Character Analysis: Like Water For Chocolate

Mama Elena is the type of person that think other should take care of her and his the type of person that want to take control of someone else life. Elena thinks that a daughter only job is to take care of her mother until she dies, but more to Tita because she is the youngest one. Mama Elena only shows people her cold heart and harsh woman, so that people respect her and fulfill her needs. Mama Elena is like a dictator, she is the only one who have full control of everyone and everyone most do what she says at all time. “During the funeral Tita really wept for her mother. Not for her castrating mother who had repressed Tita her entire life, but for the person who had lived a frustrated love. And she swore in front of Mama Elena’s tomb that come what may, she would never renounce love.”(Tita). People only want to remember the good side of Mama Elena even her own daughter, that only wanted to remember the human side of her mother and not the heartless mother that she knew since her

Magical Realism: “Tita was so sensitive to onions, any time they were being chopped, they say she would just cry; when she was still in my great-grandmother’s belly her sobs were so loud that even Nacha, the cook, who was half-deaf, could her them easily. Once her wailing got so violent that it brought on an early labor” (Esquivel 11). Significance: This scene describes the supernatural powers that Tita’s tears possess. Her tears cause her to come into the world prematurely right on the kitchen table.

One can see the flow of Tita’s emotions into her cooking when she prepares the food for the two main weddings that occur in the story. The first wedding was Rosaura’s and the other wedding was Esperanza’s. At Rosaura’s Wedding, Tita was very sad and crushed because Rosaura was marrying the love of her life, Pedro. “And so arms around each other, Nacha and Tita wept until there were no more tears in Tita’s eyes (pg.30).” As Tita prepares the batter for the wedding cake her tears fall into the mix, so Nacha tells Tita to take a break and cry until she has no more tears. When the wedding guests ate the cake, they all suddenly become sad and ill. “The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of lodging (pg.39).” Nobody including the newlyweds got to enjoy the wedding as they had hoped for, since they were all “vomiting and wailing over lost love (pg.39).” The only person

In Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel explores Tita’s negative emotions through the preparation of food, and uses magical realism to emphasise on the power of hatred. Since Tita is forbidden by Mama Elena to express her anger and hatred towards

Following, we learn that Mama Elena has no milk to feed Tita, which makes Nacha, the family cook - her official caretaker as she replaces Mama Elena. This is important to point out because the initial separation of the two main characters is quite evident; there is no mother-daughter bond that should have been established, Mama Elena doesn’t have time to worry about her, “without having to worry about feeding a newborn baby on top of everything else.” (7) We grow to understand why Tita forms other vital bonds with Nacha, and of course the food that surrounds her daily, helping her not only to grow but acts as an outlet for her emotions. “From that day on, Tita’s domain was the kitchen…this explains the sixth sense Tita developed about everything concerning food.” (7) From the beginning, Tita is given barely any freedom, she is given a purpose, she will not marry anyone until Mama Elena is alive, she is to look after her, which becomes a great conflict when the love of her life, Pedro, is to marry her sister, Rosaura, and not her. Mama Elena wants to hear nothing about Tita’s frustration. Mama Elena herself has lost her true love and because of it is insensitive to Tita’s love with Pedro. The reaction of each woman to her predicament helps explain the opposite characters. Mama Elena lets the loss of her young love turn into hatred for anything but tradition, and

Throughout Tita’s life with Mama Elena, she holds Tita back from being able to experience true love only to keep a family tradition. She is in love with Pedro and

Nacha was essential, Tita mother. She raised her and loved her more than her mother, ever did. In the kitchen with Nacha was the place that Tita felt safe and love. For a splice, when she sipped the soup she was in the kitchen with Nacha. Now that Nacha was gone, all Tita had left were her recipes to remind her of the love that she Nacha had. Tita was not the only who was transported with the sips of comfort food, so was Gertrudis:

The movie Like water for Chocolate is about a girl named Tita who is trying to rebel with all of the traditions that has been placed in front of her. She is in love with a guy named Pedro but her mother, Mama Elena realizes that they love each other and told tita that it is part of the tradition not to marry until and unless Mama Elena dies. So, Mama Elena may be seen as a heart-less mother who made Tita’s life a living hell and made Rosaura, Tita’s sister get married to Pedro and he agreed to this so that he could be closer to Tita. Mama Elena realizes that if Tita shows her true feeling at the wedding, it could cause problems. Then, Mama Elena decided that she would make Nacha (yaya) and Tita would handle the

Tita surrenders her love for her the value of family and in doing so, she begins to put a greater value into her cooking. For instance, in the writing, it states that “Soups can cure any illness, whether physical or mental. (7, 410)” This quote was embedded to show that the meal could help cure Tita even in her darkest

Mama Elena refuses and offers her eldest daughter instead, confirming another tradition- that the oldest daughter must marry first. Pedro accepts so he can be close to Tita. While preparing for the wedding, Tita focuses on the white cake and the white icing. The white wedding cake symbolizes her hopeless love and the impure marriage that is about to take place. White relates to Tita's virginity, which she can never escape. The color also represents the typical ideals of womanhood and femininity which Tita can never experience because she is bound to tradition. At Pedro and Rosaura's wedding, guests stare at Tita, aware that she has broken the family tradition by falling in love. She is harassed by their comments but she remains strong. The cake, effected by Tita's tears, poisons the guests and ruins the wedding. Rosaura's perfect white dress is ruined, exposing the impurity of the union. Only when Mama Elena dies, Tita is free to marry. She is engaged to John but decides not to marry him because she believes she is pregnant with Pedro's child. Her love for Pedro is too strong for her to marry another man. Even though she is free to marry someone she loves she doesn't; Tita chooses to once again cross the boundaries of society and has an affair with Pedro. Once again through death Tita is freed. When Rosaura dies, Pedro and Tita are free to show their love. However, their

A soul in distress is always looking for a mean to escape through a difficult situation. In the story Like Water For Chocolate, Tita De La Garza who suffered like no other, isn’t the exception. This young woman since birth was instilled with a very deep love for cooking. When the people who she loved most betrayed her, cooking eased her pain. All of the intense emotions that she felt while preparing food, were unknowingly added to the recipes. The author, Laura Esquivel through the use of symbolism, she demonstrates that the role of food in the story isn’t there just to sustain life, it also transmits strong emotions such as desire, sorrow and healing felt by the

Mama Elena, sensing Tita's reluctance to participate in her sister's upcoming wedding, warns her, "I won't stand for disobedience... nor am I going to allow you to ruin your sister's wedding, with you acting like the victim. You're in charge of all the preparations starting now, and don't ever let me catch you with a single tear or even a long face, do you hear?" (27). At the wedding party the following day, although Tita keeps a perfectly calm demeanor, her true feelings about her sister's marriage to Pedro are revealed in the guests' first bite of the Chabela wedding cake. "The moment [the guests] took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing... [T]he weeping was just the first symptom of a strange intoxication that seized the guests" (39), all but Tita, on whom the cake had no effect. The author uses the cake's effect on the guests to reveal first, Tita's grief over her loss of love through the guests uncontrollable weeping and second, her disgust over her sister and Pedro's

Recipes crafted throughout generations invoke feelings of pleasure when eaten occasionally. When enjoyed especially around the holidays, a simple dish is transformed into a manifestation of love. When eaten in celebration, it acts as a window into the unique expression of every family. The near obsession with the taste and quality of soul food can be justified by its high in fat content, but it is important not to forget how the psychology of growing up with this food remains with a child forever. It makes sense for it to also be known as “comfort food,” food that is typically unhealthy yet invokes feelings of innocence, childhood, and

“You know perfectly well that being the youngest daughter means you have to take care of me until the day I die.” (10). This statement shows how Tita is being oppressed not by mama Elena choice but family tradition. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel concentrate into the stories of the women of De La Garza. Tita the main character aim to find love, happiness and independent, and Elena De La Garza the antagonist who will stand in the way of Tita happiness and would do anything in her power to stop Tita to fulfil her goals which is to find true love with Pedro. This mother and daughter relationship was predestined since the day when Tita was brought up into this world, and her father’s sudden death. Mama Elena was the opposite of a loving, caring women she never had a relationship with Tita. While Tita formed a relationship with food that gives her the strength, and love she never experienced before. The women of De La Garza experienced many challenges in this strict societies. All the women expected to follow an oppressive family tradition.

But of course Rosaura was hurt because of the fact that he brought Tita roses instead of her and Mama Elena did not approve and told Tita to throw them out, but Tita didn’t listen to her so she went into the kitchen to express them the best way she could which was through food, so she cooked the quail in rose petals sauce making the food have a sexual tension especially towards Gertrudis. When Pedro complimented the food Mama Elena downgraded it and Rosaura excused herself. Gertrudis was feeling very hot and lusty causing her to go to the bathroom and shower herself but that didn’t help and the heat from her body cause the bathroom to catch on fire which made her run out of the bathroom naked the opposite way of the ranch, pg. 51 in “Like Water for Chocolate says “The delicacy of her face, the perfection of her pure vaginal body contrasted with passion, the lust, the leapt from her eyes, from every pore. These things, and the sexual desire Juan had contained for so long while he was fighting in the mountains, made for a spectacular encounter.” The tension that she was feeling made her run away from the ranch with Juan on the horse and from there that’s when Gertrudis made love for the very first time. Those two examples were the two major recipes that showed how much Tita’s cooking had a big impact on the people that surrounded her and what it did to them to affect them.