Major scenes in In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez - Essay Example

This discussion talks that Minerva is invited to a Discovery Day dance party hosted by Trujillo. Here, she rebuffs his attempts of courting her until he tries to touch her inappropriately and she slaps him in the face. It starts to rain heavily and the family leaves the palace. It is on the way that Minerva realizes that she had left some important letters behind. Thus, her father is called for questioning and is imprisoned. Minerva and her mother go to appeal for his release and they do succeed after a span of three weeks, but by that time, Enrique Mirabel has gone insane and later he dies.

This hits way too close to home. This time it is Minerva’s natural father who had suffered due to Trujillo’s cruel ways and it only encourages her to take a stand against the dictator. She herself had also been one of the women who were on the receiving end of the man’s unwanted attention. The enmity gets on personal reasons now and it only encourages her more to work on freeing her country. It also piques Trujillo and the personal insult to him by Minerva may be the reason why, later, the sisters were so brutally punished and killed by his men.

In the ultimate analysis in the third part of the book, Maria Teresa’s husband Leandro, Patricia’s husband Pedrito and their son Nelson are arrested. Minerva is suffering from tuberculosis but she and her partner Manolo are taken in custody before her treatment starts. Three months later, a morose Maria Teresa is also taken in. They are imprisoned, later put on house arrest and so forth.