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Butterflies

There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old, just several weeks or maybe a month before the orphanage turned me into an old man.

I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.

After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea bushes strewn around the orphanage.

I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.

How cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close.

When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down on the back cement step and went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down and touched it on the wing causing one of the pins to fall out. It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally it's wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and just quivered.

I picked up the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on it's wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.

The next thing I knew the house parent came walking back out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and then he left.

I sat there in the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.

Every year when the butterflies would return to the orphanage and try to land on me I would try and shoo them away because they did not know that the orphanage was a bad place to live and a very bad place to die.

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Average: 3 (2 votes)

Comments

Submitted by admin on Wed, 03/04/2009 - 12:59

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Thats what I thought while reading... ...hopes are pinned on something, like the butterflies were pinned onto the cardboard. The little boy had the hope to be free once again and to be allowed to be childish, it seems he has to behave really correctly and the orhpanage seems a strict place. And like the butterfly the boy is pinned, he is not allowed to move nor to think...
And as the broken butterflies he wont be buried as a whole, because he lost his family and therefore never will be whole again...
catching story...

Submitted by admin on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 23:27

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ITS AN AMAZING STORY I LOVE THE WAY THAT THE WRITTER HAS THE ABILITY TO EXPRESS HIS FELINGS AND TELL US HIS RELL STORY!!!!!!!! LOVE YOUR WORK AND IM FOR SURE LOOKING FORWARD TO READ NE OF YOUR BOOKS!!!! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!!

Submitted by admin on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 18:14

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I think that this was a very sad story and I am curious to know why the man did that cruel stuff to the boy and the butterflys. I think that it was very kind of the boy to try and save the one butterfly and bury all of them.

Submitted by admin on Fri, 08/21/2009 - 11:54

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After reading this story, I became very much pleased to the pot of the story. It made it very interesting to read and the contrast between the boy and the butterflies is great. They are similar in many ways because they both are in the same setting, as being part of the orphanage. Being pinned down to this strict sounding place, waiting to be freed. Id also note that the details in the story were great, it gave great imagery to the mind.

Submitted by admin on Sat, 10/03/2009 - 05:36

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I think the author Roger Dean Kiser did a really great job with his short story “Butterflies”. He wrote a moving and deep going story. It’s impressive how he managed to get this depth into just those few lines. I can see the boy caring for nature. Roger Dean Kiser shows us with this story that there are still people thinking of nature, caring for nature though there are more and more people in this world that turn their face away and have no regard for those things that happen in nature, that happen to nature.
Also the boy can identify himself with those butterflies. As the last sentence says “because they did not know that the orphanage was a bad place to live and a very bad place to die“ (l.49/50), you can see, the boy is thinking of himself in this sentence. He once went to the orphanage lie the butterflies without knowing that it is a bad place to live and a very bad to die. There was no one who told him to go away, who shooed him away. But the boy learned that “the orphanage is a bad place to live and a very bad place to die”. I think in last sentence of the story you can feel the desire for being told not to come to the orphanage. But he went there and now he is pinned down there to the strict rules as the butterflies are pinned down on the cardboard.
Furthermore, and what makes the story even more sad but also even more interesting is the fact, that this could be a true story. It is nothing that is hard to fancy. It is a story that could happen in real just in the orphanage at the next corner.
Roger Dean Kiser created a beautiful, moving and realistic story with and incredible depth. It even can bring tears into your eyes while reading for the first time.

Submitted by admin on Tue, 11/03/2009 - 20:37

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I just read this to my English class today since I wanted them to work on visualizing. I chose this story specifically because of the powerful imagery. I loved this story. I really liked how simply you told it, while at the same time painting vivid images. Thank you so much for sharing your work with my class and me.

Submitted by admin on Wed, 11/11/2009 - 08:29

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Thanks for a beautiful story!Although the story is sad,I like it. In this story the author shows us how cruel can be people to oyher people and to nature,too.Also,the author shows us how unhappy and unprotected are children without their parents. I think,the boy from the story identifity himself with those killed butterflies,too. He isn"t happy in the orphanage,he doesn"t want to live here,but like a butterfly he can"t to be free.

Submitted by admin on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 08:43

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I really loved this story! I loved how the death of the butterflies acted as an allegory for the lose of the little boys innocence at the hands of the "parent".

----Lonely Housewife12038034848

Submitted by admin on Sun, 07/18/2010 - 22:54

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What a TOUCHING story. The little boy feels like a trapped butterfly. However, like the butterfly that was still alive and struggling to be free, the human spirit is able to overcome all obstacles and reach its potential.

Submitted by admin on Wed, 05/11/2011 - 05:47

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Nice story

Submitted by admin on Tue, 06/14/2011 - 11:35

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I did like this story. Having read additional stories by the author, it is inspirational to see that events that would scar many and give them adult "issues" are conquered through writing. Writing is therapy.

Submitted by admin on Sun, 06/24/2012 - 01:37

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LOVE IT!!!

Submitted by admin on Wed, 09/05/2012 - 15:44

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Very nice story. Very appealing to me
because butterflies are beautiful
creatures to admire. So it is the young
boy whose life is enduring a harsh
childhood at the orphanage by the
parent.
It is appealing to me to see young
people caring for nature, caring for
another creature and the compassion that
inspires the young by trying to save the
pinned butterflies. The story has a lot
of tenderness and beauty. Children are
naturally good and they want to be good,
regardless of the environment they live
in. I have seen my daughter perform a
little ritual to bury a frog once when
she was a small child, like this little
boy, she tried to give it a Christian
burial. very impressive!Thanks, I may
use this short story to an ESL class to
teach them compassion and love for
nature.

Submitted by admin on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 09:01

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Very nice

Submitted by admin on Thu, 05/30/2013 - 09:27

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Butterflies is a pretty personal story
written in the point of view of Roger Dean
Kiser, the book has a down mood to it the
boy or Roger sees a man who is taking
butterflies and pinning them to a board.

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