In the Time of the Butterflies

I am blogging about In the Time of the Butterflies because I don't have my outside reading book today. At the end of the novel in chapter 12, Minerva begins to feel depressed and as if she can no longer help with the revolutionary cause. Mate, Patria, and Minerva go to visit their husbands in prison because it is one of the few things they are allowed to do while under house arrest. One theme that appears is that even though their husbands are in prison, they all try to follow the men's wishes. One example of the girls following the men's wishes is when Patria decides that she wants to go with Minerva and Mate to visit Manolo and Leandro at Puerto Plata. "Patria game me a quizzical look, as if the answer were obvious. 'He could have said, no, you can't go'" (287). Obviously, even if Pedrito had said no, she could still have gone with the two other girls, but she wouldn't have done that since her husband would have been opposing her. Another theme that appears is the idea that people need something or someone to look up to. The girls look up to their husbands for guidance, and the Dominicans look up to the Mirabal girls for hope and strength in their lives. Also, the girls look up to the Virgencita for help in nearly everything they do. The epilogue of In the Time of the Butterflies contains all the thoughts of Dede on the matter of her sisters' and their husbands' deaths. She feels incredibly sad, but she realizes that she has a purpose as being that last surviving Mirabal sister. Her job is to accumulate all the information possible relating to the lives of her sisters from anyone who wants to speak of the tragedy to her. In essence, she has become the martyr for everyone involved in the revolution.

Chapters 1-3

The first three chapters set the scene for the rest of the book. In the first chapter, Alex displays his temper issues and explains how good he is at the flute by saying that he has a solo in the upcoming orchestra concert. Also, Allende reveals how bad Lisa's, Alex's mother's, condition is. She has cancer and must travel to Texas with John, Alex's father, to get chemotherapy. Alex's two sisters are sent off to live with their mother's mother, while Alex is sent to live with his father's mother in New York.
When Alex gets to New York, he discovers that his grandmother is not there waiting for him like she was supposed to be. He decides that he has to find his way to her apartment on his own and ends up meeting a girl named Morgana. She tells Alex that she knows how to get to his grandmother's house, but she ends up leaving him stranded in a restaurant after stealing his backpack, which contained his money, return-trip ticket, and his flute. After having all of his possessions stolen, except for his passport, he sets off to find his grandmother's house, which is on the opposite side of the city.
It is around midnight by the time Alex reaches Kate's house. She explains their journey to Amazon with very little detail, then sends him off to bed to sleep.
I believe that nearly all will go as planned, at least until they reach the Amazon. Nearly everything was going wrong for Alex, so I believe that his luck will change. As soon as they reach the land of the Indians in the Amazon, things will most likely start to go wrong. This book has started off at a reasonable pace, and i hope that it will continue, or even increase in excitement.

City of the Beasts, by Isabel Allende

I read the back cover of the book and skimmed through the book as a whole to get the general plot of the story, and it seems like it will be an exciting book. A general synopsis of the book is that Alexander Cold, a 15-year-old boy, has to go to his grandmother's house on account of his mother contracting cancer. Kate, Alex's grandmother, is a writer for International Geographic and has to go on an expedition to the Amazon to do some research on the sighting of a new possible species. On the journey, Alex meets a young girl named Nadia. Alex and Nadia are recruited on a mission to save the People of the Mist, which leads them to discover a legendary species of creatures called Beasts.