In her novels, The House of the Spirits (HOS) and Of Love and Shadows (OLAS), Isabel Allende reveals the violence and the injustices endured by the citizens of Chile. However, her novels include more than just dark tales; they are stories of hope and of social change. Allende utilizes these texts to emphasize the importance of language. She views language as a means of reclaiming the past and fighting against the loss of memory. Storytelling, both oral and written, is utilized in the novels as an instrument for self-discovery and as a therapeutic process for overcoming pain and hatred. Allende's texts as a whole function as counterdiscourse to the "official" history of Chile, the authoritative history created and controlled by the corrupt military dictatorship. In Allende's novels, language serves to inform people and move them to action within the text and in the world outside the text.

The impact behind Allende's use of language stems from her own belief in what she calls "la magia de las palabras," the magic of words ("La magia de las palabras" 451). In discussing her first novel, HOS, Allende discloses that she utilized the writing of her novel as a form of exorcism, a way of ridding herself of the phantoms she carried inside. In order to accomplish this task she assumed the power words would hold, assured that they would be able to reconstruct the world she had left behind and rescue her memories forever ("La magia de las palabras" 448). Allende links language with history, confident that language helps us to remember, adopting her novel as the medium through which she recalls what has happened in her personal life and in the life of her country.

HOS provides the best example of language as a means for reclaiming the past in that it simultaneously recalls the history of Chile and that of the Trueba family. The novel's narrator, Alba, uses her grandmother's memories to reclaim her past in order to discover her own identity and to overcome the nightmares that haunt her. Clara del Valle, Alba's grandmother, is the first woman of the family to write down the events in her life. Her notebooks that bear "witness to life" hold everything that Clara once knew, witnessed, and remembered. Clara plays the role of historian in the novel. This is a role normally reserved for a man, for it is usually the men in Latin America who have the authority to write history. But thanks to Clara's careful recording the past isn't erased. She preserves the memories for Alba, making them a part of the future. Alba inherits Clara's intuition and her ability to record life and preserve history through writing. At an early age, Alba discovers the power of recording things. When Blanca, her mother, forgets the feminist fairy tales she creates for Alba, Alba decides to write them down to preserve them, just like her grandmother preserved the family's stories in her notebooks. Alba also begins "to record the things that struck her as important, just as her Grandmother Clara had before her" (HOS 304). The Trueba family history, as recorded by Clara and Alba, retains an integrity which contrasts strikingly with Chile's recorded history. The history of the country is manipulated by the military through their control of literature and the mass media. This allows them to create their own version of history and to erase what they don't approve of, whether it be the truth or not. Unlike the country's history which is altered, hidden and forgotten, the story of the del Valle and the Trueba families remains intact, recreated through Alba and her grandfather, Esteban Trueba's words when they rewrite the family's history in the form of a novel.

However, it isn't until Alba opens her eyes to the dark side of human nature that she discovers the true power behind language. Due to her political involvement, Alba is taken prisoner by Esteban García, her grandfather's bastard son who seeks revenge. While in captivity, Alba is beaten, tortured, and raped. But she is able to rebel against Esteban García through the power of her imagination as she struggles to maintain her sanity and to hold on to her life. Once again, it is her grandmother who provides her with the material to survive:

Clara also brought the saving idea of writing in her mind, without paper or pencil, to keep her thoughts occupied and to escape from the doghouse and live. She suggested that she write a testimony that might one day call attention to the terrible secret she was living through, so that the world would know about this horror that was taking place parallel to the peaceful existence of those who did not want to know, who could deny that they were on a raft adrift in a sea of sorrow, ignoring, despite all evidence, that only blocks away from their happy world there were others, these others who live and die on the dark side. (HOS 414)

By piecing together a story in her mind, Alba is able to escape madness, the total fragmentation of her mind. Alba's writing will also educate others, bringing the voice of pain to those who choose to ignore the suffering of her country. It is through the power of her imagination that Alba is finally able to escape the clutches of Esteban García: "They took her back to Colonel García, whose hatred had returned during those days, but she did not recognize him. She was beyond his power" (HOS 415). Writing is a tool that Alba uses to survive and continue with her life, despite everything she's gone through. It is what allows her to fight insanity, death, and the tortures of Esteban García.

After Alba escapes from prison, writing becomes a therapeutic process which allows her to heal and to overcome the pain she has endured. It allows her to pass the time and to await the future with hope and strength, but only after she has recreated her past in the form of a written text. By remembering her family's lives, Alba brings new life to the words written by her grandmother:

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. (HOS 432)

Alba's repetition in her novel of the first lines in Clara's notebook --"Barrabás came to us by sea"--points to the cyclical nature of history (HOS 1). Alba begins her own writing process using her grandmother's words, repeating the story Clara recorded in her notebooks. However, as Carmen J. Galarce points out, it is necessary to break the "inexorable cycle" of history when the same injustices are repeated. She argues that Alba accomplishes this through her examination of the events that have elapsed, her revision of history based on her own experiences and on that of others, and in the codification of history through writing (Galarce 138). In other words, Alba does more than just repeat Clara's words, she reinterprets them, making them her own. Through Alba, words serve a dual purpose: one in the moment when they are written, and later when they are recovered by future generations. Alba becomes just what her name signifies, "dawn" a new beginning for the Trueba family. She is the synthesis of both the past and the present. Through the novel she writes, Alba is able to unite history with the present. She is an example of the narrator that Galarce refers to when she discusses the function of the exile novel:

the narrated world is not simply the chronicle of what is lived, but rather a space where the figure of a narrator is projected for whom the word is history and poetic adventure, a creative dialogue which aims to transcend the plane of contingency in order to find the truth which explains the anti-revolutionary violence that gave term to a decisive time. (115)[1]

Alba is able to gather all the information she needs in order to observe the events that led to the violence of a military takeover in Chile. She is not merely recalling a history, but analyzing it. It is only in retrospect that Alba is finally able to understand the dynamics of her family's lives, allowing her to both remember and to forget. Through the events she has recalled she is able to forget the vengeance and hate that plagued her family, finally learning how to forgive. It is then that she learns the true power of language, the power of recollection which becomes valuable only after a lesson has been learned.

In House of Spirits, the importance of language is illustrated within the text, specifically through the way in which the characters view and utilize language. Through Alba and Clara, Allende illustrates how language functions as a way to reclaim the past. This in turn, allows Alba to use language and writing as a therapeutic process to overcome pain and learn from this past. In Of Love and Shadows, Allende's depiction of the function of language is most clearly conveyed by the text itself and the impact it has on the reader. The novel centers on the loss of voice of the common citizen. In an epigraph at the beginning of the novel Allende states the purpose of her novel: "I do it. . .for others who have confided their lives to me, saying: Here, write it, or it will be erased by the wind." Allende's novel, like Clara's notebooks, will now be the instruments that will bear witness to life by remembering, recording, and preserving "una historia," both a history and a story of Chile.[2] Many critics have confirmed that OLAS is based on a real historical event, the discovery of fifteen unidentified bodies in a hidden grave in Loquén, Chile in 1978 (Hart, Introduction 11; Weaver 74). Allende then fictionalized this event in her novel. The result is a mixture of reality and fantasy. Wesley J. Weaver III comments on the two forms of expression that can be found in the narrative of Of Love and Shadows:

On one hand, you can appreciate the truthfulness of the testimony, which is the result of the journalistic background of the author and her fascination with the real world,...On the other hand the handling of the narrative voices amplifies the testimonial account to include the emotions, the ideas or simply the thoughts of the characters. (79)[3]

Allende's amplification of the historical events results in a personal account of the facts. Carmen J. Galarce adds to our understanding of Allende's use of this historical background when she explains another characteristic of the exile novel. According to Galarce, the exile novel aims at interpreting a historic reality. It rejects the system which manipulates history in order to create its own account of what it calls the "truth." The author of the exile novel wishes to recover the world he/she has lost, as well as to dominate and supersede it fictitiously. Galarce believes that what the exiled author is trying to do is not to change the world so much as to merely comprehend it (18). In Allende's case, she is interpreting a moment in time and retelling a story of what has occurred. Her novel lacks a didactic tone. Its main purpose is not to tell the reader what to believe, but rather to convey a set experience, to relay a story of hope and of sorrow, emotionally moving the reader towards a recognition of injustice. Allende herself has described what her role as a writer means to her:

Writing is no longer only a pleasure. It is also a duty that I assume with happiness and pride, because I understand that I am in possession of an effective instrument, a powerful weapon, a wide channel of communication. I feel that I am. . .a voice that speaks for those which suffer and remain silent in our country. My work stops being solitary and becomes a contributor to the common effort for liberty, justice and fraternity. . . .Writers are interpreters of the reality. . . .Our first duty is create good literature, so that this fulfills its task of moving the readers and lasting through time (La magia de las palabras 451).[4]

^{Allende's aim in Of Love and Shadows is to tell the personal story of those who have not had the opportunity to do so before, at the same time defying the loss of memory. She succeeds in reminding the reader that history has shaped people's lives, making it something more than just words you read in a textbook. In accordance with Weaver's observation and the characteristics of the exile novel, OLAS isn't a strict historical account of an event. Instead, it is a weaving of fact and fiction, allowing the reader to walk into the minds of the victims and the culprits of the military coup in Chile. Allende's story becomes more than a reporting of history, it is a reliving of it, a story of real people whose feelings and thoughts the reader can not only read, but also feel.}

Elías Miguel Muñoz argues that OLAS functions as an instrument to combat authority (63): "In Of Love and Shadows. . .a strong attack against official discourse, that is emitted from Pinochet's Chile, is elaborated" (62).[5] Allende's novel does indeed work as a counter-discourse to official discourse because it recounts a part of history that has been omitted, erased and ignored by military officials in Chile in order to justify their actions. It speaks about the evil and the violence of the military:

Motionless, terrorized, everyone waited for some atrocious response, some dark madness, some final calamity that would mean the end of all of them; they expected to be lined up against the wall and shot on the spot, or at least to be kicked into the Army truck and "helped" to disappear in some mountain ravine. (OLAS 75)

It also brings to light the lies created by the government and the censorship of the information that is released:

Since it was impossible to eliminate poverty, it had been forbidden to mention it. The news in the press was soothing; they were living in a fairyland. Rumors of hungry women and children storming bakeries were completely false. Bad news came only from outside the country, where the world struggled over insoluble problems that had no relation to their esteemed homeland. (OLAS 177)

Once again, as in HOS, Allende uncovers the truth behind the military takeover in Chile revealing details not mentioned in the "official" account. Muñoz writes: "Of Love and Shadows establishes itself precisely as `proof' or `evidence' of the certainty of those crimes" (63).[6

] OLAS speaks in detail about the crimes committed by the military, offering a new perspective of history that reaffirms what the citizens of Chile remember, but is denied by the history books. The purpose that OLAS serves is the purpose that all exile writers want their novels to serve. The exile writers from Chile from 1973 on seek to utilize the "discurso dial--gico" (dialogic discourse) of the novel as an alternative against the dominant "discurso monológico" (monologic discourse) of the military dictatorship in order to culturally and politically educate individuals (Galarce 65). The version of history provided by the exile writer, in this case Allende, allows for a better understanding of both history and the world and serves to return memories to those who have stayed behind; allowing all readers to be shaken and liberated from indifference (Galarce 57, 117).

Muñoz also argues that OLAS functions not only to speak against official discourse but also to prevent the real story from being forgotten by "la mala memoria," the loss of memory (64). Allende affirms this within her text. The characters in the novel fight to make the truth known, not allowing it to be easily forgotten. For example, Evangelina Flores, whose brothers and father are killed by the military, spends the rest of her life traveling throughout the world reminding people of the desaparecidos "to insure that the men, women, and children swallowed up by that violence would never be forgotten" (272). Allende's characters struggle to make the atrocities of the military known in the same way that Allende informs and reminds the reader of what is happening in Latin America. Through the writing of her novel, Allende proves that the written word aids in keeping history fresh, not allowing things to be easily forgotten or lost forever. The importance of writing is exemplified by the novel itself. The novel gives a voice to those who don't have one, allowing a counterdiscourse to official history to be heard.

For Isabel Allende, words hold the power to recall history, be it the history of a country or a family; they can rescue memory, and can be used to reconstruct and challenge the past. Within HOS, Allende demonstrates the different ways that language functions through the development of her characters. Clara, through her meticulous record keeping, illustrates how writing functions to preserve memories which might otherwise be forgotten. Alba, in turn, depicts the importance of language as a way of the reclaiming the past, not only to remember but also in order to analyze past events and learn from them. By rewriting her family's history, she also shows how language can serve as a therapeutic process to heal the soul. In OLAS, the importance of language is most clearly expressed by the function the text serves in society. The novel as a whole, expresses the importance of Allende's own use of language. OLAS serves to bear witness to the realities of the common citizen of Chile, informing the reader of an account of history that in the past has been silenced. Through a mixture of historical accounts and fiction, Allende succeeds in creating a written account of history that defies the loss of memory by telling the tale of those who have lost their voices to the violence of the military. Through OLAS, Allende creates a counterdiscourse to official history, challenging what's been said as well as what has been hidden. In her novels, Isabel Allende expresses the significance of language, her own as well as her characters', by using fiction to retell the history that in the past has been silenced. In this way, she provides the hope that if the truth is learned and indifference is erased, then maybe someday justice can be achieved.

Endnotes

[1] Unless otherwise specified, all quotes translated from Spanish will be my own translation. "El mundo narrado no es ahora simplemente la crónica de lo vivido, sino un espacio donde se proyecta la figura de un narrador para quien la palabra es historia y aventura póetica, un d'alogo creador mediante el cual se busca trascender el plano de la contigencia para encontrar la verdad que ezplique la violencia antirrevolucionaria que dio término a una época decisiva" (Galarce 115).

[2] In Spanish, the word historia signifies both history and story. Professor José Saldivar of U.C. Berkeley utilized this term to describe the literature of certain Latin American writers who both tell a story and recall history.

[3] "Por una parte se aprecia lo veraz del testimonio, que es resultado del fondo periodístiço de la escritora y su fascinación por el mundo rea;l . . .Por otra parte el manejo de las voces narrativas amplifica el relatio testimonial para incluir las emociones, las ideas o simplemente los pensamientos de los personajes" (Weaver 79).

[4] "Escribir ya no es sólo un placer. Es también un deber que asumo con alegr'a y orgullo, porque comprendo que estoy en posesión de un instrumento eficaz, un arma poderosa, un ancho canal de comunicación. Siento que soy. . .una voz que habla por los que sufren y callan en nuestra tierra. Mi trabajo deja de ser solitario y se convierte en un aporte al esfuerzo común por la causa de la libertad, la justicia y la fraternidad...Los escritores somos intérpretes de la realidad. . .El primer deber es crear buena literatura, para que ésta cumpla con su tarea de conmover a los lectores y perdurar en el tiempo" (Allende, "La magia de las palabras" 451).

[5] "En De amor y de sombra. . .se elabora un fuerte ataque contra el discuso oficial que se emité desde el Chile de Pinochet" (Muñoz 62).

[6] "De amor y de sombra se erige precisamente como 'prueba' o 'comprobación' de la certeza de esos crímines" (Muñoz 63).

References

Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. Trans. Magda Bogin. New York: Bantam Books, 1985.

-----. Of Love and Shadows. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

-----. "La magia de las palabras." Instituto Internacional de Literartura Iberoamericana 51.132-133 (1985): 447-452.

Galarce, Carmen J. La novela chilena del exilio (1973-1987): el caso de Isabel Allende. Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1993.

Hart, Patricia. Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende. London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.

Muñoz, Elías Miguel. "La voz testimonial de Isabel Allende en De amor y de sombra" Riquelme Rojas 61-72.

Riquelme Rojas, Sonia and Edna Aguirre Rehbein, eds. Critical Approaches to Isabel Allende's Novels. New York: Peter Land Publishing, 1991.

Weaver III, Wesley J. "La frontera que se esfuma: Testimonio y ficción en De amor y de sombra" Riquelme Rojas 73-82.