Like Water For Chocolate And Mama Elena Essay

The Puritan community in The Scarlet Letter and Mama Elena in Like Water for Chocolate have similar roles that the authors emphasize in their characters’ descriptions, expectations, customs, responses, and significances. Esquivel’s use of iron in reference to Mama Elena’s command (page 48) parallels Hawthorne’s description of the Puritan law in Chapter 5--picturing the community’s rules as a “giant with stern features, but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm.” The image of iron in relation to Mama Elena and the Puritan community symbolizes the great power both antagonists hold, as beings with strong, harsh, and unyielding control, like heavy shackles made of iron. Because Mama Elena and the Puritan community occupy roles

Since these adversaries both expect compliance with their rules and traditions, it is unsurprising that people rebelled against the oppressive guidelines set upon them. However, when someone would cease to conform to the rules, they were harshly punished. When Chencha went against the will of Mama Elena and escaped to work at a brothel, Mama burned Chencha’s birth certificate and disowned her (page 57). Likewise, the women who went against the traditions of the Puritan community were branded with the hot iron of shame and isolation, as Hester was. Unsurprisingly, both the Puritan community and Mama Elena are significant in the sense that they are the most critical “villains” of both The Scarlet Letter and Like Water for Chocolate. The authors described the antagonists of these stories in such a way that the reader is compelled to strongly dislike these awful oppressors, and sympathize with Tita and Hester. The Puritan community and Mama Elena reflect each other, in the ways that they both give conflict necessary to create these stories--without their well-written roles, expectations, customs, responses, and highlighted significance, Hawthorne and Esquivel’s novels would have little conflict and no driving