Vanity And Obsession In 'Trujillo' By Julia Alvarez
In the short story Norma by Sonia Sanchez, Sonia is in middle school. She does not have a very good math teacher, Mr. Castor, who does not really help his students. Sonia loves french class, but one day Norma snapped at the teacher and left the room. Sonia kind of look up to Norma, so after she did not like french, Sonia started to dislike french class. Which is sad because that was one of Norma’s favorite classes.
In Isabel Allende’s short story, “The Proper Respect,” she artfully conveys the theme that the way to carve a path to the true top of society is thick with deception, and she does this to create a biting criticism of popularity in the modern era. As Allende describes Abigail’s accumulation of wealth and luxury, she notes that “By then, she was obese, laden with jewels, the spit and image of Nero.” (229). Allende artfully paints with her diction a tone of scathing disapproval. By describing Abigail as “the image of Nero”, Allende is ascribing the nature of a murderous, self-indulgent madman to her.
It can be said without question that the Mirabal sisters made extreme sacrifices in the name of social justice. They gave up their time, their energy, their families, their safety, and finally, their lives. But did those sacrifices really make a difference? After all, they were killed before they could see Trujillo’s regime topple. And the sisters arguably did little to impact Trujillo’s reign and his assassination several months after their deaths.
Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies is a work of historical fiction set in the Dominican Republic that focuses on the four Mirabal sisters who bond together to rebel against the corrupt leader of their country, Rafael Trujillo. The four Mirabal sisters, Patria, Dedé, Minerva, and María Teresa form closer relationships with each other as they figure out a way to bring down the tyranny of Rafael Trujillo. Although they have a mutual goal, each of the Mirabal sisters has different feelings and thoughts throughout this time period. The theme of coming-of-age and identify is best exemplified through the character of María Teresa, known as Mate, through the ways she matures throughout the novel and becomes her own person who stands up for what she believes in.
Women’s struggle for power in a patriarchal society has been a monumental fight throughout the ages, and even now women around the world fight for the right to simple rights like an education, and voice within society. In Julia Alvarez's book In the Time of the Butterflies the character Minerva Mirabel portrays women’s fight for power through her own personal struggle for power in her home against her father, and in the Dominican Republic society against Trujillo, and patriarchal norms of the time. Minerva’s struggle for power in her family is displayed through her thoughts and actions concerning her father’s patriarchal rule of his household, and her going against what was assumed to be the way a daughter was supposed to behave. She doesn’t follow her father blindly, and trust him simply because of his authority, she treats him as someone equal to her.
Her mother says “No flies fly into a closed mouth”, metaphorically meaning that as long as one does not speak out, that person can not get into trouble (par. 21). Trujillo also demanded tributes, and her parents had to simply comply without protest, or else they could leave the country. Alvarez also has conflicting thoughts when contemplating whether or not to publish her second novel, “could I really put my work above the lives of human beings...if I shut up, wouldn't I still be fanning the embers of dictatorship with its continuing power of censorship” (29). This suggests that she is also being affected by Trujillo’s mandate of silence continued by her
In In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez utilizes the power struggle between Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic in 1994 and the Mirabal sisters, who try to overthrow the government, as a means to demonstrate the power struggle the people faced during this time period of Trujillo’s reign. Trujillo is a man who thrives on power and put spies in place to make sure that none of the people were even hinting towards a revolt. When Papa makes a snide comment about Trujillo being a female ruler, in that moment, “the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security” (Alvarez 10). This was the beginning of the end of three out of the four Mirabal sisters. Trujillo posts his face on every newspaper, book cover, and anything that people commonly use in order to promote how great he is.
The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.
" Guayabera: The Mexican Wedding Shirt | The Art of Manliness. " The Art of Manliness.
Assimilating into a new society is difficult and full of plight, but when you are leaving a dangerous country into an unfamiliar one, then that is when all hell breaks loose. “The Daughters of Invention” illustrates the family struggles of Julia Alvarez and her family back in the 1960s. Alvarez’s family left Trujillo’s harsh dictatorship after Alvarez’s father attempted plot to overthrow Trujillo was revealed. Rafael Trujillo was a dictator that turned Dominican Republic into a horror environment. People feared their lives and futures.
The theme of "Chee's Daughter" by Juanita Platero and Siyowin Miller is the struggle between traditional and modern ways of life. Throughout the story, this conflict is evident in the way the protagonist, Old Lady, grapples with her responsibilities as a Navajo woman and her desire to pursue her education. In one scene, Old Lady's father tells her, "You are a woman, and you have a place here... you have work to do here that is as important as anything you could learn in school" (Platero and Miller). This quote illustrates the traditional expectations placed on Old Lady as a Navajo woman.
Lola takes advantage of her deteriorating mother whose illness represents the declining hold of the norms over Lola. Since her mom “will have trouble lifting her arms over her head for the rest of her life,” Lola is no longer afraid of the “hitting” and grabbing “by the throat” (415,419). As a child of a “Old World Dominican Mother” Lola must be surrounded by traditional values and beliefs that she does not want to claim, so “as soon as she became sick” Lola says, “I saw my chance and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and I eventually took it” (416). When taking the opportunity to distinguish herself from the typical “Dominican daughter” or ‘Dominican slave,” she takes a cultural norm like long hair and decides to impulsively change it (416). Lola enjoyed the “feeling in [her] blood, the rattle” that she got when she told Karen to “cut my hair” (418).
“How has the author implemented stereotypical gender roles to reflect the society at the time?” Love in the time of cholera is a novel written in 1985, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The novel was written to expose the society during the time. This was done through a range of different techniques. One method is the implementation of the honour system and stereotypical gender roles.
In Julio Polanco’s poem, “Identity”, the author develops the theme that one should be true to himself through the extended metaphor of ugly weeds feeling beautiful. The narrator wanted to be freed from the burden and pressure of trying to fit in so he’d “rather be a tall, ugly weed” (Palanco). This expresses the idea that inward appearance trumps outward appearance and inner beauty is achieved through being yourself. The metaphor conveys how he wanted freedom and to live an adventurous life without being forced to be something other than himself and that had a greater meaning than beauty.
Throughout Miguel de Cervantes novel, Don Quixote, there is a fine line between reality and illusion that seems to vanish portraying a prominent theme in the novel. Don Quixote de La Mancha, a fifty-year-old man, has an insane obsession in reading chivalry books; he is so absorbed in reading these books that he decides to become a knight-errant himself that will set off on adventures for his eternal glory. These books of chivalry have left Don Quixote so deep within his fantasy that there is no risk of him perceiving true reality. There are a plethora of examples where Don Quixote 's perceived reality is his idealistic fantasies. Cervantes expresses these complexities so much that we begin to notice the social criticism Don Quixote receives from people he encounters.
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