The House of the Spirits
...annical, treating his family members and the tenants on his family hacienda, Tres Marias, like subjects rather than intimate community. The basis for most of Trueba's actions is the desire for power, control, and wealth, and he pursues these things at any cost, disregarding his emotional decline and the effects of his actions upon the people in his life. Unlike Trueba, which was able to reach and obtain power quickly due to his social class, Pedro Tercero Garcia, a revolutionary peasant and a socialist leader was not able to experience what it felt to be in power or implement socialist power in the community due to the manipulation and control that the upper class had; an example of this being how the conservatives manipulated the votes and always ended up winning the elections. Trueba succeeds in his terms of wealth and power, and becomes the most successful patron in the region. There are many positive aspects to his success. He improves the standard of living of his tenants, provides food and shelter, “[he] builts brick houses for his workers, hires a teacher for the school,” and offers medical care. Objectively and intellectually, these things are wonderful for the tenants and at the same time it shows that Trueba is not completely cold hearted; however, he meets the rational and physical needs of the tenants, but disregards their emotional needs, dignity, and equality as fellow human beings. Furthermore, in his need to control, he censors the tenant's education for the fear that too much education will allow the peasants from the lower class to gain knowledge and confidence and revolt against him. Hence, even if someone rebelled against him, he had enough power to get rid of them, as it was in the case of Pedro Tercero Garcia, who rebelled against him and started spreading socialist ideas and beliefs. This brought him no good, and the perfect example of Upper class manipulation comes into play when Esteban attempts to kill Pedro Tercero Garcia, cutting off three of his fingers and sending him away for a long time; not knowing that in future years he would turn to him for help. Class struggle is not only seen as the difference between two social classes in this novel, but it can also be interpreted in terms of conflict between the genders. One of the major examples showing the existence of conflict between genders is the many rapes Trueba performs in Tres Marias, and the following quote describes such actions; “…not a girl passed from puberty to adulthood that he did not subject to the woods, the riverbank, or the wrought-iron bed…he began to chase after those from the neighboring haciendas, take them in the wink of an eye, anywhere he could find a place in the fields.” The unique feature about this novel is that it has a cyclic structure, and Esteban’s actions, come back to haunt him later in the novel, when the product of one of his rapes, his illegitimate grandson, E...