In the Time of the Butterflies

Enrique Mirabal died as a result of his harsh treatment in prison and his failing health owing to the heart attack he had there. Though he doesn't die until 1953, this family still says that it's...

Maria Teresa changes throughout Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of the Butterflies from an individual who values material goods and popularity to someone who values love for her family. This...

As María Teresa (Mate) writes in her journal accounts, Manolo and Minerva explain to her why they are called butterflies. Now that they are part of an underground movement opposing the repressive...

In chapter 9, Julia Alvarez writes: So when she saw her three sisters coming down the path that afternoon, she felt pure dread. It was as if the three fates were approaching, their scissors poised...

In the Time of the Butterflies presents the story of the four Mirabal sisters. Their father, Enrique Mirabal, is a farmer who tries to stay out of trouble. He avoids involvement in any activities...

In her work, The Time of the Butterflies, Alvarez tells of the Mirabal sisters' death as narrated by Dede and told to her by various people. There existed different accounts of their death even by...

This novel has a unique structure in that the first chapter is told in the present day from the voice of Dede, the only surviving Maribel sister who reflects back on the past and on her sisters'...

Dedé spends a great deal of time trying to keep her sisters’ memories alive. Recall how at the beginning of the story, she shows pictures of her sisters to the interviewer and recounts stories...

As a young girl of 10, Maria Theresa keeps a diary as a way to record her personal secrets, as many young girls do. In another diary she records her college years, and in a third her six months in...

1. In Chapter Five the girls, Dede and Minerva, finish their work at their father's shop and head to Tio [Uncle] Pepe's where they will play volleyball with their friends. But, Minerva has invited...

Dede is the oldest and only surviving Mirabal sister. For much of the time, it seems of the four daughters, Dede is the least committed to the revolution. Dede "had always been the docile middle...

If you look back carefully at Chapter Five of this amazing novel, you can see that the animosity that exists between Dede and Minerva has its roots in the conflict they have over a man. When...

In my opinion, Patricia is the character that goes through the most dramatic changes in the novel. Patricia changes from religious, to being in love, to losing a child, to losing her faith, to...

Minerva and Dede are both beautiful and intelligent women. Their personalities are vastly different, however. Minerva is outgoing and assertive, and chafes at the confines of home and family....

In the Time of the Butterflies is a historical fiction novel written by Julia Alvarez. The narrative centers around a fictionalized account of the Mirabel sisters, four revolutionaries and...

In Chapter 6, Minerva discovers that her father has a mistress and four other daughters. She also finds that he has been hiding letters to her from Lio. When she confronts him, her father defends...

Chapter 1 of In the Time of Butterflies contains a lot of descriptive details that reveal hidden meanings and predict what is to come later in the novel. For example, in the beginning of the novel,...

The Trujillo regime is built around a cult of personality. In In the Time of the Butterflies, Rafael Trujillo, brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, presents himself as a wise, benevolent...

Maria Teresa writes, "I asked Minerva why she was doing such a dangerous thing. And then, she said the strangest thing. She wanted me to grow up in a free country. "'And it isn't that already?'...

One of Dede's weaknesses is her capitulation to the "rule" of men. Unlike Minerva, Dede believes in the authority of patriarchy. In Chapter Five, she disapproves of Minerva's crossing the line in...

Probably the most notable difference between Dede and Minerva is in their personalities, especially as concerns their levels of assertiveness in making decisions. Minerva is adventurous and...

On April 11, 1960, Maria Teresa is tortured at La 40; in undated journals between the 10th and the 16th, she recovers from her ordeal. When Maria Teresa is incarcerated by the Servicio de...

Minerva is intelligent and determined. From a young age, she desires to become a lawyer, but her ambitions are thwarted because her father dispproves. She does eventually achieve her law degree,...

The unsettling realization about Virgilio, nicknamed Lio, that Dede comes to is that he is really a Communist. Lio is "a radical young man" who, for a period of time, was a close friend of the...

Minerva is arguably the lead protagonist of the novel and shows many acts of bravery and courage throughout the novel. As a young woman she defiantly slaps Trujillo for what she considers...

In Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, Maria Teresa, "Mate", the youngest of the butterfly sisters, matures from innocent child, preoccupied with pretty, trivial things, to brave freedom...

Dede is at first very suspicious of the American interviewer. She has been enduring the questions about her sisters, "Las Mariposas" (the butterflies) for over fifty years (1943-1994,...

The Mirabel sisters are faced with several conflicts throughout the novel. Internally each young woman struggles with becoming who she desires to be while remaining loyal to her family wanted her...

Loaded dice are dice that are improperly balanced, so that the player who uses them has an unfair advantage. In the latter part of Chapter 6, Minerva gambles with the dictator Trujillo, using dice...

In Julia Alvarez's book, In the Time of Butterflies, there are several symbols. First, as noted in the title, butterflies are significant. (This supports the theme of "change and transformation.")...

During her last year at Immaculada, Minerva befriends Hilda, a "really rude" young lady who "wears trousers and a beret slanted on her head like she is Michelangelo". Hilda lives in town but...

It rains often in In the Time of the Butterflies, which is not surprising, as rain symbolizes the onset of trouble in this novel and trouble comes frequently to the Mirabals as they oppose the...

Chapter 9 in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies describes Dede's final interaction with her interviewer, as well as her final decision to not join the underground movement. As all of...

Virgilio "Lío" Morales is introduced by Dedé's narration in chapter 5 of In The Time of the Butterflies. In this recollection,he meets Dedé and Minerva Mirabal at their father's shop. By Lío's...

In chapter 10, Patria discusses the horror of watching the SIM, which is Trujillo's secret police force, arrest numerous people she loves. At first, her husband, Pedrito, and her son, Nelson, are...

At the beginning of Chapter Seven (1953-1958), Maria Teresa is very depressed, writing "I feel like dying" because she has been mourning the death of her father. On December 31, she starts her...

In the novel In the Time of the Butterflies, Dede is the middle sister in the Mirabal family unit of four sisters. Unlike her outspoken and revolutionary sisters, Dede is a play-it-safe kind of...

In The Time of the Butterflies, the Dominican people experience Trujillo's abuse of power when they are forced to suffer through his unchallenged decisions. Early in the novel, Minerva learns...

In chapter five Dede narrates to the interviewer(1994) a story concerning Virgiho Morales (Lio). She was romantically interested in Lio during his youth. After that, the story goes back to 1948....

Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of Butterflies tells the story of the three Mirabal sisters: Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa. María Teresa, nicknamed Mate, is the youngest of the sisters....

Although it might seem that the revolution causes the dissolution of Dede's marriage, I think that in reality it merely exposes weaknesses that are there already. As Dede muses in Chapter 1,...

Dede Mirabal's husband, Jaimito, brands his three sons with his own name. Their first names are all Jaime as well, so they have to go by their middle names--Enrique, Rafael, and David. This is a...

You might want to look in the first Chapter and at Dede's reminiscence of the family time together in the garden at night. There is one excerpt from this chapter that really helps to set the scene...

Because this novel is written in a way that uses all four sisters' voices as individual narrators of their part of the story, you could examine the difference in tone between the four sisters. The...

"El Jefe" wasn't just a physical entity; rather, the Dominican people considered it a metaphysical force that could be conjured up by simply thinking a non-approved thought. "God...

Patria alludes to the "crown of thorns" to describe her torment in the days and weeks after her sisters, husband, and son are rounded up by the Trujillo's police force, the SIM....