Butterflies Dede Sacrifice

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In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies Dede’s three best friends are dead. She has to figure out a way to carry on without them no matter how much she misses them. These three best friends of course are her sisters who fall victim to the regime of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Before their deaths, Dede cannot imagine a life apart from her sisters, but Dede realizes that she can keep her sisters alive by becoming a living martyr for them by keeping their memory going and carrying on their legacies. This unusual suffering is one where Dede gives up her whole personal life so much that it is now less about her and more about her deceased sisters. Dede is a martyr for her sisters who sacrifices her own life through taking …show more content…

Unsurprisingly, these interviews take up large amounts of time and get very repetitive which is a large sacrifice for Dede. Dede portrays several things about her sisters in these interviews, the first of which it their bravery. One example of this is when she tells about how Minerva stands up to Trujillo when he is sexually harassing her. Dede talks about how her sisters fought in the revolution just to show how incredible their dedication is. This is best seen in how she tells the reporter about how Minerva and Mate refuse a pardon in prison to fan the flames of revolution. The last part of these interviews that Dede must offer up for her sisters is the sheer number of them. The interviewers have pestered her for thirty-four years, yet she still does them on her sisters’ behalf. Dede thinks to herself, “Oh dear, another one. Now after thirty-four years the commemorations and interviews have almost stopped… Every year as the 25th rolls around, the television crews drive up. There’s the obligatory interview.” (3). Dede is a martyr in this peculiar way: speaking for her dead sisters, and carrying out their legacies. This task presents itself to Dede so often that has become a hassle for her, yet she still does it for the love of her …show more content…

Being born less than a year apart from two of one’s siblings, and having a younger sibling-older sibling bond with the other draws Dede very close to her sisters. As a result, she spends much of her time with her sisters and loves them dearly. This is best illustrated when Dede attempts to stop them from going out on the trip through the mountains to visit their husbands. It would be unbearable for Dede to live without her sisters, yet when they die, she must carry on. This in and of itself is a huge sacrifice. The second hard part about Dede outliving her sisters was how she agonizes over how she did not join the revolution and help them. She must spend the rest of her life thinking to herself: “Why them and not me.” Dede dies to herself, and cannot contain her sorrow when she mourns the gruesome deaths of her sisters. It is very difficult for her to keep this emotion from boiling over. Dede thinks to herself at the end of the novel: “…maybe it was for something that the girls had died.”(310). It was at this moment that Dede’s yoke becomes lighter, and she realizes that living without her sisters was a worthy

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