A leftist professor at Alba’s university. Sebastián Gómez is a man in his forties who looks “tubercular,” and he has “crippled legs” from “machinegun fire in Bolivia.” He is an inspiration to his students—an ideologue who “makes his students burn with the flame that in most of them extinguished itself as soon as they graduated and joined the world they had once hoped to change”—and when Miguel organizes the protest at the university, Sebastián is the only professor who stays until the very end. After the military coup d’état, Sebastián is killed, and numerous other professors and intellectuals are “fired, arrested, or simply disappear, in accordance with a blacklist in the hands of the political police.” Sebastián Gómez is the embodiment of a left-wing, liberal professor, and his persecution and death represent the oppression of free thought and ideas at the hands of a corrupt government.
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Sebastián Gómez Character Timeline in The House of the Spirits
The timeline below shows where the character Sebastián Gómez appears in The House of the Spirits. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 11: The Awakening
...the protest feels like a game. The students barricade themselves in the building, along with Sebastián Gómez, a disabled professor. Miguel, however, is the unofficial leader of the operation. He drains...
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...no business being with “all those communists,” Esteban says, and Alba hangs up the phone. Sebastián doesn’t think the police will come in to get them. The public won’t stand for...
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...cold, too, and the students are looking tired. The only one who seems unaffected is Sebastián Gómez, who is rumored to have taken machinegun fire to the legs while in Bolivia....
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Sebastián approaches and, finding Alba curled up in the corner, is instantly irritated. “That’s what happens...
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Chapter 13: The Terror
...“trade union.” Most of the professors at Alba’s school have been arrested or killed, including Sebastián Gómez.
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