Multicultural Research Essay
In the historical fiction In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez, recounts the story of the Mirabel sisters who dared to cross the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo. Her novel gives a historical accounting of the dictator’s reign of terror and at the same time adds fiction in keeping with the culture of the Dominican Culture at that time. The overall story is one of politics and power through violence but also a story of family and the struggles within the family unit. The novel uses the times and life in the Dominican Republic to portray the details in the lives of the Mirabel family. The author tells the story through many different narrative techniques, an epilogue delivered by the only surviving sister, and the final chapter narrated in first person. Alvarez had a special interest in the horrific times of the Trujillo Era because her own family escaped the same dictatorship just before the sisters she wrote about years later were killed. Julia Alvarez exemplifies …show more content…
Alvarez’s plot of the story is true but little details about the characters were created by her. There are many plot points that are similar and different. Some similar culture aspects that were in the novel and in history were the struggles of women and their rights, the massacre that killed thousands of Haitians, the timeline of how Trujillo got to be the dictator of the Dominican Republic, etc. As I researched then continued to read the novel, it amazed me how well Alvarez told the story while adding and creating these characters. I researched how Rafael Trujillo manipulated his way up to becoming the dictator and instead of having a narrator explain this part of history, a character named Sinita told Minerva as a secret that Trujillo was a bad man. As I researched I also found out that if any of the people turned against Trujillo then they
In the historical fiction In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez, recounts the story of the Mirabel sisters who dared to cross the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo. Her novel gives a historical accounting of the dictator’s reign of terror and at the same time adds fiction in keeping with the culture of the Dominican Culture at that time. The overall story is one of politics and power through violence but also a story of family and the struggles within the family unit. The novel uses the times and life in the Dominican Republic to portray the details in the lives of the Mirabel family. The author tells the story through many different narrative techniques, an epilogue delivered by the only surviving sister, and the final chapter narrated in first person. Alvarez had a special interest in the horrific times of the Trujillo Era because her own family escaped the same dictatorship just before the sisters she wrote about years later were killed. Julia Alvarez exemplifies …show more content…
Alvarez’s plot of the story is true but little details about the characters were created by her. There are many plot points that are similar and different. Some similar culture aspects that were in the novel and in history were the struggles of women and their rights, the massacre that killed thousands of Haitians, the timeline of how Trujillo got to be the dictator of the Dominican Republic, etc. As I researched then continued to read the novel, it amazed me how well Alvarez told the story while adding and creating these characters. I researched how Rafael Trujillo manipulated his way up to becoming the dictator and instead of having a narrator explain this part of history, a character named Sinita told Minerva as a secret that Trujillo was a bad man. As I researched I also found out that if any of the people turned against Trujillo then they