In The Time of Butterflies

                                              

An interesting skillfully pearled fiction “In the Time of Butterflies” is a good flashback sorrowful book about the Mirabal sisters. I think this novel is an interesting novel, as you read through it; you get more involved in it. At the same time, I think it’s confusing. It’s hard to understand it if you only read it once. It’s probably somehow connected to all the families at the time, when Haitian had to go through from their bad times and suffered every moment of their lives. By reading this book, we can imagine that how bad it was. The novel starts with a very sorrowful line, which is an indication to death of three sisters. “She is plucking her bird of paradise of its dead branches (pg. 1)”. “She” refers to Dede, the surviving sister and “dead branches” refers to the three dead sisters. Dede is the one who is still not over with the tragedy that happened with her family. She is tries hard everyday to move on, but even trying doesn’t help.  As much as she tries to get over with, she gets stuck even more. Julia Alverez, the one who brought this story out to the world by interviewing Dede. Dede starts the story with recalling the time, when her father, mother, and three sisters were very happy together in their own little life. She starts out with telling about their personalities, behaviors, believes, and their dreams. Then she talks about them individually. Minerva is first sister she talks about. Minerva was more like an independent, self-centered, and stubborn girl. I think I like her character more than the other sisters. She is more like a person, who usually raise questions on others view. She likes being free without any restriction. “The four of us had to ask permission for everything” (pg. 11). Her voice is like “why”, why should we listen to others, why can’t we just be free. I think she is more of a freedom person, because of incident about a rabbit. I mean, she wants everyone to be free. May be, because she thinks of freedom a lot, it was very shocking for her, when she finds out about this Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Then comes Maria Teresa, the young innocent spoiled sister. She is the youngest innocent sister, so doesn’t think deeply about the situations. She likes to thinks about her pleasures, especially her clothes. Dede talks about her beauty. She says, “She’s always getting compliment when we walk on the street”.  At last Patria, who is kind of similar to her mother. Her language tells us that she is very religious. “No one had to tell me to believe in God or to love everything that lives” (44). Her language was an indication to the church or I should say becoming a nun, but her destiny was not that. She ends up falling in love with Pedrito, who she looks up to as her Jesus and got married. So, this was a little bit of introduction to these sisters. But, I really want to find out the significance of the butterflies. I mean even in the other books, I read something related to the butterflies. I wonder why authors use this word a lot. The other thing, I am looking forward to that how Dede survived and other three sisters died. I hope to read the whole novel and find this out. I think it’s a great novel. It’s a truth of someone’s life, which is very painful. I think Dede is sharing her sorrows with others, probably because it may give her some relieve form the pain. Because it’s said, “sharing helps”.