Verified Document

Water For Chocolate By Laura Esquivel, And Essay

Related Topics:

¶ … Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel, and "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto. Specifically it will discuss how the writing styles of the two novels compare in portraying the theme of love. Love and passion are central to these two novels, but so is food and food often communicates the passion the characters are feeling. The books also talk about loss, often the loss of a love, another aspect of passionate and loving relationships. In "Like Water for Chocolate," the main character Tita is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena. Mama Elena will not allow her to marry, because she is the youngest daughter, and she is the one that must care for Mama Elena until she dies. Tita is in love with Pedro, a neighbor boy who loves her too. However, when he asks for Tita's hand, Mama Elena says no, and offers him Tita's sister, Rosaura, instead. Pedro agrees to marry Rosaura, only because it will mean he will be close to Tita. Pedro lives in Mama Elena's house after the marriage. The book is laid out differently than many other novels. It is divided into twelve chapters, and each chapter represents a month of the year. Each chapter starts out with a recipe, and shows the reader how to complete the recipe throughout the chapter. Tita is the ranch's cook, and her emotions and passion are transferred into the recipes, affecting the other members of the family, and allowing her and Pedro to communicate. Esquivel writes, "With that meal it seemed they had discovered a new system of communication, in which Tita was the transmitter, Pedro the receiver, and poor Gertrudis the medium, the conducting body through which the singular sexual message was passed" (Esquivel 54). Pedro and Tita never give up their love for each other, and they eventually get to consummate their passion. They die together, and look forward to a life together in Heaven.

Esquivel makes cooking sensuous and very appealing. She writes, "The sound of the pans bumping against each other, the smell of the almonds browning in the griddle, the sound of Tita's...

The passion of cooking is used throughout the book to translate into the passion between Tita and Pedro, and it adds color and vitality to the book. Her writing style is passionate and very vivid, and her style is the most appealing when she is writing about love and passion. She makes the pages sizzle without using strong sexual references. For example, she writes, "Plumes of phosphorescent colors were ascending to the sky like delicate Bengal lights" (Esquivel 158). This is the first time Pedro and Tita make love, and their passion is easy to see when the author expresses it so fully.
There is a real difference in this story between passion and love. Tita loves John, but she is passionate about Pedro, and there is a huge difference between the two. That is why magical things happen when they are together. It almost seems as if the love between John and Tita is more "real," because it is difficult to maintain the passion, sometimes.

"Kitchen," on the other hand, is really two novels contained in one. It talks about love, but its central theme is loss, often the loss of a great love. The first story, "Kitchen" opens with the death of the narrator's grandmother, and her feelings of loss that come over her. She finds herself living with a strange new family that she may be falling in love with Yuichi, the young man that invited her to live with them. The author writes, "The conversation we just had was like a glimpse of stars through a chink in a cloudy sky -- perhaps, over time, talks like this would lead to love" (Yoshimoto 30). This author's style is very different from the style of Esquivel. Esquivel's writing is lyrical and passionate, while Yoshimoto's writing is far less dramatic, and so her ideas of love are less dramatic, as well.

The narrator suffers another loss when Yuichi's "mother" is murdered. She sees that throughout life, people disappear one after the other. The author writes, "When I…

Sources used in this document:
References

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. New York: Doubleday. 1992.

Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Words: 1584 Length: 5 Document Type: Research Paper

Like Water for ChocolateLike Water for Chocolate is a novel by Laura Esquivel, a Mexican screenwriter and novelist, written in 1989 (Puccinelli 209). The novel's protagonist is Tita, a young girl who is not supposed to get married due to her traditional beliefs. Still, she eventually marries her beloved Pedro, Rosaura's husband. Before this, Tita only expressed herself when she cooked because she was always longing to get married (Puccinelli

Water for Chocolate' Is a Movie Based
Words: 2539 Length: 8 Document Type: Essay

Water for Chocolate' is a movie based on the popular novel of the same name which was written by Laura Esquivel, a Mexican novelist. The novel was published in the year 1989 and is based on the life story of a young girl called Tita. The entire plot of the movie revolves around the life of Tita and her desire to marry Pedro, her lover. Tita can never get

Water for Chocolate: May-August the
Words: 889 Length: 3 Document Type: Thesis

Synthesis: This quote is similar to a comment Nick makes about the Tom and Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (188). Though the

Water for Chocolate the Book
Words: 1235 Length: 4 Document Type: Thesis

Though Rosaura bears some feelings towards Pedro, it is doubtful that she really loves him in the way Tita does, and it is certain that Pedro feels more for Tita than he does for his new wife. Still, their wedding -- their public celebration of love -- is hugely destructive to Tita and ultimately everyone else. Synthesis: Although the elements of magical realism do not crop up in the works

Film Analysis of Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate
Words: 1870 Length: 5 Document Type: Film Review

Water for Chocolate Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate is a tragic love story. Tita de la Garza and Pedro are in love but are not allowed to marry because of a family tradition which bars the youngest daughter from marrying anyone until her mother has died and no longer needs the daughter to take care of her. Tita's sisters, Rosaura and Gertrudis, are allowed to marry and do so,

Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B.
Words: 1031 Length: 3 Document Type: Book Review

Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Linda O. McMurry. Specifically it will contain a critical review of the book. Ida B. Wells was a black activist who came of age after the Civil War in the American South. She was influential, perhaps one of the most influential black women in American history. The author wanted to portray her history so people would have a greater understanding

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now