One thing that I haven't really thought about while I am reading a book is WHOSE PERSPECTIVE IS MISSING???? To me, this is a very crucial part of the story and I can not believe that I missed it in the first place. This can tell you lot of things about the book like, why would the author choose to exclude that voice? In In The Time of The Butterflies, Julia Alvarez makes sure that any person from the supporting side of Trujillo's, voice isn't heard. So we don't really get to go inside the mind of the dictator of the Dominican Republic. We only get to hear from the point of view the people who are being terrorized by "El Jefe" also know as Trujillo.
I think it would be cool if we were able to see what was going inside Trujillo's head as he had to put up with the feisty Mirabal sisters. These are four sisters that trying to help revolt against their unfair government. I think that Julia excluded Trujillo's voice because she wants us to be sympathetic towards the Mirabal sisters. She wants to have the Mirabel sisters be the "good guys" and Trujillo be the "bad guy." I'm not trying to say that what Trujillo did isn't bad, because it is, but the revolutionaries also did some damage themselves.
Another question that defiantly comes up is, how does this effect the story; and what don't we know and why might the author not want us to know that ? Well after I read the story, I did some research on that time period from the Dominican Republic and I was shocked to find that the statistics for dead people on Trujillo's side was a little less that the dead people on the communists side (the side that the sisters support). This made me think what was the author trying to hide? Then it hit me. Perhaps the author sculpted her story so the Mirabal sisters seemed like the innocent ones. The ones who were trying to fight for their freedom and getting punished for it. And Trujillo was this big horrible monster who was selfish and wanted everything to be about him.
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