“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014
In summary, this story is about a girl and a boy who have met one day in the city and find
1 themselves in a room making love. The story focuses on the inner dilemma between the boy who isn’t interested in the girl who he sees as just an innocent friend, while the girl, who is lonely and needs to “make love without complications”, is vying for him to pay attention to her and love her the way she needs. In the end, a more profound aspect of the story is revealed as a sort of underlying theme: civil war and its effects like torture.
Because this story is about love and the issues of civil war, the word choice is contrasted with “hard” and “soft” words. Words like “caressed, sugar, kissed and love” are contrasted with words like “thorns, whips, tortured, straps and bogged”.
Although the word choice reflects the contrasting nature of good and bad things, taken in context they paint a different picture. The tone of the piece is of forged love. Phrases like “he tried to make love to her”, “he retreated”, “two vulnerable people” and “he laughed, almost with a sob” show that they are trying in vain to be in love. The characterization of both the girl and the boy are shown through these phrases, as they are the inner dispositions of the characters. The boy is struggling to like the girl because he is dealing with this inner turmoil and so the fact that he is trying to make love to her shows that he’s dealing with something greater. A sense of place is also created from this diction and word choice. A peaceful room, where the story takes place, changes from a place of love-making to a place of turmoil as the characters evolve emotionally.
The point of view in this story switches from the boy to the girl without paragraph changes or any other notification. One sentence will contain the boy’s perspective and then the

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 next could be hers. This is a good choice for the purpose this story serves: to gain the inner perspective of each character in regards to the other.
The dialogue in this story is unique because there are no quotations marks used or divided sections for dialogue. Instead, the dialogue is included within the paragraphs, which are very long and seem like endless stories. This gives the effect of a stream of consciousness, an endless running on of description. There also wasn’t much dialogue. In this story, there may have been three or four uses of dialogue. This story focused less on the conversations between the
2 characters and more on the inner conflicts and thoughts of the characters.
This story is the first story in the book: the first story Eva Luna writes to her lover Rolfe.
It is a beautifully written piece about love, civil war, and magic; a genre Allende is known well for using called magic realism . The story is about a girl named Belisa Crepusculario who sells words to people by either writing them love letters, speeches, reciting verses, telling stories, or giving them their own special words: words that only they could use; a form of magic used by
Allende. She winds up selling words to a bandit who steals her because he wants her to write a speech that will change his public perception from being a bandit to a revered politician. She writes his speech, he becomes revered, but she also gives him two words that seem to haunt him, rendering him useless. Belisa is fetched to undo the “curse” but is found to be in love with The
Colonel.
The word choice in this story appeals to the senses and yields a tone of magical splendor grounded in real life. In essence, magic realism drives the tone of this story, giving it the feel of a

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 fairy tale, with witches and secret words, while grounding it in very serious issues like civil war and prostitution. Words like “twilight”, “dreams”, “fantasies”, and “magic” opposed with words like “hunger”, “civil war” and “rebels” show this point. The sense of place is shown through this diction, word choice, and subsequent tone. Words like “hell, desert, thorny bushes, skeletons, and dust” all give a visual of a barren land.
The characterization of Belisa shows her to be a dreamer, a woman governed by things that are emotional like love and beauty and magic, and words, which are contrasted with the characterization of The Colonel, who is shown to be a real-world man, grounded in civil war history and campaigns to become President.
The point of view in this story is third person omniscient, with the narrator being able to give insight into the character’s thoughts. Using this point of view is beneficial to the story because it allows Allende to tell the story of all of the characters. She can give exposition about
Belisa, insight into how El Mulato felt about The Colonel’s cursed campaign, and even the thoughts of the man washing his horse about how ignorant Belisa was when she didn’t know what words were. If she used first person, Belisa being the narrator, this would have been
3 limited.
There was quite a bit of dialogue in this story, as compared to Our Secret . The dialogue actually seems to serve a purpose: showing the more important issues of the story. Allende seems to use people’s words to bring to light the social issues she’s subliminally or blatantly trying to base her story on. Feminist issues, issues of civil war, and a magic element are things that the dialogue is mostly focused on. When Belisa asks a man what is on the newspaper he says: “’The sports page of the newspaper,’ the man replied, concealing his surprise at her ignorance” and

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 when The Colonel says “alright woman, what do I owe you?” These are examples of a feminist undertone, added through dialogue. Allende shows political issues through dialogue when The
Colonel says things like “I want to be President,” and “War’s what I know”. Finally, the element of magic is used in dialogue as El Mulato, The Colonel’s assistant, asks Belisa “Tell me what they are (the two words) and maybe they’ll lose their magic.”
This story is about a man and a woman who become phony impersonators of the upper class through dishonest schemes. They work their way up to becoming very wealthy from
4 humble beginnings, Abigail, the woman, living in the jungle. They acquire wealth in dishonest ways, he, Domingo, selling contraband and phony shops in poor neighborhoods, she selling fake artwork and “purported antiquities”. But this wealth isn’t enough for Abigail because she isn’t accepted into the highest class by its members; she is just seen as having a bad and phony reputation. This is all she wants and she does everything she can to appear 1 st class. One day she is kidnapped by a guerilla group and held at millions of dollars in ransom. Her husband, against public opinion, pays the ransom to get his wife and ends up satisfying the upper class’ requirements to become noteworthy and members of 1 st
class society. In the end, Abigail gets what she wants.
The word choice used to describe the characters is specific to their characterization.
Allende uses words like “Pirate”, “adventurer”, “unscrupulous”, “hollow-eyed” and “scoundrel” to describe Domingo, showing him to be less invested in the relationship with Abigail and her goals of becoming socially accepted into the highest class and more interested in gaining

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 material wealth. While words like “devoid”, “practical”, “fleshy”, “classy”, “racehorses” and
“greed” are all words used to describe Abigail, showing that she is more interested in attaining class rather than just wealth.
The tone is created with contrasting diction. Allende uses many posh words, words associated and describing the higher class, but also uses words that pertain to the lowest class.
Words like “pirate, scoundrel, scheme, guerilla group, contraband, poor neighborhoods and kidnappers” are used as lower class representations and words like “banquets, yachts, silk, racehorses, chauffer, and lavish” to describe an upper class. This blatant opposition of diction creates a tone of rivaling clashes amongst classes, a power struggle, a phoniness, and an ultimate disgust for Abigail who gets her way in the end and ultimately wins over the lower class she thinks she’s too good for. We also get a sense of place, from the tone and the word choice, of lower class and upper class society. We can see the Toro house and we can see the slum.
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The characterization of Abigail and Domingo are very well executed and give us unquestionable ideas about who they are as characters. The dialogue to be mentioned, the diction and word choice already mentioned are solid evidence that create the characterization of the two.
We are painted with the picture of Abigail’s need for social class at any cost and Domingo’s desire for wealth.
The point of view being in third person is useful to this story because of its reported tone.
The narrator basically goes through the story as if he has witnessed the events and is telling them to the reader. He doesn’t seem to get too much insight into the character’s minds, but instead can only infer, like the reader, how these characters must have felt and why they acted the ways they did.

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014
The use of dialogue in this story is purposeful in the way that it brings to light the underlying issues Allende is trying to portray in the story. Whenever they speak, it gives us a clear example of their character: when Abigail says things like “No one is called Toro, that’s a barroom name”, “[with it] we’ll have to convince people that we’re wealthy”, “what I want is a respectable family” and “I’m going to buy racehorses…anyone who is anyone has horses” we can see visible examples that she is worried about social standing. Domingo, in response to one of her comments, says “you’ll be the ruin of us.”
The first story in the book “Two Words”: is the first story Eva Luna writes to her lover
Rolfe. It is a beautifully written piece about love, civil war, and magic; a genre Allende is known well for using called magic realism . The story is about a girl named Belisa Crepusculario who sells words to people by either writing them love letters, speeches, reciting verses, telling stories, or giving them their own special words: words that only they could use, a form of magic used by
Allende. She winds up selling words to a bandit who steals her because he wants her to write a speech that will change his public perception from being a bandit to a revered politician. She writes his speech, he becomes revered, but she also gives him two words that seem to haunt him, rendering him useless. Belisa is fetched to undo the “curse” but is found to be in love with The
Colonel.
6
The next story is called “Our Secret”. In summary, this story is about a girl and a boy who have met one day in the city and find themselves in a room making love. The story focuses on the inner dilemma between the boy who isn’t interested in the girl who he sees as just an innocent friend, while the girl, who is lonely and needs to “make love without complications”, is

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 vying for him to pay attention to her and love her the way she needs. In the end, a more profound aspect of the story is revealed as a sort of underlying theme: civil war and its effects like torture.
“The Proper Respect” is a story about a man and a woman who become phony impersonators of the upper class through dishonest schemes. They work their way up to becoming very wealthy from humble beginnings, Abigail, the woman, living in the jungle. They acquire wealth in dishonest ways, he, Domingo, selling contraband and phony shops in poor neighborhoods, she selling fake artwork and “purported antiquities”. But this wealth isn’t enough for Abigail because she isn’t accepted into the highest class by its members; she is just seen as having a bad and phony reputation. This is all she wants and she does everything she can to appear 1 st class. One day she is kidnapped by a guerilla group and held at millions of dollars in ransom. Her husband, against public opinion, pays the ransom to get his wife and ends up satisfying the upper class’ requirements to become noteworthy and members of 1 st
class society.
In the end, Abigail gets what she wants.
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Isabel Allende is a world-renowned author, journalist, and teacher who has written 20 books, which have been translated into 35 languages, and of which have sold over 60 million copies total. She has also received 50 awards in more than 15 countries, 14 honorary doctorates and has created Isabel Allende Llona was born August 2, 1942 in Peru to Chilean parents
Francisca Llona Barros and Tomás Allende. She is well known for her use of magic realism in her stories.
She relocated to Chile when her parents separated, went to an American private school in
Bolivia, moved back to Chile and finished secondary studies. It was at that time where she met

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014 her first husband with whom she had her daughter Paula and son Nicholas. In 1973 her uncle/first cousin Salvador Allende was overthrown, resulting in the soiling of the Allende name.
She then fled to Venezuela after receiving threats.
She is the niece and goddaughter of Salvador Allende
1
, who was the president of Chile in
1970 and founder of its socialist party. Allende’s first novel, The House of the Spirits, was written based on his suicide due to a military coup took over the government 2 . The book began
8 as a letter to her dying grandfather in Chile (1981), recounting her childhood memories at his home, but when he died before she could get it to him, the letter became the basis for the book
3
.
She now lives in San Rafael, California with her second husband, William Gordon, who is an attorney and author. She enjoys humanitarian work, creating The Isabel Allende Foundation to empower women around the world after her daughter Paula who passed away.
Works Cited
"Isabel Allende Biography." Bio.com
. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.biography.com/people/isabel-allende-9181801>.
"Isabel Allende." Isabel Allende . N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014. <http://isabelallende.com/>.
1 http://www.biography.com/people/isabel-allende-9181801
2 http://www.biography.com/people/salvador-allende-37231
3 isabelallende.com

“The Stories of Eva Luna” by Isabel Allende
March, 6 2014
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