What are two significant quotes from chapters 9 and 10 of "In the Time of the Butterflies"?

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 to snip the knot that was keeping Dede's life from falling apart.

This quote shows the overall theme of fate that echoes throughout the novel. No matter how much the characters try to improve things and have better lives, they're unable to in most cases. Bad things still happen. Dedé's sisters still die trying to fight for a better life for their people. Dedé is still forced to live without them.

In chapter 10, Alvarez writes:

I guess I saw it as a clear-cut proposition I was making El Jefe. He would ask for what he always asked for from women. I could give that. But there would be no limit to what our Lord would want of Patria Mercedes, body and soul and all the etceteras besides.

With a baby still tugging at my breast, a girl just filling out, and my young-man son behind bars, I wasn't ready to enter His Kingdom.

Patria is thinking of ways to save her loved ones and readily admits that she's willing to give to El Jefe what she isn't willing to give to God. There's an irony in it because Patria, like all her sisters except for Dedé, dies in defiance of El Jefe. Even though she knows she isn't ready to die and leave her children behind, she's ready to give herself to the man she hates who has damaged her family to save them. It's that bravery that pushes her to rebel against El Jefe but also that ultimately gets her killed.

What are two significant quotes from chapters 9 and 10 of "In the Time of the Butterflies"?

I'm fond of the following lines:"Only much later did she realize she had forgotten to put any seeds in the ground."
This is chapter 9, about Dede, and is nicely symbolic of her upset. And, of course, the first line of chapter 10 is nice:
"I don't know how it happened that my cross became bearable."(Patria) Nicely ironic.

What are the main points and summary of Chapter 9 in In the Time of the Butterflies?

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 Dede's chapters begin in the present, 1994, chapter nine concludes Dede's interview in the present. The chapter opens with Dede insisting that the interviewer can stay longer, even though she has recited a line of a poem that indicates the night is late: "And the shades of night begin to fall, and the traveler hurries home, and the campesino bids his fields farewell" (171). This line cycles back to Dede at the end of the chapter, revealing its true significance.

In the meantime, Dede ends her interview, and as the interviewer is leaving, Minou arrives from visiting Fela. She insists that Fela has said that the girls won't come anymore because they are finally at rest. However, Dede reassures Minou that the girls are actually with her that evening and will return to give her more messages in the future. Minou then asks Dede if she can ask her any question, as she does with Fela. Dede agrees to this, knowing the question in advance. Of course, Minou asks her why she didn't go along with the other sisters' involvement in the underground movement. Dede then flashes back to 1960, when she decided to not join her sisters.

Dede's first encounter with the movement is when Patria asks her to hide boxes in her fields. However, Jaimito refuses to permit this, and furthermore, he demands that Dede stay away from her sisters. Yet Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa soon come to Dede to ask her directly to join the movement, leaving Dede to make her decision.

Initially, Dede vows to leave Jaimito and join her sisters. She romanticizes about when she first met Lio and imagines "Lio's surprise at hearing Dede had joined her sisters" (181). However, Dede is torn over the potential reality of losing her boys if she leaves Jaimito, and therefore, she seeks the advice of the priest. After insisting that she see the priest despite Jaimito's lack of permission, she discovers the priest, Padre de Jesus, is involved in the underground movement. She realizes that he will of course encourage her to leave Jaimito and join the movement. Yet her greater realization is that it is not Jaimito preventing her from joining the movement, but fear—"She was afraid, plain and simple, just as she had been afraid to face her powerful feelings for Lio" (184).

Upon returning home from the priest, Dede discovers that Jaimito has taken her boys to the house of his mother, Dona Leila. She immediately enlists the help of Minerva and Manolo in getting Jaimito to return the boys. To break the tension between everyone, Manolo suggests that Jaimito and Dede take a second honeymoon, which they do, sealing Dede's decision to remain with Jaimito.

After their trip, "the roundup started," and Leandro, Pedrito, Nelson, and Manolo are arrested and taken to prison. The sisters believe the worst is over, with their husbands taken and houses ransacked, but then Minerva and Maria Teresa are also arrested. Dede finds out about Minerva's arrest when she is trying to bring Minerva money to help with her debt. Dede and Jaimito immediately drive to Mama's house to find Maria Teresa being taken away. They follow her but fail to bring her back home.

Jaimito and Dede make plans to petition for the release of Minerva and Maria Teresa the following day. Meanwhile, Patria leads a rosary. That night, Dede struggles to fall asleep, and as she lies awake, she recognizes that she "could not run away" (198) and instead has to "fortify her spirit" (198). She begins to recite the line of the poem from the beginning of the chapter and remembers both a cool night and Minerva's tactic to remain sane in prison by reciting lines from poems or songs. Dede confuses in her mind "Minerva's exercise and her poem about the falling of night" (199), leaving her with both a childhood memory and "the premonition" (199) that she is entering "the center of hell" (199). Either way, though, her fate is bound up with that of her sisters—not directly, but indirectly, in that the loss of her sisters is a loss of a part of Dede.

What is a powerful quotation from Chapter 9 of In the Time of the Butterflies and why?

The chapter concludes with: “A dark night was falling, one of a different order from the soft, large, kind ones of childhood under the anacahuita tree, Papa parceling out futures and Mama fussing at this drinking.  This one was something else, the center of hell maybe, the premonition of which made Dede draw closer to Jaimito until she, too, fell asleep.”  This is important because it refers back to Dede’s story in Chapter One, which talks about the time before “the darkness” fell, the time when things were still good, characterized by the family sitting outside, under the anacahuita tree,  talking about the future, just a little conscious but not overly worried about the stranglehold Trujillo held over the country. In this present scene Dede is frightened because the SIM have arrested many in her family, and her own marriage almost broke up, although now she feels somewhat safe lying in bed next to her husband. In bed next to him she feels a moment of safety that she knows is not safe at all, because she realizes the extent of the revolution, is afraid of the events that will inevitably happen, and she feels helpless to hold back the terrifying future.

What are the top important quotes in "In the Time of the Butterflies"?

I am adding four more quotes to the list; I hope these help.

"As for the sisters of legend, wrapped in superlatives and ascended into myth, they were finally also inaccessible to me. I realized, too, that such deification was dangerous, the same god-making umpulse that had created our tyrant. And ironically, by making them myth, we lost the Mirabals once more, dismissing the challenge of their courage as impossible for us, ordinary men and women" (from the postcript, page 324).

"Minerva is up to her old tricks again. She wraps a towel around the radio and lies under the bed listening to illegal stations.

Today she was down there for hours. There was a broadcast of a speech by this man Fidel, who is trying to overturn their dictator over in Cuba. Minerva has big parts memorized. Now, instead of her poetry, she's alwasy reciting, Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me!"

I am so hoping that now that Minerva has found a special someone, she'll settle down. I mean, I agree with her ideas and everything. I think people should be kind to each other and share what they have. But never in a million years would I take up a gun and force people to give up being mean" (page 123).

What are the top important quotes in "In the Time of the Butterflies"?

Fifty?? How about five? :)

Minerva, Ch 2. :"The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn't believe in the hammer." (*Until pain is made real, it seems like it will never happen to you.")

Minerva, Ch 6:"I know the clouds have already rained."(To her father; Minerva has discovered his other family; the deed cannot be undone.)

Dede, Ch 8 (to interviewer): "I followed my husband. I didn't get involved." (*This is Dede's huge regret in life; her decision not to act in a cause she knows is just leaves her the sole survivor of the four sisters. It is clear that Dede, until the very end,if she had to do it over again, would chose to act and die with her sister.)

Patria, Ch. 8: "I scrambled to a little niche where a statue of the Virgencita was standing, and begging her pardon, I knocked her and her pedestal over." (*This is an important moment for Patria, who realizes that religion is not found in icons, but in passions.)

Maria Teresa, Ch. 11: "May I never experience all that it is possible to get used to." (*Human beingscan learn to accept all kinds of horrible living conditions.)