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Summary Of In The Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez

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In Julia Alvarez’s novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, a young, naïve girl transforms into a prominent figure in the revolution against Leonidas Trujillo as we read page after page of her most private thoughts. This character is Maria Teresa (Mate), the youngest of the Mirabal sisters. Alvarez weaves Maria Teresa’s story as a coming of age story under a dictatorship, and slowly, but thoroughly, shows us how it corrupts childhood innocence and forms revolutionaries. Mate’s chapters in the novel are solely journal entries. In Julia Alvarez’s words, “Techniques are just tools on the wall to help you get at what best reflects the stories in your heart to tell. For me, certain characters are more real, or more realized, depending on the angle …show more content…

Still just a little girl, her entries in this chapter are often mundane. She draws her new shoes, Minerva’s swimsuit, and lists her christmas presents, but this section shows us that Mate is observant and intelligent. She takes control of the narrative, and we get to see her in a different light. She says, “I don’t know if you realize how advanced I am for my age?” directly addressing one of the issues that comes with being labeled as the baby, maturity (Alvarez 32). Further, when Mate learns that Minerva is doing “dangerous things” because “she wanted [Mate] to grow up in a free country” she writes her reaction on the page, outlining her growth for us. She goes from saying, “I am taking these few minutes to wish El Jefe Happy Benefactor’s Day with all my heart” to “I see the picture of our president with eyes that follow me around the room… Before, I always thought our President was like God, watching over everything I did,” her changing ideas are right in front of us (Alvarez 37, 39). And although she does not explicitly state she no longer thinks he is like God, her words carry an air of anxiety. She is beginning to understand the danger of her country’s dictator, and we continue to see her evolve into a revolutionary. “Everything looks just a little different,” she says, and right alongside her, we see how her perceptions change as her journals

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