The Moths Helena Maria Viramontes Summary

The story “Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of Mexicans in a Chicago neighborhood. She depicts the life that women endure as Latino wives through her portrayal of the protagonist, Cleofilas. For Cisneros being a Mexican-American has given her a chance to see life from two different cultures. In addition, Cisneros has written the story from a woman’s perspective, illustrating the types of conflicts many women face as Latino wives. This unique paradigm allows the reader to examine the events and characters using a feminist critical perspective.

Out from the kitchen and into the world, women are making a better name for themselves. Although humankind tends to be male dominated, men are not the only species that inhabit the world that they live on. In Julia Alvarez's novel In the Time of the Butterflies, the women of the Dominican Republic are expected to grow up to be housewives and lacking a formal education. Women may be cherished like national treasures, but they are not expected to fulfill their truest potentials as human beings.

In the story "Woman Hollering Creek" Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleofilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally .Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. Cisneros has been famous about writing stories about the latino culture and how women are treated; she explain what they go through as a child, teen and when they are married; always dominated by men because of how the culture has been adapted. "Woman Hollering Creek" is one of the best examples. A character who grows up without a mother and who has no one to guid and give her advise about life.

In the short story “The Moths” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the author uses symbolism and characterization to paint the scene of a girl in a literary fiction that has lost her way and ends up finding herself within her Grandmother through the cycles of life. Through the eyes of an unnamed girl we relive a past that has both a traumatic ending and a new leash on life; however, we do not get there without first being shown the way, enter “The Moths”.

Annie Dillard’s piece “The Death of the Moth”, is about Dillard being reminded of the death of a moth she observes and how it relates to herself, this piece is a great depiction of the impact of life and death. Dillard describes her surroundings living in a rural area and within her bathroom is a spider which Dillard reminds of a moth that she killed in her past when she sees the web that the spider has spun and how it has caught many bugs including two moths. She is intrigued by the dead moth’s bodies and givings a vivid description of the bodies While describing the moth’s dead torn body she relates it to a personal experience from her past where she watched a moth die with candle two years ago. Dillard described the burning moth in vivid

Social standards may confine individuals from pursuing their own personal interests. Through the relationship between societal standards and individual interests, Sandra Cisneros’ short story, “Woman Hollering Creek,” introduces the roles of men and women in a Hispanic culture. The protagonist, Cleofilas Hernandez, is trapped in an abusive relationship with her newly-wed husband, Juan Pedro. However, Cleofilas tolerates the toxic relationship due to the social norms of her society, which reveals that the Hispanic culture revolves around a patriarchal society and that women have to be submissive to their husbands. As the story progresses, Cleofilas abandons the gender norm to lead an independent lifestyle.

The Moths by Helena Maria Viramontes is a short story about a relationship between a teenage girl and her abuelita. Although, the title seems unfitting for a story about a loving relationship between family members the significance of the moths, in this story, has a much deeper meaning than one would think. Like many other aspects of the piece, the insects have a symbolic meaning in order to convey the author’s feelings during the time of her grandmother’s death. Throughout the story we see the use of multiple descriptions, settings, as well as dialogue in order to pass a message to the audience. The Moths is not only a story about death and brokenness, but a story about cures and peace. Upon further examination of this narrative, the story presents symbolic attributes about the main characters personalities, descriptions, and religious imagery that tell the story about a cure for brokenness, a rebirth of hope, and coming of age.

Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of the Butterflies shows the lack of fairness in society and the importance of maintaining a strong family bond. Trujillo was not fair between men and women and granting men the rights to do whatever they want. The Mirabal sisters’ revolutionary against president Trujillo and fighting for freedom of the country and its people. In Saudi Arabia women are now granted to drive, but there some other things that men can do but women cannot. The Mirabal family has a strong maintain of a family bond. Minerva is one of the four sisters who is brave and had the courage to stand for others and started the revolution against the president.

In “Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Transvestite in the New World” by Catalina de Erauso, a female-born transvestite conquers the Spanish World on her journey to disguise herself as a man and inflicts violence both on and off the battlefield. Catalina discovers her hidden role in society as she compares herself to her brothers advantage in life, as they are granted money and freedom in living their own lives. Erauso decides to take action of this act of inequality by forming a rebellion, as she pledges to threaten the social order.The gender roles allotted to both men and women in the Spanish world represent the significance of societal expectations in order to identify the importance of gender in determining one’s position in the social order in the Spanish World.

Throughout history women have always been minimized from social, sexual , and political aspects juxtaposed to men. Just like in the novel  In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, the author uses the Mirabal sisters to demonstrate the inequalities set in the Dominican Republic. The dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo causes the Mirabal sisters to come together and overthrow Trujillo’s regime.Trujillo. Rafael Trujillo was despised by many yet many were forced to worship him like some type of paragon. As the novel progresses, illustrations of male dominance often appear throughout each chapter. The Mirabal sisters: Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa and Dede each demonstrate the ability to overcome stigmas in order to obtain freedom.

In the Time of the Butterflies revolves around the Mirabal sisters, women living in a very patriarchal, “macho” society. Their personal struggles are part of the power of their story, as they stand not only as symbols of rebellion against Trujillo, but at the same time as loving, independent women with husbands and children. Alvarez shows how the resistance against women in politics can even be propagated by the women themselves, as both Mamá and Patria initially express sentiments that women are inferior to men, or else are somehow “purer” and so shouldn’t dirty themselves with politics. In talking to the interview woman in the present day, Dedé says that women “followed their husbands,” but she knows that this is an excuse, as she is the

The narrator is never directly introduced or ever called by a name. It is obvious that this narrator is a woman, married to a named John. His name is presented, and not hers, for a reason. It is to present the fact that within herself, within her marriage to John, and within society, she feels unimportant. Within her, she feels as though, she cannot be named like others can, as though she cannot be in the same human category. She doesn't see herself as

A life in the city of Seguin, Texas was not as easy as Cleofilas, the protagonist of the story thought it would be. The author, Cisneros describes the life women went through as a Latino wife through Cleofilas. Luckily, Cisneros is a Mexican-American herself and had provided the opportunity to see what life is like from two window of the different cultures. Also, it allowed her to write the story from a woman’s point of view, painting a vision of the types of problems many women went through as a Latino housewife. This allows readers to analyze the characters and events using a feminist critical view. In the short story “Women Hollering Creek” Sandra Cineros portrays the theme of expectation versus reality not only through cleofilas’s thoughts but also through her marriage and television in order to display how the hardship of women in a patriarchal society can destroy a woman’s life.

In the past, women had less power than men for thousands of years. In other words, men played an essential gender role and controlled people all around the world. Obviously, most leaders were males, and there were more male bosses than female`s in companies. This unequal social injustice has existed all around the world, especially in the Dominican Republic. In this country, men always thought the only responsibility of women was staying at home and taking care of the whole family. In addition, men did not care what women really wanted, and the only way was to force women to do what men asked. In the movie In the Time of the Butterflies, which happened in the Dominican Republic, people struggle under the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo between the 1930`s and 1960`s. In this movie, men play the important gender role that women have no right to apply for university, and they have to be obedient to men. However, women work hard to defeat their oppressed unequal fate and seek feminism, especially for the three Mirabal sisters. The Mirabal sisters are normal women who live in a farm with their parents. Unfortunately, their father is killed by Trujillo, so they become revolutionaries. They lead people to dare to start the revolution against feminist resistance. Although the Mirabal sisters understand they will sacrifice their lives, they never abandon due to their respectable ambition to gain equal rights as men.

There are thousands of Invasive Species trying to make their way in the U.S. many of them being stopped by DNR. Sea lampreys are successfully being controlled, these spices stick to native fish and suck their blood until they kill their host, leaving dead fish carcasses along shores. In 1955, TFM was discovered which kills the sea lamprey without causing harm to the other native species. Since 1956 the United States and Canada have together spent about $15 million annually on monitoring and poisoning sea lamprey. (David, Lodge, Lewis, and Shogren 3) The Gypsy Moths is another invasive species that has been controlled by the DNR throughout the years of introduction. In 1869, gypsy moth had been imported from its native habitat in Europe, escaped