In The Time Of The Butterflies By Julia Alvarez

My Essay is a time capsule that was designed to show what Dede finds important in In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. It specifically focuses on how she can move past her fears, doubts, and feelings of responsibility to find courage. With this newfound power, she is able to fight for something that is important to her. Even in Dedes’ childhood, she was always a very sensible person who thought through what she does, relying on reason rather than using some courage to make important decisions. We watch her family talk about each sister saying that “‘[Dede will] bury us all’, her father adds, laughing ‘in silk and pearls’ ” (Alvarez 8). When discussing each sister, we hear about how all of her siblings have dynamic traits that will
something is missing now. [she realized] --- it’s me, Dede the one who survived to tell the story” (Alverez 321). Dede compares her lost family to statues; this comparison is made to show how what happened cannot be changed much like how once status is formed it is not easily changed. Both the Mirabal sisters and statues are locked in place. People are able to observe both cases and learn about the history of the subject without directly talking or experiencing what the subject went through. It is easy to argue that the biggest example of courage is fighting past fears and doubts to take action anyway. Dede is a prime example of how she was faced with the guilt of being the only survivor, but still woke up each day to keep her sisters’ story alive. For my visual element, I tried to incorporate Dedes’s traits as well as attention to detail, revolving around how the Dominican Republic was at the time. On the outside of the time capsule, the flowers are in the colors of the Dominican Republic and are not super overwhelming. I went for this because of Dedes’s timidness and logic in the beginning of the story, some flowers are smaller and still blossoming which in my mind is similar to the trait of