World Literature Allende and Marquez

[Guest cjopsticks2g2]

Hi Everyone
I just joined this site hoping to get some help on how to start and what my
world literature essay should contain.

books am using are The house of the spirits and Chronicle of a death foretold
my research question deals with
The effects of two deaths one natural and the other violent have on the novel and the readers.

This is due on thursday morning. I would appreciate all the help I can get!

[Hedron123]

I can help you with Chronicle of a death foretold. One of the main themes is the protagonist's fatality; everybody knows that they want to kill him but nobody seems to be able to warn him. It acts as a promoter for the narrator to pile up events and structure the course of the story. On the readers, however, it transmits this sense of irony (portrayed, for instance, when he is walking through his neighbour's house with his guts on his hands) to show that once your destiny has been fixed, you cannot avoid it. You can also refer to the themes of honour and dignity which foster the reaction of the brothers towards the protagonist (as he had supposedly dishonoured their sister). His death evokes feelings of victory and of relish on the brothers while the characters that appear as friends of his are touched and distressed. I hope that my ideas are useful!

[SharkSpider]

Allende's House of Spirits is by far the best book I've read this year, and definitely in the top few ever, so I'd really love to discuss it if you need any help with themes and stuff.

Anyways, considering the magnitude of the amount of death in House of Spirits, you should probably narrow your choices down. The effect of Trueba's death at the end of the story works to end the book in a fitting way, and to provide a final say in the life of Esteban's character by showing the culmination of it, essentially how it can be viewed as either a huge failiure or a life full of great successes. Coupled with what is, in my opinion, one of the most well-developed characters in modern Litterature, the death really does have a profound effect on the almost 500-page novel, which can be simply states as an ending that gives the reader a chance to go over the events they have likely spent a good 20 hours reading about, and to come to an opinion on them. In a way, it parralels almost a hundred years of Chilean history, and outlines the struggles of so many different types of characters. If you're talking about death in House of Spirits, be sure to focus on the fact that in death, a reader can examine the culmination of characterization and events surrounding a character, and pass types of judgement that would otherwise wait until the end of the novel (Ie, death halfway through means the reader can look at the life holistically halfway through, instead of doing so at the end of the book)