Isabel Allende’s The House of The Spirits: Examination of Buddhism and Marxism Through Character Development

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Within Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits Marxism is a significant theme and the political ideology held by many of the characters. These same characters tend to exhibit traits that correlate with the Buddhist belief system through reflection of aspects of Gautama Buddha’s life within their own. The characters accept the ‘Four Truths’ - most notably that suffering is an ingrained part of existence - and that there is an escape to suffering. Through this it is shown that Marxism and Buddhism share common elements; the relation between the two is reflected by characters following the Marxist doctrine within The House of the Spirits. Characters from the aforementioned doctrine have a propensity to have similar life experiences to Gautama Buddha. One such character is Jamie, he struggles throughout the story with the contrast between his Marxist views and his upper class family. This eventually leads him to abandon his fathers surname “he wanted to change his last name...the poor...no longer trusted him...”(Allende 228). This is reminiscent of Siddhartha Gautama who was born a prince but upon seeing human suffering abandoned his family to lead an acetic life style in the hopes of finding an end to suffering. Another character who is decidedly similar to Gautama Buddha is Alba. At birth she is predicted to have a fortunate life by her grandmother and spends her childhood raised in relative seclusion in the big house, “'...She will be lucky and she will be happy...'... they made no effort to prepare the child for life”(Allende 262-7). This is similar to another excerpt from Siddhartha’s life, where a soothsayer predicated he would to either be a great king or a ... ... middle of paper ... .... To this end Allende has shown that Miguel still exhibits traits of a Buddhist despite his extremist views. Over the course of The of The Spirits Allende develops Marxist characters with Buddhist tendencies, through this she has brought to light the parallels between these two doctrines, notably through Alba's experiences during her detainment or Jamie's emancipation of his father. To take reference from Father José Dulce Maria “...the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left,” (Allende 154) based on the aforementioned evidence it can be seen that this statement probably holds true for Gautama Buddha. Works Cited Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. New York: Dial, 2005. Print.

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