24 pages • 48 minutes read
Isabel AllendeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
As its title suggests, the power of words is a central theme of the story. Words have the power to transform and can be a vehicle for freedom and independence.
Belisa’s ability to use words to escape a poverty and servitude and achieve independence demonstrates the transformative power of language. When she becomes an itinerant storyteller, she uses words as currency, selling them in the market to support herself and achieve independence. She purchases access to the written language by paying a priest to teach her to read. Her acquisition of literacy catalyzes the plot and the Colonel’s political trajectory, but it also enables impoverished people without access to education to remain connected to distant loved ones and the broader world through the letters she writes for them and the information she conveys from town to town.
The power of words is demonstrated again when the words Belisa sells to the Colonel for a political speech change his country’s trajectory. The soldiers and all who hear the words in Belisa’s speech are dazzled and inspired by their clarity and poetic lucidity. Her words capture their hearts, leaving them with feelings of hope and optimism and lifting them out of political strife.
By Isabel Allende
A Long Petal of the Sea
A Long Petal of the Sea
Isabel Allende
And of Clay Are We Created
And of Clay Are We Created
Isabel Allende
City of the Beasts
City of the Beasts
Isabel Allende
Daughter Of Fortune
Daughter Of Fortune
Isabel Allende
Eva Luna
Eva Luna
Isabel Allende, Transl. Margaret Sayers Peden
In the Midst of Winter
In the Midst of Winter
Isabel Allende
Island Beneath the Sea
Island Beneath the Sea
Isabel Allende
Maya's Notebook: A Novel
Maya's Notebook: A Novel
Isabel Allende
Of Love and Shadows
Of Love and Shadows
Isabel Allende
Paula
Paula
Isabel Allende
Portrait in Sepia
Portrait in Sepia
Isabel Allende
Ripper
Ripper
Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
The Japanese Lover
The Japanese Lover
Isabel Allende
The Stories of Eva Luna
The Stories of Eva Luna
Isabel Allende
The Wind Knows My Name
The Wind Knows My Name
Isabel Allende
Violeta
Violeta
Isabel Allende
Zorro
Zorro
Isabel Allende