Sublime Elements in Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

The novel Like Water for Chocolate, published in 1989, was written by Laura Esquivel who is of Spanish heritage. She lives in Mexico, and Like Water for Chocolate was her first novel. I feel that in the story Laura Esquivel gives a lot of magical elements that are treated as real in order to evoke emotions about love, but it also employs many features of sublime literature.

In Like Water for Chocolate, a girl named Tita was born. When she was first born, it mentions that she was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor (6). This occurrence appears to be a magical element rather than the sublime. A baby cannot be washed into the world. Therefore, I feel that it is magical.

Another magical realist element is that when Tita was born, Nacha swept up the residue the tears had left on the red stone floor. On the floor was enough salt to fill a ten-pound sack that was used for cooking and lasted a long time (7). This element is more magical than sublime because this happening can not occur. However, it is a good example of sublime literature because it illustrates Longinus' notion of accumulation as a feature of sublime language. The salt from Tita's birth definitely dealt with accumulation.

In addition, in Like Water for Chocolate, when Tita was making her sister Rosaura's wedding cake a magical element occurred. She was making her sister's wedding cake, and at the same time, she was thinking of Pedro with whom she was in love with and who was marrying her sister. As she was thinking of Pedro, she began to cry. While she was crying, a tear drop went into the cake, and she was afraid that it messed up the meringue. The moment...

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...elements. I did not notice many realist elements in the story Like Water for Chocolate. However, the realist elements did not relate to the sublime as well as the magical elements did. That the sublime is not used as much in writing. I feel that the sublime needs to be more fulfilled for people to understand it better. There are many articles that a person can find on the sublime, and it would be a new, enjoyable experience to learn some information on something new in life.

Works Cited

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. New York. Doubleday, 1989.

Simpkins, Scott. "Sources of Magic Realism/Supplements to Realism in Contemporary Latin American Literature." Magical Realism. Theory, History,

Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durkham, N. C: Duke UP, 1995, 150.

Longinus. On the Sublime. Cambridge. Harvard UP, 1995.