The Time Of The Butterflies Patria Character Analysis

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.” Stated by French poet, Victor Hugo. He is stating that people should have the right to rebel against a dictatorship. When a country is under a dictator, people should speak out and fight for their independence. Some will accept the fate of the dictator and become weakened by it, but some will choose to stand up against it. Speaking out for your independence is demonstrated in the person Minerva Mirabal, from the novel In the Time of the Butterflies. In In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, Minerva Mirabal is shown as a strong woman who is able to stand up to the dictator, Trujillo. Minerva Mirabal is living in the Dominican Republic at

In the Time of the Butterflies, a novel by Julia Alvarez, takes place in the Dominican Republic during the time of the Trujillo regime. The main characters are four sisters, Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and Dedé, who fight against Trujillo’s oppression. All of them except for Dedé get killed in the end by Trujillo. A great amount of violence occurs over the course of the novel.

The Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo had thousands of people killed because of their disobedience to him. From the 1930s to 1960s the country was under the control of Trujillo. He had taken control of the Dominican Republic and used his power against people who decided not to follow him and his laws. The four Mirabal sisters, Minerva, Patria, Mate, and Dede were all risking their lives because of their involvement in the underground, against their harsh dictator. In the book In the time of the Butterflies, the four Mirabal sisters perspectives are impacted by the underground movement against Trujillo because of each of their involvement with the revolution.

This image illustrates how Trujillo's system truly brunts the lives of Patria, her sisters, and their fellow people. To them, Trujillo is almost godlike. He usually gives them arcane commandments, smites those who contravene his power, and is delimited by wealth. Patria shows her disbelief in how callously God is behaving toward her because of her child's death. Throughout In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez’s Patria Mirabal develops from an optimistic young Catholic girl to a woman who doubts; subsequently, that educators can further come to understand the influence of God on one’s actions.

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”.

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.

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 the novel In the Time of the Butterflies, written by Julia Alvarez, one of the main characters, Minerva, shows many different types of courage throughout the whole story. The novel is about the true story of how a family is dominated by their countries dictator and the daughters attempt to free themselves and their family.

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

In conclusion, In the Time of the Butterflies, is a very touching and breathtaking book that embedded the historical event into a chronological story that showed the symbolic and thematic topics that occurred in the time periods the book was set in which was from 1930’s-1990’s where Dede was telling the

“The moment I understood her hatred, my family had not been personally hurt by Trujillo just as before losing my baby. Jesus had not taken anything away from me. There was the Perozos, not a man left in that family and Martinez Reyna and his wife murdered in their bed and thousands of Haitians murdered at the border. Making the river they say still red. I had heard but not believed. How could our all loving father let us suffer? I looked up challenging him and the two faces merged” (Alvarez 53).

“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 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’

During other visits with Mariana, Estrella and Mariana de la Luz would run into their brothers, which is how they first met Pancha (short for Francisca)—José Manuel’s wife. Pancha, with a deep voice, told both sisters that despite her childhood poverty and limitations in La Libertad Parte Alta’s outskirts “life goes on.” Estrella understood why her youngest brother fell in love with Pancha (aside from her shiny black wavy hair to her waist, large almond-shaped eyes, and olive skin): besides her honest demeanor, like their grandmother’s Mariana, and very much unlike their mother’s demeanor, there were other complicated reasons involved. She was a year older than him, and both obtained parental approval to get married, as he was 15 and she was

The Christening of Danielle, the granddaughter of Joseph Demonte and Martha his former wife had brought the family together for the first time in many years. Joseph and Marth had had only one child in the course of their marriage, Dominick Demonte, now married to Martina Marchese-Demonte with whom he had sustained a long term relationship in Buenos Aires, before their marriage in 2007. Life has blessed them with two beautiful girls, Daniella, one-year old and Lina three and a half. This memorable day kept them not only busy, but, also aware of their family commitments. Perhaps, it had borne more relevance for Dominick; Danielle’s baptism had brought the family together in a celebration that could have no future parallel.