of the new dictator long before he displays his megalomania. She begins to secretly help those wanted by the new government to secure asylum. Amanda also puts her in touch with priests who are organizing soup kitchens for children, and Alba begins to help the priests with supplies, eventually winning Blanca’s cooperation as well. Esteban initially insists the widespread poverty is a communist lie; however, when people start turning up everywhere begging for food, he increases Blanca’s household allowance so that she can provide the needy with hot food.
The military imposes a dictatorship and carries out a campaign to alter all history and ideology in opposition to the new regime. The upper middle class eventually comes to accept the military regime, understanding that they themselves hold economic power even if the military has ultimate rule. Landowners regain what they lost in the agrarian reform, and Esteban returns to Tres Marías to avenge himself on all the peasants who revolted. He destroys their homes and livestock before turning them off his property. Later that night, he regrets the harshness of his actions, and he puts out word the next day that he will take his tenants back if they agree to certain conditions. Having dispersed far and wide, none return, and Esteban makes his way back to the city feeling disgusted with himself.
The Poet passes away, his death hastened by a combination of illness and the heartbreak of the events taking place in the country. Alba and Esteban attend his wake, the latter out of memory of having hosted the Poet at the house on numerous occasions. The Poet’s funeral turns into an emotionally charged event with attendees shouting slogans for the Poet and the President and reciting the Poet’s most revolutionary verses. The government then promptly bans any mourning for the Poet.
As months pass, it becomes clear even to Esteban that the military does not intend to hand over the government to the right-wing political parties but rather to keep power for itself. One night he admits to Blanca and Alba that he was wrong to seek to overthrow the left this way; Blanca than confides in him that she has been hiding Pedro Tercero in one of the house’s back rooms. Esteban arranges for both Blanca and Pedro Tercero to flee the country, and two days later Alba and Esteban bid a teary goodbye to Blanca and Pedro Tercero. The couple settles in Canada, where Pedro Tercero continues composing revolutionary music and Blanca finds success making and selling her crèches. The couple are finally happy, but Esteban never sees Blanca again.
Miguel arrives at the house one day and Alba is overjoyed. He has joined the guerrillas as he originally planned. Alba tells Miguel about Esteban’s stash of weapons and takes him to the place where she and Jaime have hidden their loot. Miguel tells Alba it will be a while before they meet again, as it is too dangerous for now.
Alba begins to sell the house’s furniture to aid the priests’ charity. She also begins to use the various rooms in the house to hide people who need a couple nights of shelter before fleeing the country. However, the political police have the house under surveillance, and one night they break in and enter. Esteban is violently dragged out of bed, the house is ransacked, Jaime’s books are set on fire, and Alba is taken away. The police blindfold, beat, and molest her before depositing her in the custody of García, who is now a colonel.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Hour of Truth”
Alba is bound and blindfolded for a day before she meets García once again. García questions Alba about Miguel’s whereabouts, and when she refuses to cooperate, his men beat and torture her. This process repeats over several days; the third time, she is stripped naked and subjected to electric shocks. Alba loses consciousness, and when she wakes up she finds herself in a cell with her old university friend Ana Díaz.
Although there are almost 200 prisoners and García is very busy, he sees Alba every day; he alternately pretends to be her friend and rapes and tortures her with “unbridled violence.” Alba realizes that he is exacting revenge on her for generations of insult and pain, beginning with Esteban and Pancha García. Ana, who has also undergone all manner of torture, helps keep Alba’s spirits high; Alba in turn comforts her when she loses a child to miscarriage because of the beatings she endures. Alba begins to empathize with the plight of the other prisoners as well.
García has Alba thrown into the “doghouse”—a sealed single cell. Alba almost loses her will to live until Clara appears before her and urges her to stay alive; she encourages Alba to write in her mind, and Alba devises a code that allows her to mentally take notes and remember the different events and stories of her life. When Alba is finally released from the cell, she does not recognize García: “She [is] beyond his power” (461).
Esteban narrates how, weeks later, he goes to see Tránsito Soto at the Christopher Colombus. She has transformed the former brothel into a hotel where lovers meet in secret; it is doing extremely well, and Tránsito Soto is a wealthy woman with substantial connections in the current government. Esteban unburdens himself to Tránsito Soto, telling her that Alba is the only important person left in his life. He has spent weeks searching for her, but none of his connections, including General Hurtado, have helped; he begs Tránsito Soto to help him find Alba before she is cut up into small pieces—he has already received three amputated fingers in the mail that “bring[] back memories, but memories that have nothing to do with Alba” (468). Tránsito Soto repays the debt she owes Esteban from 50 years ago: Two days later, she calls him with news of Alba’s location.
Epilogue Summary
Alba narrates how her grandfather passed away peacefully in his bed the previous night, avoiding Férula’s curse. His body lies on the “blue sailboat” in Clara’s room while Alba writes at her desk.
Alba then jumps back in time, recounting her return to the house: She arrives on a winter morning in a horse-drawn cart. Esteban and she embrace, and he cries at the sight of Alba’s hand. He wants Alba to leave the country for her safety, but she refuses; he asks if this is because of Miguel, surprising Alba. Esteban tells her that Miguel turned up at the house a week after her arrest. The two men united in their common goal to find Alba; it was Miguel’s idea to visit Tránsito Soto for help. When Esteban offered to send Miguel safely overseas and the latter refused, he realized that Alba too would never leave.
Alba tells Esteban the details of her arrest. After her fingers were chopped off her hand became infected and she developed a fever, so she was moved to a hospital. A kind nurse, Rojas, took care of her; he also told Alba about Amanda’s fate. The police arrested Amanda around the same time as Alba; fulfilling the promise she had made to her brother many years ago, Amanda died under torture, refusing to inform on Miguel. After Alba healed she was not taken back to García but instead to a concentration camp for women. The women at the camp came together as a community and took care of Alba. Ana was also at the camp and found Alba a notebook to write in; when Alba showed Ana her mutilated right hand, Ana encouraged her to write with her left.
A few days later soldiers removed Alba from the camp. She was blindfolded and terrified, but one of the soldiers gave her candy and reassured her she would be reunited with family soon. The soldiers left Alba in a garbage dump, telling her not to move till curfew broke at sunrise; however, a young boy found her in the middle of the night, and Alba followed him. He led her to a dilapidated hut where an old woman greeted her and took her in. They spent all night talking; Alba told the old woman she was running a great risk by helping her, but the old woman just smiled: “It was then she understood that the days of Colonel García and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women” (477). The next morning, the old woman arranged for a friend to take Alba home in his cart.
After her return, Alba and Esteban clean and repair the house. He also gives her the idea to write this story so she can carry her roots with her whenever she goes. Together they dig up old photo albums and Clara’s notebooks to aid her writing; Esteban also contributes some pages. When he feels he has said all he needs to, he lies down in bed and dies peacefully with Clara’s name on his lips.
Although Alba wanted revenge on García when she was in the doghouse, she now feels her hatred starting to ebb. She wonders whether everything that happens is fortuitous and connected, reflecting on the cyclical nature of her grandfather raping Pancha García and Pancha’s grandson doing the same to Alba years later. The time spent piecing together this story from memory and Clara’s records has given Alba a sense that life is too brief for anyone to see the larger picture or the relationships between and consequences of different events. Alba chooses to break the cycle of vengeance by letting go of her hatred for García. She is pregnant and does not know if the child is Miguel’s or a result of rape; however, she chooses to write this story and wait for Miguel, her unborn daughter, and better times. She does this with the help of Clara’s notebooks, the first of which begins with the line “Barrabás came to us by sea…” (481).
Chapter 13-Epilogue Analysis
In these final chapters, the political and personal intersect for the Trueba household. Mirroring events that took place in Chile, the military stages a coup and the Socialist government falls, with the President rumored to have killed himself. Jaime’s ties to the President enmesh him in the chaos and lead to a gruesome death. Early in the book, the narrator talks about vengeance following the del Valles for generations, so it is significant that Jaime adopts his mother’s surname as Esteban gains political success. Although he is not a daughter, Jaime is a del Valle in name, and tragedy strikes him too.
Esteban initially celebrates the coup; in keeping with Luisa Mora’s prediction, he is on the winning side, but it brings him suffering and loneliness. It eventually becomes evident to Esteban that the military has no intention of relinquishing power. This is one of many hard lessons he has to learn, and it significantly contributes to the character development Esteban undergoes in these final chapters. After denying the existence of poverty as communist rumors, he gives Blanca a larger household allowance to ensure that there is enough hot food at home to give away to the needy. Although he initially avenges himself upon the tenants when he regains Tres Marías, he quickly feels disgusted with himself and attempts to make amends. As the atrocities continue, Esteban admits out loud to Blanca and Clara that he made a mistake. It is this admission that finally allows him to reconcile with Blanca, even though they then part ways forever—she confides in her father that she has been hiding Pedro Tercero in the house, and in an echo of the latter helping to free Esteban from Tres Marías, Esteban organizes safe passage to Canada for his daughter and her lover.
The final chapters see multiple other connections and patterns coming together, most prominently when Alba becomes García’s prisoner. Now a colonel—a post made possible by Esteban’s own recommendation many years ago—García is in a position of power. He uses his position to exact revenge on Alba for all the humiliation, imagined and real, that his family has faced for generations. Alba recognizes this, putting together the stories he tells her and the savagery of his actions: Esteban’s rape of Pancha García set in motion a series of events culminating in her experience as García’s prisoner. Even Esteban’s dismissal of García after he brought the former information about Pedro Tercero has played a significant role: García sends Esteban three of Alba’s fingers, cut off in the same manner that Esteban chopped off Pedro Tercero’s fingers. Echoing her father’s response in the same situation, Alba eventually overcomes the mutilation and creates again. Just as Father José Dulce María’s encouragement helped Pedro Tercero learn to play the guitar with his damaged hand, Ana Diaz’s support helps Alba relearn writing. Writing takes on a powerful, healing role in Alba’s life, just as music—another form of storytelling—did for her father.
Ana Diaz is not the only person from whom Alba finds support; at the concentration camp, she finds community among all the women who have suffered similar fates as her. Thus far in the story, strong relationships between women mostly existed within one family, but now Alba discovers solidarity with women from different backgrounds, linked together by suffering. Nor is Alba the only prominent female character who suffers at the hands of the new regime; Amanda dies under torture, fulfilling her promise to her brother that she would give her life for him. Despite the shared pain of these women, what emerges from it is something beautiful: a sharing of burdens and a feeling of sisterhood. This calls to the overarching theme of interconnectedness. The picture is larger than a single story, even as this particular book comes to a close.
Just as the book works to establish cycles and patterns, it explores ways to break these same cycles and patterns in the Epilogue. After 50 years, Tránsito Soto makes good on her debt to Esteban, finding him Alba’s location in repayment. Alba comes home, and grandfather and granddaughter together begin to heal. The house is cleaned and repaired once again, and Esteban grows and changes enough that even Férula’s curse has no hold on him; he dies peacefully, with Clara’s name on his lips.
A large factor in helping Esteban and Alba heal is their decision to write their story together. Stories, writing, and literature are significant throughout the book, and especially so in these final chapters. The military attempts to erase and modify history, censoring and creating stories about the President to take control of the narrative. When the Poet dies, mourners recite the most revolutionary of his verses out loud at his funeral as a way to express their dissent. The act of writing—first mentally and later physically—is what keeps Alba alive throughout her time as a prisoner.
Upon Alba’s return home, the writing she undertakes with Esteban not only helps her heal from her trauma but also keeps her humanity alive: She consciously chooses to let go of her hatred towards García, recognizing how giving into a desire for vengeance only perpetuates a bloody cycle. Piecing together the larger picture with the help of Clara’s notebooks and other records helps Alba see patterns otherwise indiscernible within a single human life. With the perspective that everything that takes place has reasons and consequences beyond a single individual’s grasp, Alba chooses to wait for Miguel and her unborn daughter, comfortable even in the ambiguity of the child’s parentage. She reflects on the materials that helped her write this story, referencing the very first line from Clara’s very first notebook and bringing the book itself full circle: “Barrabás came to us by sea…” (481).
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