Analysis Of Like Water For Chocolate By Laura Esquivel

Many people have grown up in a tyrannical environment, limiting their freedom and individual opportunities. Tita has been under the oppression of Mama Elena for her entire life and has never had the ability to feel love and happiness for a man who she wants. She meets with John who tells her how she should be living her life and why she is always so depressed with her actions and situation.John compares love to striking a match, and many sentences with passage two describe this action vividly. In the story Like Water for Chocolate the author Laura Esquivel uses literary techniques such as extended metaphors and specific word choice in order to describe the process of striking a match and how it is compared to a humans love for another. This creates a very passionate and romantic effect for the reader.

Doctor John is describing a story is grandmother used to tell him about how everyone has a box of matches within them.

He tells this to Tita when tehy are sitting down together in his laboratory. “...she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.” This quote conveys the use of an extended metaphor in order to create a prodigous concept. He mentions that people have a box of matches in their bodies and that it need love and a person's breath to light it. This is repeated many times throughout the passage and gives us the romantic effect of one’s self needing another person to light the flame of happiness within them. Although this effect appears multiple other times during this passage, the evidence above clearly uses it in a romantic sense adding onto the overall effect of the

passage.

Doctor John is describing the passion that striking a match within a human creates and that connects with Tita on a personal level in which she realtes to. This next quote creates a passionate effect on the reader. Esquivel wrote, “Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.” The author uses the words explosion and combustion in order to show how the immense amount of love and warmth that comes from lighting these matches is incredible and provides a reason as to why humans look for this emotion. It almost sounds like a large event like the big bang or a very large bomb going off which shows the immensity of the feeling Tita wishes to receive permanently. Tita is nervous and anxious because the only time her matches had been lit was when she was around Pedro. Now that Pedro is gone with Rosaura

In the story Like Water for Chocolate the author Laura Esquivel uses literary techniques such as extended metaphors and specific word choice in order to describe the process of striking a match and how it is compared to a humans love for another. This creates a very affectionate and heated effect on the reader.Adding Doctor John’s story of his grandmother builds on this effect by explaining how these matches are lit and why they are inside of us. Anyone can light their matches, its finding the right person that can lead you to keeping them lit for eternity.