Taylor Eng
Mrs. Stuart
English II Honors
16 May 2017
Metamorphosis
The butterfly flits across the warm breeze, sunlight peeking through its gossamer wings. Behind it lies the remnants of the cocoon it has just broken out of. Now the butterfly is free, the entire world before it. Butterflies, known in the Spanish language as mariposas, start of as caterpillars. These caterpillars weave silk threads together to form cocoons, which they stay in for a month before breaking free of the silken shells. The caterpillars have metamorphosed into butterflies, capable of spreading their wings and soaring into the skies. These butterflies symbolize freedom and change, and the Mirabal sisters in Julia Alvarez’ In the Time of the Butterflies are no different. The Mirabals transform like their namesake butterflies, their change spurred by the story of Trujillo’s cruelties told to Minerva, Maria Teresa falling in love, and the death of Patria’s child. While at school,…show more content… However, she is transformed when she instead entrusts her heart to Leandro, her Palomino. Leandro, a revolutionary like Minerva, appears at the home where Maria Teresa is staying with Minerva and Manolo. Maria Teresa answers the door, accepting Leandro into the home with his delivery of contraband guns. He correctly presumes that Maria Teresa is not one of them, and Maria Teresa writes in her diary “I didn’t know what us he was talking about, but I knew right then and there, I wanted to be a part of whatever he was” (142). Maria Teresa, smitten, resolves to join the revolutionaries, unable to stop thinking about her Palomino. It is this encounter one September night that causes Maria Teresa to break out of her cocoon and become Mariposa number two. She is no longer a little girl fussing over shoes, but a woman making bombs in her sister’s house, forced to be brave as she defies Trujillo’s oppressive
