Like Water For Chocolate
Like Water for Chocolate: Magic and EnchantmentLike Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, relates a "Cinderella-like story" of a young woman, growing up during the Mexican Revolution whose fate is dictated by her oppressive, overbearing mother. Tita, the heroine of the story, lives with her mother, Mama Elena, and two older sisters, Rosaura and Gertrudis. As the youngest daughter of the family, Tita, by long-standing tradition, can never marry; it is her responsibility to care for her mother into old age. To ensure Tita is well-groomed to eventually be her mothers care-giver, she is raised in the kitchen, working alongside Nacha, the family cook and housekeeper. Nacha becomes more a mother to Tita than Mama Elena. While working in the kitchen, Tita learns old recipes and the secrets of cooking. She eventually becomes a chef in her own right. Because she is able to establish a mystical connection between food and sexuality, Tita learns to communicate to Pedro through the very activity that imprisons her, cooking. As Tita blossoms into a beautiful young woman, she meets Pedro, a handsome local boy (10). They have a low-key relationship as Tita knows her mother will not approve. She falls in love with Pedro. Eventually, he a
She races to the shower outhouse, tears off her burning clothes, and is eventually swept up by a passing revolutionary. we are all born with a box of matches in us. sks for her hand in marriage, but Tita's tyrannical mother Elena refuses to allow them to marry (13). Eventually, their baby dies for the lack of Tita's cooking. Pedro eventually dies over Tita, and because of her unyielding life-long devotion to him, Tita ends her life with him, an ending which is symbolic and not necessarily happy. For a while Pedro and his bride even live in the same house with Tita and her mother. As Tita's passion and soul become enraged by the marriage, so rightfully does she use her only method of self expression- cooking, to relay her pain while under Mama Elena's restricted household. Tita is devastated as she sees this as disloyalty to the love they share. After Pedro dares to give Tita a bouquet of roses, she presses them ecstatically to her chest; the scratches from them are as close as she can get to Pedro's caresses. Tita enraged, yells, "You did it, you killed Roberto" (99). "It is a dish for the gods!" Pedro praises (51). Smoke actually pours from the ears of the middle sister, Gertrudis. Through the many twists and turns in the novel, there is a good deal of "magical realism" in the tale, where belief in the effects of the supernatural becomes a very real part of routine existence. This is the first encounter with the novel's mysticism and sets the stage for the relationship between sexuality and food.
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Acceptance Essays
