The House of the Spirits Lesson Plan

What is the significance that the novel begins and ends with the same sentence?

At the novel’s end, Alba becomes reflective about the process and effect of writing one’s family history. She concludes that it is hard to see how one’s actions connect to a larger whole. In this instance, her process of writing her book is about seeing the connections between the actions of the different family members. She writes, “nothing that happens is fortuitous, that it all corresponds to a fate laid down before my birth, and that Esteban Garcia is part of the design. He is a crude, twisted line, but no brushstroke is in vain. The day my grandfather tumbled his grandmother, Pancha...