The desire to overcome corruption became a battle for all who lived in those times. The passion that many had and the hope that it was not lost kept them stronger. Now, everyday corruption is not the most popular topic, but it is still present in many places and never talked about. The author makes a connection to a real life story that will confuse and leave you wondering what would have happened if it had happened a different way, she writes this novel to inform the audience of how terrifying it must have been during that time. Although the book In the Time of Butterflies is a historical fiction novel, power has been abused and only the smartest can attempt to fight that battle. The four fearless Mirabal sisters stood up for what was right even if it was against a dictator who always got what he wanted, they found a way to finally overcome him especially with all the damage he had already caused. Unfortunately the sisters were killed because they tried to rebel against him. Before anything happened, Trujillo was planning to kill every single person who attended that nun school and Minerva found out and got angry. Minerva Mirabal was the most heroic of the Mirabal sisters, she was the first of her sisters to join the rebellion, she attended law school and slapped the dictator. The dictator immediately apologized and continued to want Minerva. Minerva knew that with such a powerful dictator she would have to advance her plans, she knew she was taking a big risk by getting into trouble with the most powerful man there was at the time but that didn't stop Minerva from doing what was right , not only for his family but for everyone else who was influenced by Trujillo and his team. She didn't know exactly what to expect, but she knew that if she didn't try she would regret it for the rest of her life. This heroic action pushes the audience to stand up for what you believe is right and not be afraid of any outcome that may come your way. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the Time of Butterflies, the author uses tone to reinforce the central message of how she tries to put herself in the shoes of what people might have felt during that time and in a way she was the interviewer who he saw everything that happened, the tone is very reverent. For example, “possessed by the spirits of girls, you can imagine! People also come from Barahona to talk “through” this black and ebony sibyl with the Mirabal sisters.” He understands the pain and pressure people might feel when under command. In other words, Julia Alvarez uses different tones to show the reader how serious one of those situations can be, she also puts herself in the shoes of each of them because they were all very different and to understand the decisions they made, she had to think like them, that's why the tone of this book is very reverent because what the sisters went through wasn't easy. In the Time of Butterflies the novel about the Mirabal family is divided into three sections, all of these sections involve Dedé discussing her life with an interviewer. The tone of the book is one of action and fun. As the Mirabal sisters choose a dangerous and outspoken path, the book becomes very lively. Through many adventures such as planning the destruction of Trujillo, but also love stories and falling in love with relationships and children, and finally sorrows in which deaths occurred due to corruption and power, the reader is called to a way of life more active with high expectations. The tone of the book is one ofmost important aspects because it makes you feel and gives you a better understanding of what they are going through, the tone of this book was very serious because the sisters have been through a lot, especially because of Trujillo, he was basically the enemy in the book but the book it wasn't just filled with sadness, there were a lot of changes as the girls changed a lot whether it was the way they thought about life or their mindset completely changed. Tone can also allow you to better understand situations where they didn't just have bad times, they experienced moments of growth, they fell in love, some found loyalty, others went through tragedy and pain. Throughout all their adventures you felt like you were part of it because of how relatable the book was, it was very shocking to see how things went because you would never expect it. The book gives the reader unexpected turns that you would never expect to happen. Although the book deals with very dangerous situations that ultimately lead to death, it also somehow manages to maintain a tone of love, loyalty, and pleasure through the sisters' optimism and energy. A tone of willpower definitely comes through, especially shown through the character of Minerva. In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez uses symbolism to reinforce the central message of the corruption they had to deal with. For example, “Trujillo is a devil”, Sinita the one who describes Trujillo as the devil to highlight all the bad things he has done that people see as evil. Trujillo knows that the dictator at that time was the greatest enemy of all, he didn't care if I was innocent, he would always have the floor. In other words, Trujillo's actions contributed to many deaths, in the beginning he showed what he was capable of doing and this made everyone respect and hate him. When Minerva tried to clash with him, she was brave but ended up being her destruction, the power that Trujillo had was very difficult to overcome. Also another type of symbolism in the book would be rain, for example: "Today is a great day, it has been raining since dawn." The rain symbolizes good luck and a new and good beginning is ahead of them, the rain also symbolizes Minerva's new beginning with Manolo and that rain gives them good luck for a long time or as long as they are together. Symbols don't always start with a negative meaning, many symbols show power, good luck or even positive results. The symbolism in the book is very different and involves different things or people, there is not a certain type of symbolism in this book. Symbolism brings ideas and thoughts into the book, that's why it's so important that symbolism has a lot of this novel, it makes it more interesting to the reader and gives us more of a picture of what is happening. Another type of symbolism in the book is the Butterfly, the butterfly symbolizes growth and maturity, first the sisters only had themselves then they met other people with whom they ended up falling in love and one had children and got married, and this shows how much the change can happen in a matter of time. The butterfly also symbolizes strength for all those obstacles that they all had to face together. Also in the book, Minerva explains how she has felt caged her whole life, then she starts comparing herself to the rabbits that her family keeps in cages and then Minerva opens the cage door to one of the rabbits but the rabbit doesn't want to leave and was trying to force it and realizes it was only hurting him and in the end it wasn't like the rabbit at all. Minerva thought that the rabbit was not happy in the cage and was wrong when she saw that he did not want to leave the cage, but the only reason she compared herself to the rabbit was because of the way shewhich his father was accustomed to doing. treating her, she saw how overprotective he was of her and just wanted to escape him, she felt trapped by all the rules they had given her and she just didn't want it anymore. Because of its strict rules, people are afraid to escape their “cages” to find comfort elsewhere. She wants to be free regardless of the cost. But unlike most people, Minerva will open her cage door and fight with everything she can leave in the cage. The example that Trujillo shows and his personality play a really important role, especially on the part of Minerva, who shows how brave she is thanks to him. There is a portrait of him in his mother's house next to an image of Jesus, a combination that becomes a powerful symbol for the homeland, which sees the two as opposites. Many readers have been struck by Julia Alvarez's central message in Time for Butterflies. For example: “I had originally planned to write a non-fiction book, but in conducting the interviews there were so many versions of the “truth” and so many gaps in the sisters' lives, that I started having to fill in imaginative leaps to put the whole truth together." In other words, Julia Alvarez meant that the book is a non-fiction book because she had to make up some things to complete the puzzle, there were many parts of the story where she didn't know what happened, so she wrote what she could have been the most logical story. Julia Alvarez was born on March 27, 1950 in New York City. The theme of entrapment between two cultures can be found in Alvarez's work. Julia Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic, but had to leave the country when she was 10; her family had supported a failed attempt to overthrow dictator Rafael Trujillo, and then fled to Brooklyn, New York. She explored this cultural divide in her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, published in 1991, which achieved critical and commercial success. Her readership continued to grow with her second novel, The Time of Butterflies, published in 1994. Julia Alvarez is very attached to the book especially since she was in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo dictatorship. The idea behind In the Time of the Butterflies began in the 1960s when Julia Alvarez was in the Dominican Republic. It was then that the Mirabal sisters were killed, just three months after her father had been involved in the attempt to expose and rebel against Trujillo. That experience made her deepen her research on the story of the Mirabal sisters and she created a novel about their story, although Julia Alvarez invented some parts of the story, much of the novel is based on a true story with a twist of what which he believes happened to the Mirabal sisters. The book was written in both first and third person, about the Mirabal sisters and their extraordinary experiences. Julia Alvarez's butterflies are the four Mirabal sisters, whose code name in the revolutionary underground was Mariposa, Spanish for butterfly. These women, daughters of Don Enrique Mirabal, a landed merchant-farmer who became wealthy and socially prominent, and his wife, Doña Mercedes, called "Mama" throughout the novel, were born into an ascending middle class. Alvarez tells the story of the Mirabal sisters firsthand. Each division of the book is headed by the name of a sister and one or more dates. This structural device shows the full development of each character because each sister speaks to herself in the first person but also reveals herself when others see her and comment about her. The novel asks a series of universal social questions. Obviously this is a jarring statement on human rights andon human dignity. It also becomes a strong feminist statement. Minerva, the most independent of the daughters, is a feminist in every way. Dedé, a submissive wife until she joins the revolutionary movement, divorces her husband and, once the political unrest is quelled, becomes a highly successful insurance agent, something she could never have done in the Dominican Republic as Jaimito's wife. Alvarez shows how passion and having a strong mindset can change and make someone stronger. Before Julia Alvarez became a writer, she lived in New York, had to perfect her English and adjust to life as an immigrant, plus she was teased while in school, and that experience she turned to reading for comfort. Alvarez began attending boarding school at the age of thirteen. In high school she wanted to be a writer. She was encouraged by teachers but not by her family. She explains to Jonathan Bing Editors' Weekly part of her family's reasoning: 'I grew up in that generation of women thinking I was going to keep the house. Especially considering my Latino background, I shouldn't even have gone to college…. I had never been raised to have a public voice.' She pursued her writing interests at Connecticut College, where she won two prizes for her poetry in 1968 and 1969. She then attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where she won the Prize for Creative Writing and graduated summa cum laude in 1971. He earned an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University in 1975. While at Syracuse, he won the American Academy of Poetry Prize in 1974. Alvarez's homecoming was not what he expected, he was happy to be returned to America but then began to feel homesick. , alienation and prejudice. She basically missed her family there, her cousins, her family's big house and the respect her last name had. Alvarez's second novel, In the Time of Butterflies, became a novel that gave readers mixed emotions and made us feel like we were part of it. In the Time of Butterflies received a favorable reaction from reviewers, some of whom admired Alvarez's ability to express the wide range of emotions brought on by the revolution. For example, the Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that “Alvarez captures the terrified atmosphere of a police state, where people live under the sword of terrible fear and atrocities cannot be acknowledged. As the sisters' energetic fervor turns to anguish, Alvarez conveys their courage, their desperation, and the full extent of the tragedy. In the novel power was seen a lot in this novel and it also affected many people because everyone was too scared to mess with someone so powerful. In the Time of Butterflies is a book very close to Julia Alvarez because even if she didn't go through what the nuns went through, she knows what it means to live in an environment where dictatorship is involved, it also happened in the Dominican Republic, where she lived many years because his family was involved in the rebellion against a dictator. Even though Julia Alvarez's life wasn't as bad as that of the three sisters, even though she went through dark times when she lived in the Dominican Republic, I think the story of the Mirabal sisters attracted so much attention to her because she knows that it's not like that. it's easy to live a life where you're afraid to do anything because of the amount of corruption they have and you can't do anything about it because it can lead to death. Alvarez's passion can be felt when reading the novel; you feel every emotion, even if you didn't experience it. Please note: this is just an example. Get a personalized document now.