Like Water For Chocolate By Laura Esquivel

Food has the power of changing one’s emotions which can affect the behaviours of people in many different ways. In Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, food became of the main building blocks that made the story interesting. Tita De La Garza, the main protagonist usually shows her emotions through the food that she prepares for her family. Be attentive and analyse well the way Tita describes the food, how she prepares it and her reactions after her family tastes it. The novel also revolves around women which represents different version of femininity. Mama Elena De La Garza which is considered as the main antagonist is the head of the family who has the right to make decisions that she thinks and believes will be beneficial to all. As

a mother of matriarchal family, she likes to intrude in everything and even in the relationships of her daughters. In this novel, try to select one or more characters that make you think that it is or not a feminist novel.
The novel is divided into twelve chapters, one for each month of the year.

In each chapter, there is a specific recipe that Tita De La Garza cooks with sentimental meaning. For the reader, it seems that every food that Tita prepares has significance in relation to what she feels at the moment. For example, in chapter two, for the month of February, Tita was tasked to make a Chabela Wedding Cake. During the preparation for the cake, Tita begins to cry and Nancha comforts her. Tita’s painful tears spill into the cake batter while Nancha and Tita embrace each other and cry until Tita has no more tears to shed. When Tita opens one of the jars the smell of the preserves reminds her of the day when they preserved the fruit which also reminds her that day when Pedro came to the house to get wedding invitations to deliver in town, wherein she felt sadness, pain and anger. The tears of Tita had resulted to death of Nancha and ruin of Rosaura’s wedding. For the reader, it seems that Tita made her revenge unintentionally through the wedding cake that she made with pain for her one great love Pedro will marry her own sister,

Rosaura.
In the same chapter, it was also able to characterize Mama Elena as a brass-bound and strict woman who has the power to control things in her own way.

Mama Elena’s words are the laws of their home that everyone can’t question and should be obeyed. While Tita is an obedient but strong youngest daughter of Mama Elena who just accepts what her mother wants even if she had to sacrifice the one she really loves. But later on, she became somehow rebellious by creating different delicious recipes that would express her real self. Through her cooking skills, she was also able to show her love and feelings to Pedro. She is also a loving aunt for she treated her nephew and niece as her own. No matter how painful her life is because of what Mama Elena’s decisions for her, she still patiently prepares Mama Elena’s delicious meals. Though Rosaura was married to Pedro, Tita still helped her in diet and easing from

suffering.
The novel used a magical realism technique to make the story interesting. The author used different symbolisms such as fantasy, magical or fiction events that may happen in common settings in real life. The foods that Tita prepares are symbolism of how she feels and that it can affect the people who will taste it. It also values the tradition that one family believes in, no matter who will be affected along the way, they would still follow it. It is also about love and passion in which there are different love stories that are really not meant to be just like in real life, sometimes the people we meet are just part of the chapter or that book that we need to learn from. It is also about obedience and how a child should follow her parents no matter how much we don’t want to do it.