Esteban Trueba In Isabel Allende's The House Of The Spirits

Although throughout most of his time in the novel “The House of the Spirits”, written by Isabel Allende, Esteban Trueba acts as selfish person who for the most part has no respect for people’s lives. Toward the end of the novel through his own reflections, does the good of his presence come out. The goodness that comes out from Esteban’s presence mitigates the bad in his younger years, since he realizes his actions to be selfish and comes to a self-understanding of himself.

Despite the fact that Esteban’s connection with his family had many atrocities, the outcomes of his actions do lessen the acts he committed in his younger years. Esteban works to insure that his family is comfortable, one good aspect that comes out of him. Though because

of his incessant lust and arrogance, he is cruel to his family for the choices that they make. Some examples of his cruelty are his attempt to kill Pedro, his knocking out of Clara's teeth, and his raping of women at Tres Marias. Blanca never asks for money from her father, and learns to live independently. Although throughout most of the novel she is separated from Pedro, by Esteban, her love for him leads her to great extremes. Later in life, Esteban has a special relationship with his granddaughter, Alba. Only with her is he able to express his softer side. Esteban writes many of the chapters in his perspective. Esteban changes dramatically throughout the end of the novel, especially by the end. In his old age, he reflects on past events and this shows that he regrets his actions. But the turning point in this new revelation was when he helped Blanca and Pedro Tercero flee the country, in which he displayed his content with their love.
Esteban is a person who is obsessed with having his authority on the world, no matter who gets hurt in the process.

During the first part of the novel, Esteban seems apathetic to those around him. His incessant raping of girls at Tres Marias clearly shows that Esteban did not care towards human life and others' feelings. Although his distressed childhood plays a role, his goal of gaining power leads to being a ruthless leader. In addition, he has an to uncontrollable temper that expresses itself every time he realizes that he is unable to control the world around him. Esteban devotes his life to politics, hoping to become rich and powerful. However, by the end of the novel he is not depicted as a one-note character, rather a dynamic character. Esteban considers the past where he continues to display rage, but also understands that loneliness because of the state he put himself into. In his old age, Esteban understands the result of his actions. He feels grief when he becomes aware of how he has helped to promote a dictatorship that is wiping out his entire family line. Although he was a conservative dictator, his grief towards the product of this, shows how much he cares about his family. In the case of Clara, readers feel sympathy towards him when he acknowledges that he has failed Clara. His efforts to redeem this situation are both help redeem himself from the violence that he ensued. This also helps mitigates the bad as he becomes aware of his own selfishness. As he ages, Esteban begins to see the negative outcomes of his violent, selfish actions and becomes increasingly aware of how lonely he is. At the end of his life, Esteban receives redemption, by Clara allowing him to die

peacefully.
During his conservative political time, he distanced himself from his family and friends. In return, Blanca and Clara had their own personal relationship with each other. Also, Esteban’s political matter allowed Clara to express her inherent goodness. She often fed the hungry and tended to the sick under Esteban's political movement, where Clara’s innocence could be shown. His and conservative politics are important because although bad things come about from it, many good things do too. His conservative views are polar opposite from Clara’s that in a way balances them out. For this reason, Clara and Blanca express their own political views in a discrete way. And while he makes a lot of selfish decisions, the fact that many of the passages are written from his perspective allows us to get inside his head and at least understand why he makes them. This helps to understand that his rage came out of an afflicted childhood, where he had no relationship with his mother. While many do think that any good came from Esteban’s presence, one thing is clear is that he reflected and felt sorry for his actions in his older age. When Clara and his son died, mainly due to his own actions, one may say that the "bad" does not overcome the good. Though, his guilt and remorse for his actions show one good thing to come out of him: the responsibility that he took for their death and was aware of his actions.
In Esteban’s life, it was not until he reached old age that he realized how lonely he was and how that influenced his actions. Throughout the novel, he shows his cruelty and heartlessness nature, through his violence with others. When he becomes aware of his previous actions and asks for forgiveness, it lessens the harm he did in his life. If one cannot regain a sense of “goodness” from whole-heartedly asking forgiveness, there would be no purpose to it. The importance of this is that someone does not solely have to be a “bad” or “good” person, but rather flawed.