The Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez

“Day of the Butterfly” by Alice Munro is a story involving two girls and their short lasting friendship. In their sixth grade class, Myra does not socialize. She spends most of her time taking care and watching her little brother Jimmy. For the first time in years one of her classmates, Helen, feels slightly bad for her and makes an effort to connect with her. Right after their meeting, Myra is sick with leukemia and she becomes the most talked about person among her peers. They visit her in the hospital bringing gifts and kind words. Helen also brings a gift for her but feels that everything her classmates have given Myra are “guilt-tinged offerings”. They have similarities and differences. Myra and Helen are both are poor and

As the great Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” The book In the Time of the Butterflies is about a family of four girls who are living in the Dominican Republic under a very dangerous dictator. They rebel against him and the government to join a revolution along with many other people from the Dominican. In In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez uses the characterization of Patria to demonstrate the danger of passive religious belief.

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.

Believing that there are things worth risking your life for is a quality that is well respected.

In the Time of the Butterflies during the 1940s, in the Dominican Republic, the ruler or dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo punished people if they didn’t do as he told them and plenty of other cruel things. He ruled for about 30 years, so the people were tortured for quite a long time. He became the dictator by eliminating everyone who had power above him. He even married his wives just to use them to get the the top and control everyone. It was just an unfair way to handle things and an unfair country overall. In her book, “In the Time of the Butterflies,” Julia Alvarez incorporates the history of the famous Mirabal sisters by telling the history of their life and how it was back then for their Dominican Republic country. Julia Alvarez

Grief and tragedy not only change you, but also reveal who you truly are. A transformation of faith, especially through anguish, is a theme throughout the story that binds many of the characters together, but impacts Patria’s life most prominently. In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, depicts the life of woman who goes from an aspirant nun, to a person with a lack of faith, and then back to having a strong faith in her religion. Events within the novel constituted these changes in Patria’s life with examples being her husband’s influence, the miscarriage of her third child, and the family pilgrimage which acted as a rekindling.

Within the novel, “In the Time of the Butterflies,” Mate, Minerva, Dede, and Patria had to create decisions to overcome obstacles that would transform each of their lives. Throughout the book, all of the sisters changed somehow. They all grew up, matured, and saw things how they never viewed before. While looking at these things at a different perception, they learned to make decisions that were sometimes brave and sometimes cowardly. Each of the Mirabal sisters had to choose whether or not to be fearful and give up, or be courageous and stand her ground, or make sacrifices to show her strength throughout the novel.

Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, the four Mirabal sisters lived under Trujillo’s rule before

Death is a word associated with loss, grief and sadness, but in the novel In the Time of the Butterflies we see death in a whole new perspective; martyrdom. Strong, independent, caring, honest, and having firm beliefs are all characteristics we see in a martyr especially in Patria. In the novel we explore the wonders of Julia Alvarez’s writing and get to witness Patria as a martyr and an individual who fought for the right of women against a dictator: Trujillo.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (Andre Gide) In the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, written by Julia Alvarez, four sisters are led through a risk infested journey in which they must overcome hindrances with hollow consequences. This historical fiction novel takes us through a rollercoaster of events, incorporating everything from the partialities towards women, to life below the oppressive administration of the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo. The events painted by the four sisters give us some insight as to the positives and negatives of life in the Dominican Republic. As the novel progresses, we see the diversity in relation to the

In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, the novel contained many text to world connections such as mafias and dictatorships by portraying the effects of disobeying the orders of a dictator. In chapter two, Minerva was talking to a peer, Sinita, about how Sinita’s family was destroyed by Dictator Trujilio. Trujillo killed Sinita’s brother, father and uncles once he found out that the men turned their back against him. This is once Minerva found out that the leader they look up too is a murder. In today’s world, if a person turns their back against a gang ruler or a sovereign would the person themselves and their family would end up dead.

Rafael Trujillo, a Dominican dictator, developed a harsh reputation as being one of the most violent and domineering leaders of South America in his thirty-one years of power. In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez provides insight into the effects of Trujillo’s infamy by sharing the stories of three Dominican sisters and their struggles to gain independence and speak their truth. The Dominican-American author dramatizes the lives of the Mirabal sisters, three historical women who were assassinated in 1961, for their involvement in the anti-Trujillo movement. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, a Cuban critic of Latin American literature, provides a bias insight with regards to the novel.

heroine from the book In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. There were four

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.

“In the Time of the Butterflies” takes place in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. The author, Julia Alvarez is a native of the country, but moved to the US at a young age. She first heard about the sisters roughly around 1986 and instantly felt the need to share their story with the world. In the book, Alvarez tells the story of the Mirabal sisters and their fight for freedom against the Dominican dictator Trujillo. Rafael Trujillo reigned for about 30 years until his assassination in May of 1961. Trujillo’s reign of terror began in 1930 and the violence soon followed. The self centered dictator changed the names of cities and murdered roughly about 20,000 Haitians from the neighboring country. The book not only tells the sisters’