Magical Realism In House Of The Spirits

Magic realism is a style where magical happenings intrude a realistic surrounding. It’s what occurs when an extremely detailed, realistic plot is being interfered by something too unusual to believe. Mythology is a source of magical realism. It’s more like illusion, bordering the absurd. It always has a well-rounded down-to-earth base, where the author fuses her imaginable symbolism. Magical realism is a perspective towards reality that can be expressed in famous or cultured form, in perfected or natural styles, in open or closed structures. Magical realism is a paradox: it is the unity of contrast – life and death, the rational and supernatural, the precolonial past where magic plays an important role and the rational postcolonial present,

two views in conflict with each other, but at the same time the fusion of the reality and the fantastic. It is a direction in art in which an attempt is made to link reality with a different or higher reality, so hallucinatory images or dreamy effects occur.
Authors such as Allende with the House of the Spirits glorify these rustic environments with events and astonishment where the abnormal translates into the accustomed.

That’s what we call “magical realism”. Magical realism twists the reality way beyond imagination. Magical realism combines realism with the fantastic in such a manner that magical elements grow organically out of the reality that is being shown. Because the book the House of the Spirits is a novel based on magical realism itself, all the happenings will be connected with everything else in the book, meaning that basically everything has to do with magical realism. Therefore I will only explain the most outstanding and most important signs of magical realism explained in the fragment quoted above. "The first sentence of the fragment “Los poderes mentales de Clara no molestaban a nadie y no producían mayor desorden; se manifestaban casi siempre en asuntos de poca importancia y en la estricta intimidad del hogar” is a form of magical realism. Clara has mental powers that she uses in minor situations, but secretly. How can one have mental powers? Normally, mankind is unable to possess such power, thus it’s supernatural. Secondly, "...el salero comenzaba a vibrar y de pronto se desplazaba por la mesa entre las copas y platos, sin que mediara ninguna fuente de energía conocida ni truco de ilusionista" is also a form of magical realism. In this part of the fragment salt is capable of vibrating and moving between

objects on its own without any type of energy source. That’s impossible! This was being done by Clara’s mental powers. She has the power to predict things and the power to transfer energy into another substance making it able to move and so on. A characteristic of magic realism is the way a novel might start with a mundane, even boring situation and then suddenly something strange out of the blue happens. In this case they were all having dinner and suddenly Clara’s mental powers caused the salt to vibrate and pass through objects. These elements were found in the fragment that contains magical realism.
Considering culture as an important factor while learning a foreign language, I think that it is obligatory that we as students understand the work and way of looking of the Spanish culture, and the language itself. Learning the concept of magical realism is definitely not an easy task. My biggest challenge was to break down the terms and have a clear visual representation of what the magical realism was in the story. The term "magical realism" was first created by a German art critic with the name Franz Roh. A painting where realistic forms were combined in a particular way that does not relate to daily real world is what he called magical realism. Latin American authors embraced and passed on the tradition leaving a legacy of great woks. Isabel Allende is one of those authors and wrote this book “The house of the spirits”.
In addition to the fact that magical realism leaves the setting of the story cloudy to emphasize more on its surreal essence, authors use the being of an inexplicable supernatural phenomenon.

This is a supernatural spectacle, which in some cases is the capability to predict the future or do something out impossible. It is symbolized as a gift of nature at times and has to do with the main characters in their daily life. This is exactly what happened with Clara. She had mental powers and could’ve predicted the future. The type of style of magical realism used in a book depends on the author herself. Each style is unique and really connected to the background of the author as well as the environment and surroundings of which the author came from and used as inspiration to write a book about it. Allende brought a completely different perspective in this story. She represents the female in the story as the leading force in the narrative, placing her in a very sufficient social position regardless her struggle for integrity. Her work is a reflection of a broad Latin American way of thinking, culture and behavior. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, she had to evacuate her country to live in exile for numerous years in Venezuela where she struggled to survive emotionally especially without her bond to her family in Chile. In Venezuela, Isabel was able to write this book, her first novel The House of the Spirits. What really is important about this book is her participation in the

feminist movement in Latin America.
I chose a fragment out of the book the House of the Spirits because I am very interested in reading about the supernatural. In class we got a few suggestions and when I did some research I came across this one that really caught my eye, so I went for it. Reading about the background of Isabel Allende and how she fit her story mixing it with magical realism in the novel is truly a work of art.