WildCityWoman wrote:As I read it, the death of Barrabas, running to meet Clara at her engagement party with a large butcher's knife in his back, was a rather surreal omen and mystery. I don't recall reading any clues as to the culprit.
***** That was one very annoying dog, from everything I read. The animal was a pain in the neck - so, when you think of it, that could have been anybody who put a knife in the beast's back.
It is all very similar to the death of Rosa, which is also an unsolved mystery, and perhaps also to the big unsolved mystery of how Chile allowed the military coup in 1973.
***** It was made plain - it was her father's enemies - they didn't want him running for office. They left the bottle of poisoned brandy hoping he would drink it.
He gave it to Rosa to drink, when she cut the cake.
Note - the first and third lines here are quotes from me.
We don't solve a crime by just saying it was committed by enemies of the murdered person. The culprit for leaving the poisoned brandy was never identified, and nor was the culprit who stuck the knife in the dog's back.
The comparison to the coup as a mystery is worth exploring further. It is never made clear in the book who precisely, ie names of individuals, did not want Clara's father in politics, and so left him a warning with poisoned brandy. Nor is it really clear how the coup happened, unless we just blame Henry Kissinger, which does not get to the bottom of the historical conflict between communism and fascism as it played out in Latin America.
These things are very complex, and there are many subterranean interacting currents in operation. This is why Esteban's favorite person, his granddaughter Alba, is fathered by the communist Pedro, showing that despite his conservatism, Estaban is integrally part of the whole Chilean society. The House of the Spirits characters are all related parts of the same society, unlike the fascist dictator who seems to represent bigger outside forces from the USA.