The Use of Magical Realism in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate

Through viewing Big Fish, by Tim Burton and reading both of Marquez’s stories (Handsomest Drowned Man In The World and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings), it becomes apparent that while both novels vary greatly in plot and storyline, they are also both centered around the concept of magical realism. For example, Big Fish is a story about a young mAn who visits his dying father, but throughout the story, is introduced to various ‘magical’ entities, which introduce an almost fantasy-like theme to the story. In Marquez’s stories, one is about a handsome drowned man and the other is about a dirty, raggedy angel. We are similarly shown this sense of an ordinary reality, with a certain twinge of magic/fantasy. So while this film and these novels are completely different in the terms of context and storyline, they share these elements of fantasy, that seamlessly blend together to create a realistic, yet magical atmosphere that provides the reader with a unique and capturing experience.

The title of this novel, Like Water for Chocolate, is also a simile for the burning passion Tita and Pedro had for each other. In Latin countries, “like water for chocolate” mean to boil water to the right temperature in order to make chocolate milk. Figuratively it is a metaphor for state of sexual arousal. Despite their true love for each other, Tita and Pedro had to restrain their feelings under the eyes of society. Their love is like the boiling point of water.

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

Cien Anos capped the ascendance of Latin American literature known as the "Boom". And for a generation of readers—and authors, magical realism in Latin American literature, pioneered by Borges, was drawn most accurately by Marquez. The first sentence of the book, which describes the Colonel's memory about discovering ice, is the most obvious and often cited trope for magical realism. The extended life span of several characters, the ascent of Remedios the Beauty and the wondrous objects brought by the gypsies are less often cited as vivid magical realism examples.

The first use of the magical realism in Like Water for Chocolate, was in the first few paragraphs of the book, to describe her birth. “Tita 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. That afternoon, when the uproar had subsided and the water had been dried up by the sun, Nancha swept up the residue the tears had left on the red stone floor. There was enough salt to fill a ten-pound sack-it was used for cooking and lasted a long time” (Esquivel, page 1). Tita, the main protagonist, was

     Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a master of magical realism, twist our minds eye in the story A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS. Our perspectives are disoriented as we are enchanted with beautiful prose and appaled by people’s actions.

In the story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez intertwines the supernatural with the natural in an amazing manner. This essay analyzes how Marquez efficiently utilizes an exceptional style and imaginative tone that requests the reader to do a self-introspection on their life regarding their responses to normal and abnormal events.

García Marquez’s reputation in literature is basically based on magical realism (Nedungadi, 2015). In Marquez’s short story on a “Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and film, magical realism is clearly referenced. In the story, Marquez mixes fantasy and reality to the point where any real distinction between both gets blurred. As Strecher (1999) defines it, magical realism is that which “happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.” In the essay below, two notable versions of Garcia’s story—i.e. its print and film versions—will be compared and contrasted based on their conformity to the tradition of magical realism. This paper will elaborate on how each version would allude to the use of realistic details alongside those that are magical, how fantasy and the ordinary are joined together in the details they include.

The controversy surrounding Magical Realism makes the classification of what is and what is not Magical Realism very difficult. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a famous Latin American author, has written many pieces of what is generally conceived to be Magical Realism. Marqez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" fulfills every characteristic of Magical Realism..

Allusions and time are common elements of magic realism in Jorge Borges’s stories. Throughout Book of Sand, Borges makes references to a variety of things outside the short story to enhance its depth. He also includes cyclical time to give Book of Sand a background story and to leave readers wondering what will happen to the unusual literature. Guayaquil alludes to the Guayaquil conference in which Simón Bolívar and José de San Martin debated over the future government of Peru. This event recycles into two historians meeting to decide who will get to publish letters written by Bolívar himself.

Latin author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many short stories and novels that are considered to be Magical Realism. Some of these works are "The Ghosts of August," One Hundred Years of Solitude," "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," and "Light Is Like Water." In "Light Is Like Water" (December 1978), the use of various fantastic elements along with the realist elements is what defines this story as Magical Realism.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the remarkable book of his career. Mariella Frostrup said “My favourite book by one of the world’s greatest authors.. You’re in the hands of a master”. Many newpaper reviews considered this as one of the masterpiece of Gabriel and he himself considered this book as a turning point in his life. This novel is a account of a journalist who visited to the land after 20 years of the death of Santiago Nasar, a renowned person of the town. She visits that place and tries to find out the different details from the person directly and indirectly involve with Santiago’s death or is having any kind of relationship with him. The author has used Magic Realism as a motif in the novel and has very well presented it. It adds to the charm in the novel. It also explores the reality of the characters and community which is different from us. We actually understand the characters and the community much better by the introduction of the magic realism in it. There are many examples of magic realism in the novel.

Magic realism is a writing style in which mythical elements are put into a realistic story but it does not break the narrative flow; rather it helps a reader get a deeper understanding of the reality. Often time’s Latin-American writers utilize this writing technique. It has been speculated by many critics that magic realism appears most often in the literature of countries with long histories of both mythological stories and social turmoil, such as those in Central and South America. Like many Latin-American writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez used this approach of magic realism, in his book “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, in which he reveals the history of Macondo through the seven generations of the

The phrase “magical realism” in the context of literature was first coined by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier to describe the combination of the fantastic and everyday occurrences in Latin American fiction. Over time, the term has been vastly modified by writers from a plethora of backgrounds. Nevertheless, magical realism still refers to the tendency to mix the magical and terrestrial in a context of realistic narration, as seen in the works of Gabriel García Márquez. Born in Columbia, Gabriel García Márquez introduces readers to magical realism through one of his short stories “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by combining earthly and fantastic elements to create an image of an ordinary society with mythical creatures. In his work, Gabriel García Márquez effectively illustrates the coexistence of cruelty and morality in society through the strategic utilization of magical realism.

Don Quixote fully titled “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” is an admirable Spanish novel by an eminent novelist Miguel De Cervantes. Cervantes wrote many novels while in prison but unfortunately this was the only reputed work produced by him which became world’s first best seller and literature’s great masterpiece. It encompasses the history, culture and the general environment in Spain. According to me, this magnum opus became so high-flying because of its universally-recognized matchless idea of “Quixotism” (pursuits of lofty romantic ideas) combined with the innovative characters.