In the Time of the Butterflies - Section I - Loss of Innocence/Faith

We have completed reading the first section of Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies. There are four chapters in the first section, each about a Mirabal sister, Dede, Minerva, Maria Teresa, and Patria. We were assigned to write about each of the sisters' loss of innocence/faith from this section.

In her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez reveals loss of innocence/faith as a way of growing up. The four Mirabal sisters grow up in the Dominican Republic where there are issues with the government. As they grow older, they see that their leader isn't the person they thought he was. They also find troubles of growing up in their own home. As for Dede, the second oldest of the four sisters, she finds out that she won't be loved like she used to be when she was younger anymore. When her father asks the girls which one of them wanted to stay home instead of going off to an away from home school, Dede offered to stay. "Dede always was the smiling little miss. ‘I’ll stay and help, Papa.’ Papa looked surprised because really Dede was a year older than me. She and Patria should have been the two to go away. But then, Papa thought it over and said Dede could go along, too.” (12-13) Papa decided he didn’t want Dede to stay home with him all year. Dede finds that she is not as loved by Papa as Minerva is, or as the other two sisters. She also learns that she will not always be loved all of her life, as Papa has already shown her. Now that Dede is growing up, Papa feels that he won’t hide his feelings from her and that Dede has to accept that she won’t always be loved, even if it’s her own father. For Minerva, her loss of innocence isn’t shown through her own life. At school, she becomes friends with a girl, Sinita, whose father, three uncles, and brother that was killed by Trujillo, the Dominican president. As Sinita is telling her horrific story to her, Minerva can’t stand to listen to this truth. “Sinita told me as much as she knew. I was shaking by the time she was through. According to Sinita, Trujillo became president in a sneaky way. First, he was in the army, and all the people who were above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole armed forces.” (17) Minerva never realized that Trujillo was such a bad man. Before, she thought he was a hero based on no knowledge of his life. She figured that since he was the leader of their country, he was a brilliant man. This makes her angry and she learns that she wants to get back at him. Now that she is older, she understands what Trujillo has done wrong and how dangerous living in their country is. This information she learns from Sinita really affects her when a young child wouldn’t understand the issue. She also shows that she’s grown up by wanting to take action. A young child wouldn’t even think about standing up to anyone, especially the president. Loss of innocence for Maria Teresa, the youngest sister, is a matter of helping out others, like Minerva’s was. Minerva has made friends with a rude girl, Hilda at school. Minerva, Hilda, and some other girls go to one of their grandfather’s house to have meetings about politics. They have secret papers that hold their beliefs on it that gets one of them in trouble. Police find some of those papers in Hilda’s car. She first runs away and hides, but is eventually caught. Maria Teresa possesses a diary in which she writes about her daily life. She mentions Hilda and her story in it, which is considered something that might prove Hilda guilty. She learns that she has to bury her diary until the situation is over. “Hilda has been caught! She was grabbed by the police while trying to leave the convent. Everyone in Don Horacio’s meeting group has been told to destroy anything that would make them guilty.” (43) She handles the situation very well, agreeing to give up a loved possession. Unlike a young child, she didn’t throw a fit about giving something of hers up. Instead, she understands that it is important that she gives it up so that Hilda won’t be found guilty and so the other members of their group won’t be caught. Patria is the oldest sister, and is quite different from the others. All of her life she has been very religious. She always had a set dream of becoming a nun. That changed when she married and had kids. Her third child was born dead and she questions if that is revenge for not becoming a nun. She looks at a picture of Trujillo next to a picture of God. She knew Trujillo was a bad man, but then she equates Trujillo with God. “I had heard, but I had not believed. Snug in my heart, fondling my pearl, I had ignored their cries of desolation. How could our loving, all-powerful Father allow us to suffer so? I looked up, challenging Him. And the two faces had merged!” (53) She can’t understand how God and Trujillo allow their people to suffer. She has suffered because the loss of her baby, and she questions God’s trust. For Trujillo, she sees the Dominican people suffer from poor leadership. Since she sees God’s and Trujillo’s two acts as the same, she wonders if God is like Trujillo. She has significantly loss faith of God. Each sister has experiences in their life that forces them to grow up.