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Throughout literature, there’s always going to be a villain in the story. In Julia Alvarez’s, “In the Time of the Butterflies”, villainy is shown to only one character whose actions were brutal and sinning. Rafael Trujillo, or “El Jefe”, is well known in Dominican History as he is portrayed as the antagonist in the novel. It is displayed with his totalitarianism that he is powerful enough to “own his country” without any hesitation. Trujillo’s villainy illustrates his dictatorship as he uses he objectifies his citizens and society with the use of manipulation and tortures them for challenging or not supporting him. Trujillo seemed to always have this toxic mindset of being ranked as a top priority while everyone was below him. As he attended the military armed forces, his true colors showed, and achieved his power, “According to Sintia, Trujillo sneakily became president. First, he was in the army, and then all the people above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole Armed Forces,” (Alvarez 7). This quote exhibits him being identified as an ambiguous impostor. As he joined the military, he had to earn his rank as all the other higher-ups. Nevertheless, he appears to be obsessed with power and his bitterness towards others is what got him to be the head leader of the Armed Forces.
To get on top, he either murdered all the officials above him and hid his tracks or he informed officials of lies to make them turn against each other. Trujillo reveals how easily people can be manipulated with power. As he became the head leader, he controlled the society of the Dominican Republic. Totalitarianism and dictatorship were then created in the society’s country. With his technique of manipulation, he still manages to get away with tricking his citizens to obey and respect him. He achieves this message by drawing attention to himself out to the public, “When we got to school that fall, we were issued new history textbooks with a book of you – know– who embossed on the cover so even the blind men can tell who the lies were all about….It was pretty disgusting,“ (Alvarez 24). As illustrated in the quote, Trujillo is distinctly boosting himself as a leader of the Dominican Republic by using government propaganda. He’s being indirect at the fact that he is linking with knowledge and that him living at a higher rank than everyone who is designated to listen.
This is one of the first initial instances in the novel where the readers are aware that Trujillo is driven to make himself be perceived as a dictator. Even though he isn’t bothering anyone through this example of government propaganda, Trujillo manages to still manipulate information to make him appear popular and flattering to society. Trujillo continues to manipulate the citizens of the Dominican Republic as he is now perceived as intimidating to the public, ‘Trujillo is the law’, Papa whispered, as we all do nowadays when we pronounce the dreaded name,” (Alvarez 90). As displayed in the quote, this shows the perspective of how society in the Dominican Republic feels about Trujillo. The society of the country seems to be fully aware of how powerful he is and understands the repercussions if they were to ever challenge him. As a result, society is frightened by him.
Trujillo successfully manipulates the country to convince society that “he is the law” and that he is the only one who can make decisions since he is very powerful. As continuing to look into Trujillo’s villain roles, it’s interesting to see the perspective of society about how they feel about him. A citizen named, Minerva Mirabal, expresses her feelings towards her freedom after the feeling of being trapped, “And that’s how I got free… I mean in my head after I got to I and that’s how I got free… I mean in my head after I got to Inmaculada and met Sintia and saw what happened to Lina and realize that I’d just left a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country,” (Alvarez 13).n this quote, it appears that she is not speaking about physical freedom but preferably mental freedom. Minerva explains that she has the freedom to scout her thought process however she wants to without any measures being taken from the government, meaning Trujillo. This displays Trujillo’s totalitarianism in the Dominican Republic and is symbolized by the metaphor of a cage and how the citizens of the Dominican Republic felt trapped in the totalitarian country run by Trujillo.
Overall, as Trujillo uses he objectifies his citizens and society with the use of manipulation and tortures them for challenging or not supporting him he displays a role of villainy in the novel. Trujillo was the dictator of the Dominican Republic and was ruthless with his power making that society very intimidated to display their opinions and beliefs. He doesn’t tolerate resistance towards him (totalitarianism) which results in being detained and tortured. Trujillo is a tyrant manipulating every chance he gets to entirely have power over society but fails to do so with his bad decisions resulting in him being assassinated at the end of the novel.
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