2) By the end of the novel, how have the characters of Minerva, Mate, and Patria
changed? Have they changed the revolution or has the revolution changed them?
Is there a happy ending to this story at all?

The three women most certainly display character changes throughout the course of the book. In the final chapter of Minerva, who is also the strongest-willed, most fervent revolutionary of the group, begins to see her spirit weaken, her fire beginning to burn out. She chronicles this strange feeling of hers: “By then, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to stay home with my sisters at Mamas, raising our children.” And who could blame her? After all, she had been subject to seven months in prison, much of that time in solitary confinement. She saw the majority of her own family imprisoned; some even tortured. She questioned that maybe she was “ready for a new life, and this is how it starts.”

Mate also changes in her own way. In the beginning, she is often characterized as being ‘innocent’ and ‘naïve,’ and influenced deeply by her older sister Minerva. When she is thrown into jail, she suffers tremendously, and is forced to grow up fast. Many times in her journal, it appears as if she is on the verge of going insane. She endures, though, and comes into her own. When the sisters learn that OAS will interview Mate, Minerva tries to persuade Mate to embellish certain things in attempt to attract international attention. For the first time the reader can recall, Mate doesn’t simply concede and go along with Minerva. She says, “So I say to her the only thing I can say. I promise you this, I’ll be true to what I think is right. Minerva has never heard such talk from me. Fair enough, she says, fair enough.” Also, for the first time throughout her incarceration, Mate displays the first signs of inner-strength. This happens after she is tortured and proceeds to pick up her clothes. “Then Bloody Juan gathered up my clothes, but I wouldn’t let him help me. I dressed myself and walked out to the wagon on my own two feet.” She almost becomes hardened. This is how the revolution changed Mate.

As a person, Patria hasn’t changed much. She finds herself asking slowly recovering from the imprisonments via her usual venue: religion. Patria becomes consumed with freeing her husband and son. She even compromises certain principles in appealing to Captain Pena. She also appeals to Trujillo, in person, to get back her son. Unlike Minerva and Mate, who refuse their freedom (only if sworn allegiance to Trujillo), Patria, in way, gets in bed with the enemies (but for good reasons). The big change lies in the fact that the revolution, suddenly, is much less important then helping her family.

Minerva Mirabel is the celebrated hero of the Fourteenth of July movement. Her reputation speaks for itself and one would be hard pressed to support an argument saying that Minerva did not change the revolution. Mate and Patria also contributed in their own ways. Before the ‘prison roundups,’ the thrill and excitement of the revolution was a big contributing factor. The Mirabel sisters were swept up into the self-sustaining movement. After being jailed, it was all out of the Mirabel sisters’ hands, and instead of changing the revolution the revolution began to change them. The girls moved back home with their Mama after being released, and no longer held any active roles in the movement. Their sole prerogative now: petitioning for the release of their husbands and basically doing everything they could to free them. Perhaps now they yearned for the more simple things in life, those things they had been missing since the start of this whole thing. They didn’t want to see family in jail any longer; they wanted to be a family again.

          In many ways, a happy ending does not exist in this story. Dede personifies this notion as she reluctantly plays the sister of a national hero. She often questions her fate and wonders why she happened to be the soul survivor. Every year she goes through the motions, telling herself it’s “for the girls.” From her perspective, it isn’t difficult to understand why she desires to put it all behind her. After all, the events that unfolded had killed her three sisters and scattered her family. She is haunted by much of this. At the same time, she soldiers through, and is able to recognize and appreciate its legacy; everything that ‘it had been for.’ She can at least do that much.