Like Water for Chocolate: The Depth of Culture and Love

The book “Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel is a story that is put together by the importance of food and family tradition within a Mexican family. Within the novel, the family is impacted by the importance of these aspects. The youngest daughter Tita shows how much she relates to them. The ways these aspects influence her family consequently end up affecting her personal life. Food, and family tradition have an important role within this novel, since through these Tita is able to express herself as well as to show how these impacts her personal life. Food and family have a impact on her life as a mexican young woman.

The author is Laura Esquivel, and she is a mexican novelist. She has wrote plays for a kindergarten class that she used to teach. After writing plays for the kindergarten class, she started writing children's television programs. Mexico, her hometown plays a big role in all her books. She’s also from mexico city and write about mexican history, and culture. She was raised in Mexico city, in a middle class home with her parents and 3 siblings. In 1985, Laura and her husband collaborating on a film project, Chido One, for which she wrote the screenplay. For this work Laura won a nomination from the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures. She is a very successful woman that is self made. She started from the bottom now she’s way bigger.

The setting and point of view of the book is the food is seen as a way of communication and family tradition as an obstacle within Tita’s life. Ever since she had been born, her closeness to food was seen from that very moment. In the first scene of the book, this can be seen. “Tita made her entrance into this world, she was practically born on a kitchen counter. With all the amazing smells of food. This shows how she connects to food, and this connection only grows more throughout the story.

During the story they show how much more in depth she is with food, and family she gets. Although, later on Tita is able to mix her own feelings within her food preparation helping her communicate what she feels. When she shows her emotions through food, it could taste like all kinds of things like being sad or happy. As she is cooking she also gets emotionally involved, therefore this lets her mix her feelings in the recipe as well. Showing that she has emotion, strength, hardworking, and how much skills she puts in her recipes is outstanding. That just makes everything ten times better. Tita is just showing her family that she is capable of doing many things as she loves family, and food all in one.

The busy, and crazy thing that they have to do for another wedding find Tita and Chencha working hard in the kitchen. It seems, at first, that this is the wedding of Tita and John however, it is slowly revealed that many years have passed and the celebration honors the union of Esperanza and Alex, John Brown's son. In the intervening years, Tita has lived in the household with Rosaura, Pedro, and Esperanza under the guidelines of a silent pact. When Alex and Esperanza wanted to get married everything changed, it messed up the “plan”. Tita and Pedro pleaded that Esperanza's wishes be respected, while Rosaura staunchly keep up the tradition that her mother had forced on Tita. After days of violent arguments, Rosaura died, still suffering from her sad disorder. Everything having to do with her funeral was crazy cause the people who went to say goodbye could still smell the reek off her body.

Rosaura's death left Esperanza free to marry Alex, and everyone in the household is very happy, they have shown gratitude for Esperanza and Alex. Pedro and Tita are somewhat free to express their true emotions, though they try to keep all negative desires to themselves. After the amazing, and pretty wedding of Esperanza and Alex, Tita and Pedro are finally left on the ranch alone, with no one to stop them from doing what they want. They make love for the first time without restraint or fear of interruption, and experience a bliss so wonderful that Tita views a crazy and wonderful thing leading toward the spirit world. Reminding herself how John Brown told her of this possibility and how the soul will return through the tunnel, Tita calms herself so that she might continue living and experiencing her new crazy joy. At the same time, she feels Pedro's heartbeat rapidly accelerate and then cease. He has died and enters the tunnel in vision afforded him by his bliss. Tita desperately wishes to have gone with him. She was wanting to still be connected. For Tita to get the tunnel to open again she has to get it to spark the inner fire again that opened up for her a passage to death, Tita eat the candles that lit the room up until the moment of Pedro's passing. The tunnel is opening itself to Tita, and this time she sees the figure of Pedro at its end. Tita leaves the world to go to him. When she gets to him, their spirit bodies create sparks that set fire to the ranch. The fire is mistaken with fireworks instead of an explosion.