Thus she returned to the theme of ‘before, ’ but in a different way than she had at first. She said that we didn’t know anything, either as children or now, that we were therefore not in a position to understand anything, that everything in the neighborhood, every stone or piece of wood, everything, anything you could name, was already there before us, but we had grown up without realizing it, without ever even thinking about it. Not just us. Her father pretended that there had been nothing before. Her mother did the same, my mother, my father, even Rino… <…> They didn’t know anything, they wouldn’t talk about anything. Not Fascism, not the king. No injustice, no oppression, no exploitation … And they thought that what had happened before was past and, in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it, and so, without knowing it, they continued it, they were immersed in the things of before, and we kept them inside us, too. .Elena Ferrante
About This Quote
The novel ‘House of the Spirits’ is an early example of magical realism, a literary technique that fuses real-world events with fantasy. Magical realism often includes elements of the fantastic, including occurrences that defy rational explanation. The novel follows the lives of three generations of women, spanning two centuries. The first-person narrator is the daughter of the last Inca ruler.
She reflects on her life through her childhood memories and subsequent adulthood experiences. The story takes place in Chile during the late 19th century.
Source: My Brilliant Friend
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