During the time The Namesake was written we would not expect an Indian boy to be able to find a balance between the Indian and American lifestyles, during that period we would simply expect since he is Indian this is the only lifestyle he can have. In In the Time of Butterflies we would never expect women to be the superiors in this story of revolution, since in the 1950s it was the men who were superior. Reality can be changed any way we want, and I think the authors of both of these stories did a great job of demonstrating that. These characters play a different character than we would expect in that time period, and the authors can do that because nothing is ever as it seems, and that's what makes good books and