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In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez Summary Study Guide

Detailed plot synopsis reviews of In the Time of the Butterflies


Plot Summary Part 2

So she tells the nuns she won't be joining them and leaves them to their prayers and their dildos.


Pedrito is a retard, he could barely count to ten, but he knows how to run a farm and how to bone Patria, so by Patria's standards he knew everything he needed to. They got married and Pedrito squirted some babies into her. One time Patria's v_gina malfunctioned and spat out a half baked baby, and this upset her for a while. Then she got over it. She would let Pedrito suck the milk from her breasts like he was a baby and had wild sex, "riding him hard and fast until I'd gotten somewhere far away from my aching heart."


Patria was curious to see what her dead baby was like, so she had the coffin dug up some days later and looked inside. It looked like a hideous piece of rotting meat filled with crawling maggots. Maybe looking at her dead baby's body some days later wasn't such a good idea.

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Meanwhile Minerva gets wet between the legs for some guy named Lio (Virgilio). Lio is a communist revolutionary who wants other people to overthrow Trujillo. I say he wants other people to do it because he quickly runs away to the safety of another country early in the story, leaving others like Minerva to do the dangerous work of fighting Trujillo on their own. Still, Minerva stupidly thinks of him as her hero.


Minerva learns that her beloved Papa has been boning another woman. Not only that, but her beloved Papa has impregnated this other woman several times and Minerva has several half sisters. Minerva eagerly meets these previously unknown members of her family, products of her father's adultery and animal cravings. When Minerva asks her Papa why he impregnated this other woman so many times, he simply shrugged and said it was something that men do.


Heh heh heh heh. I'm laughing so hard as I write this!!!


Minerva meets the dictator, Trujillo, at a dance. This makes the book seem even more ridiculous, that the dictator of the entire country seems to mingle with everyone around Minerva. Even more preposterously,  Trujillo starts flirting with Minerva and asks her to dance with him. Then Minerva slaps him in the face. If this happened for real, Minerva would have been arrested or executed; instead, Trujillo simply let her go without consequence. This is the part of the book which seems the most unbelievable.


Later, Minerva is called in for questioning, not because she slapped the dictator, but because the authorities found her love letters to Lio, the communist revolutionary.  Her father has been arrested too, for reasons that are never explained. He is released after losing some weight. They put him on a good diet in prison, heh heh.


Minerva meets Trujillo, the dictator, yet again. Why the dictator of the entire Dominican Republic has time or interest to pop in and out of the lives of nearly every citizen is unexplained and totally unbelievable. Minerva tells Trujillo she wants permission to go to law school. Trujillo tells Minerva he wants to bone her and offers her a trade.

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