- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
This passage describes the moment before the butterflies' assassination—arguably the book's climax, but also an event Alvarez doesn't describe. The language of this scene, which is ironically tragic in its optimistic imagery, calls back to the first memory of the book, with the sisters as little girls in the dark yard of their house, as yet mostly untroubled by dictators, revolutions, and violence. The story thus comes full circle, and Alvarez lingers on the sisters' final moments before their tragic end.
As she emphasizes the mingling of fear and excitement in this passage, Alvarez again makes the point that the…