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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Summer of the Mariposas, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sisterhood, Motherhood, and Family
Magic, Myth, and Deception
Gender Dynamics and Female Solidarity
Kindness, Mercy, and Morality
Ancestral and Cultural Appreciation
Summary
Analysis
Odilia wakes in the nagual’s cave to see that she and her sisters are tied up, lying on a dirt floor covered in the corpses of butterflies. The nagual, a man with long white hair in a black robe, tends to a bubbling cauldron. He tells Odilia it contains his masterpiece, a potion that will cook her and her sisters instantly. Their deaths will free him from the curse that forces him to wander the earth as a beast—the girls are the last of a thousand sacrifices. Odilia realizes the walls of the cave are lined with a collection of human bones. She tries to wake her sisters, to no avail, and begins to pray.
The presence of dead butterflies symbolizes the extreme danger in which the sisters find themselves, since butterflies typically represent ancestral protection and the hope of transformation. This makes sense, considering that the nagual aims to sacrifice the girls in order to free himself. His cauldron, like the whirlpool Charybdis in Homer’s Odyssey, has claimed many lives.
Themes
Odilia tries to remember the song of the cave and the rain that Teresita mentioned, but nothing comes to her. While the nagual is distracted, she frees her right hand from the ropes and spins the ear pendant. This time, she asks Tonantzin for the song of the cave, and the music emanates from the pendant, a song that Odilia recognizes from her childhood. Her sisters slowly wake, joining in the chorus that Mamá used to calm them on rainy nights. The nagual cowers in the corner of the cave.
Despite the dead butterflies’ message of hopelessness, Odilia maintains faith in the ear pendant’s ancestral powers. That the song of the cave and rain is a song from the Garza sisters’ childhood underlines the importance of family and heritage. Since Mamá used to sing it to them, this moment also draws attention to the power of maternal love and comfort.
Themes
Around them, the butterfly corpses reanimate, dancing to the song before merging together, taking the form of a young woman. She looks like an Aztec goddess and a teenager at once; Juanita calls her La Virgen de la Cueva and bows. The nagual addresses her as Tonantzin, begging her forgiveness. Tonantzin tells the nagual he was warned that the sisters—cinco estrellitas (five little stars)—were under her protection. The warlock claims he was not going to harm the girls, but Tonantzin calls his bluff, telling him to stir the potion. Trying to flee, the nagual trips and falls into the cauldron, dying instantly. Odilia and her sisters run from the cave into the night.
The resurrected butterflies represent the ancestral protection that has returned to the girls thanks to their faith. That Tonantzin herself manifests from the butterflies emphasizes that the sisters are important enough to merit her personal protection. In calling them her five stars, Tonantzin claims the girls as her own and recalls the five shooting stars Odilia witnessed before embarking on this quest. Her confrontation with the nagual makes it clear that the Garza sisters can depend upon her and other ancestors to look after them.
Themes
