Faith Angelica C.

Galve

A Summary of the Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Green House hosts a myriad and huge pool of characters all of
which seem to exist in different times due to story not following a linear
narrative. It doesn’t help that because the novel’s narrative wasn’t written
chronologically it is separated into four parts and these four chapters are
further broken down into five separate narratives, making a jumble of the
plot and characters who seem to be jumping from one place to another.

In terms of the title itself, it refers to the brothel house created by Don
Anselmo in the dessert in the outskirts of Piura. The novel then talks about a
young girl named Antonia (Tonita) whose adopted parents were killed by
bandits and was eventually taken in by a poor villager named Juana Barra.
Later on, Don Anselmo kidnaps Antonia and keeps her in a room in the tower
of the Green House as his wife who eventually gave birth to a daughter
named Chunga. Because of this incident, Father Garcia, the parish priest of
Piura, rallies the townspeople to burn the Green House down, Antonia dies
but Chunga is saved by the cook, Angelica Mercedes. Saddened by this
event, Don Anselmo becomes a homeless drunkard and as Chunga becomes
older, she builds a new Green House in which Don Anselmo plays the harp.

The novel also talks about the Aguaruna native turned nun, Bonifacia
who was kicked out of the mission because she helped two newly abducted
native girls escape. It also talks about Bonifacia’s husband, Lituma. Bonifacia
was taken from her father, Jum, to be raised in a mission in Santa Maria de
Nieva where she is “civilized” and sold as a house servant supposedly to Don
Julio Reategui but Bonifacia cried and Don Reategui refused to take her
against her will. She eventually grew up in the mission and where she was
left to watch over the children. Lituma, Bonifacia’s husband, is a Piruan
native who joins the military. He soon serves in the Amazon region in where
he meets Bonifacia. Once they had returned to Piura, Lituma, who was drunk
at the time, takes part in a fatal game of Russian roulette with Seminario,
Seminario dies and is sentenced to ten years in jail. While he was in prison
Josefino, his friend, rapes Bonifacia who then becomes a prostitute at the
Green House. Lituma is eventually released and returns to Piura, where he
finds out from his friends that Bonifacia became a prostitute.

In another part of the novel, it talks about the story of Fushia who
escapes to Peru and meets a poor water vendor, Aquilino. They both trade
goods by boats with the commodity of rubber to timber workers and gold
prospectors. He does nothing but run away from his criminal acts and
eventually meets up with the Huambisa natives. With the help of the
Huambisa and with the company of Jum, Aquilino and Adrian Nieves, Fushia
assaults the native villages, steals rubber and hides and abducts pubescents
girls. Eventually, he ends up in Iquitos where he meets Don Julio Reategui
who Fushia joins in the illegal rubber trade. Jum, on the other hand, after
being educated by two political organizers, creates a native co-ops for
trading rubber, which messes up Don Reategui’s system of illegal rubber
trade. As a lesson to the other natives, Don Reategui leads a military force
and arrests Jum as he is publically shorn of his hair (a humiliating act for the
Aguarauna) and whipped.

While Fushia was in Iquitos, he meets the fifteen year old Lalita and
seduces her but after his ploy had been discovered, he devises a plan to
trade Lalita to Reategui for a boat and provisions but this is a failure and
Lalita escapes upriver with Fushia where the live on the island on the
Santiago River deep within the jungle. Eventually, Lalita becomes tired of
Fushia’s abusive ways and escapes with Adrian Nieves to Santa Maria Nieva,
where they take in Bonifacia who had just been expelled from the mission. It
is here Bonifacia meets her husband, Lituma. Nieves was eventually sent to
jail and Lalita marries one of the former comrades of Lituma.
 By the end of the novel, Bonifacia is still a prostitute in Piura and
Lituma is living off of her income. Anselmo dies peacefully after he has
confessed to Father Garcia and Fushia, who contracted leprosy, spends his
fortune in the leper colony of San Pablo where his friend, Aquilino, visits him
once a year.