Summary Of Julia Alvarez's Novel In The Time Of The Butterflies

Julia Alvarez’s novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, immediately grabbed my attention and intrigued me by the first page. I have never read a book that has brought me so much sorrow yet so much inspiration. Several of the stories in this novel, made me think about how hard it would be to live under a dictatorship. Even though it was very hard to read, I was inspired to be kind to everyone because you never know what someone is going through. We as humans also need to think of those who are living in fear for their lives in dictated countries. This book was very eye opening for me because I realized that there is a lot of suffering that goes on in the world. A section of the book that caught my attention was when Minerva was the narrator. The scene that mainly caught my attention was when Minerva meets a little girl named Sinita. Sinita is described to be “a skinny girl with a sour

In the first chapter of the novel, Dede recalls a time when her father bad mouthed their dictator, Trujillo, and was scared the spies heard. After Papa says, this Dede states that “Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them to Security”(Alvarez 9). It is devastating to think that Dede's father could not even talk freely in his own home. I cannot imagine how much fear people who live under a dictatorship live in. It was so hard for me to think that if they got caught for having an opinion, they would be killed. In America, people post and openly express their opinions about our government every day, and nothing bad happens to them. Because of this, we often forget that people live in fear because of their country's leader. Trujillo is an evil man who kills people yet everyone must worship and obey him. That concept is alarming to me especially after reading about how he killed Sinita’s brother and multiple