From an early age most people are taught what to do and what not do. Our upbringings also involve the way our society around us interacts. We follow the common saying, "Monkey see, monkey do." In "If You Touched my Heart," Isabel Allende uses the character's personal backgrounds and upbringings also adding the society they live in to justify the way they act.
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, 1887-1918
María Isabel Allende Bussi (18 de enero de 1945) ...
English: Hortensia Bussi de Allende at a reception...First, Allende gives the readers a taste of the lifestyle of the main character Amadeo. For instance, she writes Amadeo as growing up in the "midst of his father's gang, and like all men [in the] family, [growing] up to be a ruffian." Amadeo was taught very early on in life that a man only needed "balls and quick wits." In addition, Amadeo's use for women was only "[to] seduce... and abandon them." To Amadeo using women just for copulation and leaving them didn't affect him, so it was easy for him to use Hortensia. Also, Allende describes Hortensia's upbringings. At the tender age of fifteen, Horetensia lived in a village in Agua Santa. While she was working on a graveling a pathway and singing a song to entertain her though her work, Amadeo met her. He was so captivated by her and her music he had to have her. Since, Hortensia was so young the naïve, she fell for Amadeo's "recitation of seduction, all of which [Amadeo] could have omitted because the girl was simple... she did not understand the meaning of his words." After their brief encounter, he left her village not even knowing the girl's name. She was the one who came running to look for him because he was such an important part of her life now. Since Amadeo knew she was simple minded and she was in love with him,