The essay examples we publish have been submitted to us by students. The essays are the student's work and are not examples of our expert essay writers' work. READ MORE
See how we can help
The role of the siblings in the works ‘The House of the Spirits’ by Isabel Allende and ‘Like Water For Chocolate’ by Laura Esquivel.
Man being a social animal cannot remain in isolation, he needs to have people around him with whom he can share his both joys and sorrows. The people around him can be his friends , his relatives. One such relation which helps a person overcome various difficulties in his life is that of brother and sister or that shared between two sisters. Such a relation finds expression in Isabel Allende’s , ‘The House of Spirits’ and Laura Esquivel ‘Like Water for Chocolate’.Both the works have brought out the importance of brother- sisterhood in the story and in the life of the characters in the works. The works has many relationships of siblings which play important roles in making the plot an interesting one.
Isabel Allendes’ in ‘The House of Spirits’, revolves, around many relations one such is that shared between, Esteban Trueba (Clara’s husband) and his sister Ferula. These siblings share the same miserable childhood, have similar temperaments – an exaggerated capacity for anger and a hefty amount of pride – and even love the same woman. But while Esteban enjoys a "destiny that [is] bright, free, and full of promise," Férula has to stay locked up at home, tending to their sick mother. Esteban gets to get married and gets to sleep with Clara, while Férula can only spy on them from behind the bedroom door.
All this led to a relation that was slightly away from the ones shared by the siblings is that of Clara and Ferula, in which Ferula was misunderstood for her excessive fondness for Clara. She had a genuine sisterly love for Clara, and Clara also understood Ferula’s feelings but Esteban and the world didn’t. Ferula used to take care of the house while Clara used to meditate and used to be busy with the Mora sisters and her other spiritual group partners, and Ferula never used to mind to do all the house hold work because she used to handle everything when her mother was ill and take care of the household before her mother died.
“Clara was the one in whom she confided her most subtle feelings, and to her she consecrated her enormous capacity for the sacrifice and veneration. She once was bold enough to tell her how she felt, and Clara wrote in her notebook that ferula loved her far more deeply than she deserved or than she could ever hope to repay. Because of the excessive love, Ferula did not leave Tres Marias.”
Even when Ferula was dead, the spirit of ferula especially came to meet Clara at Tres Marias. These things prove that ferula had love of a sister for Clara. The narrator (Alba) tells the readers about the sisterly love for Clara of ferula in the work by writing
The next in line would be that shared between Blanca (Clara’s daughter) and her brothers who are James and Nicolas(Clara and Esteban’s children) but Blanca, the beautiful hypochondriac, is a complete romantic – her great accomplishment in life is her love for Pedro Tercero García, whom she finally manages to live with in Canadian matrimonial bliss. The twins Jaime and Nicolás have little in common with one another. Nicolás inherits the nomadic and entrepreneurial tendencies of his Great Uncle Marcos, while gentle Jaime displays a fierce intellectual idealism that is all his own. So nothing is common in these siblings born of the same mother, Clara .one thing that was common between both the brothers was their love for Amanda. Jaime secretly also loves Amanda but never says it for the sake of his brother’s love for her. Blanca was more close to Jaime as he was more sensible and focused in life and was always around in town. He was totally opposite to who was an adventurer. But the thing which these brothers and Blanca had in common was that they hated their father Esteban Trueba, because he never did any good to his children.
Amanda (Nicolas’s girlfriend) also had a brother named Miguel who grows up to become the lover of Blanca’s daughter Alba. Amanda and Miguel were orphans, but Amanda used to take care of Miguel as a mother and took him everywhere with her. She never let him out of her sight. A quote which can be example of this loving relationship is: -
“Amanda and Miguel embraced tearfully in the doorway of the school, the teacher was unable to loosen the little boy from her sister’s skirt to which he clung tooth and nail, shrieking and kicking anyone who came near him.”
This quote surely expresses the deep love and affection which these siblings shared with each other.
The other work Like Water for Chocolate, which is a very easy flowing and lighter work. But at the same time it is full of emotions and family issues and talks of relationships between sisters. The tragedy in the novel is that Rosaura (second daughter) gets married to Tita’s (youngest) love of life (Pedro) because Mama Elena doesn’t allow Tita to marry him. The youngest daughter is not supposed to marry until the mother dies. Tita was deeply in love with Pedro. But Mama Elena being a strong personality and Tita being scared, lets Rosaura and Pedro to get married. However, the only reason Pedro marries Rosaura is because he could then be closer to Tita.
Rosaura was supposedly the next generation of Mama Elena. She used to follow all the family traditions which Mama Elena also followed. This was one reason why she never had good relations with anyone, especially her sisters. Tita and Rosaura never had a very healthy relationship, Rosaura knew that Tita was madly in love with Pedro but she still went ahead and married him because of which there was a cold war between them. When Rosaura had her first child Robert, Tita breast fed him because Rosaura didn’t have mother’s milk to feed her child. Tita also fed Rosaura’s second child Esperanza. One of the conversations which Rosaura and Tita had which shows the hatred for each other was when
Rosaura says “From now on, I don’t want you feeding her again; never again……All she can get from you is a bad example and a bad advice.”
Tita replies “I’m not going to allow you to poison your daughter with those sick ideas you have in your head. I’m not going to let you ruin her life either, forcing her to follow some stupid tradition”
Whereas, Tita had very healthy and a loving relationship with her other sister Gertrudis. Gertrudis understood Tita’s pain and love for Pedro so she was always there for Tita whenever she needed her. She was the one who took the step to force Tita to tell Pedro that he was going to become the father of her child which Tita was reluctant to tell.
Whereas, Gertrudis and Rosaura had no bonding with each other, because Gertrudis was always more close to Tita. Even when Gertrudis came back after a long time when she ran naked in the fields to quench her heat of love and lust after eating Tita’s rose petal dish, Rosaura welcomed her very casually which showed that they were never very bonded mentally with each other.
The following quote proves that, Gertrudis and Rosaura did not have a very healthy sisterly relationship whereas, it also shows the love and affection which Gertrudis has for Tita. The following extract is conversation in between Tita and Gertrudis when Tita tells her that she is pregnant with the baby of Pedro.
Gertrudis says “the truth, the truth! Tita, the simple truth is that truth does not exist; , it all depends on a person’s point of view. For example, in your case, truth could be that rosaura married Pedro, showing no loyalty, not caring a damn that you really loved him, that’s the truth, isn’t it?”
In the end I would I like to say that, in both the works elaboration has been done on the importance of siblings. Each of the relations above are very important for the work’s story and the flow of it. The nature and the role of the characters make the work more exciting to read and As a reader there is an over flow of emotions. These authors of these works kept the readers attached with the story because there was an excitement in reading what was going to happen next.
This is Preview only. If you need the solution of this assignment, please send us email with the complete assignment title: ProfessorKamranA@gmail.com
