Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. Specifically, Term Paper

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Another historian notes, "Trujillo had prisons set up throughout the island with torture cells that became infamous for the horrors that occurred within. Opponents to his regime were dealt with swiftly and brutally, usually succumbing to death from the effects of torture or disease, if not assassinated" (Brown 31).

Trujillo is not only violent and despotic, he is a womanizer and adulterer, and he even stoops to young girls, then hustles them out of the country when they get pregnant. At a party, Minerva catches him fondling a senator's wife. "Under the tablecloth, a hand is exploring the inner folds of a woman's thigh. I work it out and realize it is Trujillo's hand fondling the senator's wife" (Alvarez 96). History shows the man was not only a violent dictator; he was a macho man who lusted after numerous women, including Minerva, who slaps him when he makes an advance toward her. This is the beginning of the end for the Mirabal sisters, because "El Jefe" will not forget an affront like that. He not only rules with an iron fist, he rules in fear and paranoia, and anyone who stands up to him like that is doomed. Later, he will not allow Minerva to practice law after she graduates from law school. This shows the ultimate power and control he held over the entire country. No one could do anything with out him knowing about it, or with out his permission. These are terrible conditions to live under, and underneath the novel in an underlying tension that never leaves the reader, just like the tension the Dominicans were forced to live with every day. The fiction of the novel reads like fiction, but the history woven through the novel gives it texture, but it also conveys the fear that filled the lives of the people under Trujillo's rule.

Trujillo relished his power and his control, but he would be remembered for his brutal dictatorship and iron-fisted rule.

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His legacy would be brutality, murder, and ethnic cleansing. However, the Mirabal sisters created their own legacy when they were murdered. The holiday in their honor is a time of peace and hope, and is the perfect legacy for these women who fought so passionately for what they believed in. Trujillo might not have believed it at the time, but killing the "butterflies" set the Dominicans free, and sealed his own fate, while giving the butterflies the power to create a new legacy for themselves and their people.

In conclusion, "In the Time of the Butterflies" is part history, part conjecture, and part lyrical novel that appeals to the reader because of its poetic quality. It shows Generalissimo Trujillo as a horrible man with so many deaths on his conscience, he could never remember the three sisters he had murdered in 1960. It is not sad that he is assassinated, the reader and the historian both have to wonder just what took the Dominican people so long to rid themselves of such a brutal and hateful monster......

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