Preview

Like for Chocolate

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
762 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Like for Chocolate
Elisa Talavera
English 11o
Professor Zollo
Like Water for Chocolate
During the 1920 Revolution, Mexican men became combined in new relationships to Mexican women. In Mexican history, women developed their potentialities on a large scale beside the men and won recognition as companions, mates, and partners. Mexican screenwriter Laura Esquivel In the book "Like Water for Chocolate," is a main revolution that develops between mother and daughter, Mama Elena and Tita. Like Water for Chocolate shows revolutions in traditions and are the major factor because tradition states that the youngest daughter must not marry, but must take care of the mother until she dies. However, when a young man decides to ask for Tita's hand in marriage, Mama Elena flat out refuses to let Tita get marry and allows her sister to marry him. The revolution continues to build until finally after many years of torment by her mother, Tita leaves the family ranch. Then after a while, when Mama Elena becomes paralyzed by bandits, Tita feels compelled to return to the ranch and care for her mother. In returning Tita felt that her return humiliated her mother because how cruelly she had treated her daughter in the past (130).

When Tita had made dinner for her mother, Mama Elena brutally rejected her kindness. Tita could not understand why her mother treated her cruelly, "she didn't understand Mama Elena's attitude . . . It was beyond her comprehension that one person, whatever her relationship with another, could reject the kind gesture in such a brutal manner . . ." (130-131). After all that they had gone through, Tita thought at least some things had changed. Of course nothing had changed because Mama Elena saw her daughter as she saw her self many years before. But after her mother's death Tita was enlightened when see discovered her mother's love letters from José, her mother's only true love (137).

As Tita read her mothers letters, she discovered the reason behind her mother's

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jaffe, Janice A. “Latin American women writers’’ novel Recipes and Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The reason why Porfirio Diaz and Mama Elena similar to each other is that they both disagree with what people do. Porfirio Diaz treats his people by not caring whether they are poor or not, similar to how Mama Elena treats her daughter and forced her to work in a kitchen. This shows that both Mama Elena and Porfirio Diaz wanted to control other person that they didn’t care whether they like it or not.…

    • 75 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Josie Mendez-Negrete’s novel, Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed, is a very disturbing tale about brutal domestic abuse and incest. Negrete’s novel is an autobiography regarding experiences of incest in a working-class Mexican American family. It is Josie Mendez-Negrete’s story of how she, her siblings, and her mother survived years of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of her father. “Las Hijas de Juan" is told chronologically, from the time Mendez-Negrete was a child until she was a young adult trying, along with the rest of her family, to come to terms with her father 's brutal legacy. It is a upsetting story of abuse and shame compounded by cultural and linguistic isolation and a system of patriarchy that devalues the experiences of women and girls. At the same time, "Las Hijas de Juan" is an inspirational tale, filled with strong women and hard-won solace found in traditional Mexican cooking, songs, and storytelling.…

    • 1851 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    An additional example is when John is bringing his aunt to Tita’s home to celebrate the planned marriage. Tita cheats on John and decides she is not going to marry John, but she feels terrible because John is a kind-hearted gentleman. Tita felt “completely empty”(210); ironically, there “really wasn’t a thing”(210) in the pantry for Tita to prepare. After successfully making supper with the food that is available, Tita realizes that she has to make the best of the predicaments she will encounter in life. Gertrudis and Rosaura, Tita’s eldest sister, also exemplify the power of food. This is shown in the first chapter. Tita plays in the kitchen and invites both her sisters to join. When they witness what Tita is doing. Rosaura is “cowering in the corner, stunned by the display”(8). Rosaura then tries to join the fun, but “she barely moistened her hands”(8) which made it difficult for Rosaura. Tita tries to help Rosaura but Rosaura resists this. Tita “became annoyed and let go”(8), resulting in Rosaura’s hands touching the griddle. The power of food affects both Tita and Rosaura physically. Mama Elena hurts Tita and Rosaura’a hands burn. The food is powerful enough to actually cause physical pain to both of…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Something else that is significant to this novel is Mama Elena’s struggle. Mama Elena also suffered the pangs of lost love due to her mother. Although the reactions of each woman to her predicament helps sort out the differences between Tita and Mama Elena. While Mama Elena let the loss of her love make her a controlling and menacing mother, Tita obeys her mother’s command but still has the lifelong struggle of trying to find love which she eventually gets after all the conflicts are absent from her life. “For twenty-two years she had respected the pact the two of them had made with Rosaura; now she had had enough of it. Thier pact consisted of taking into consideration the fact that it was vital to Rosaura to maintain the appearance that her marriage was going splendidly, and the most important thing for her was that her daughter grow up within that sacred institution, the family- the only way, she felt, to provide a firm moral foundation. Pedro and Tita had sworn to be absolutely discreet about their meetings and keep their love a secret. In the eyes of others, theirs must always be a perfectly normal family. For this to succeed, Tita had to give up having an illicit child. In compensation, Rosaura was prepared to share Esperanza with her, as follows: Tita would be in charge of feeding the child, Rosaura of her…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    After all these years, Tita finally consummated her love for Pedro. However, this blessing quickly became a curse when Tita started experiencing signs of pregnancy and her dead mother came back to haunt her. Mama Elena’s recurrent visits caused Tita to be anxious and frighten. Her mother forced her to go far away from the house and this was the last straw to Tita’s patience and respect for her mother. With the seven words, “I hate you, I’ve always hated you!”, Tita expelled her mother’s ghost. Soon afterwards, Tita’s menstrual fluid rapidly escaped her body and just as her swollen belly alleviated, Mama Elena’s spirit turned into a fireball. The angry fireball aimed its trajectory at Pedro and in just a few seconds, Pedro’s body was set on fire. The magical realism in this incident uses fire to illustrate Mama Elena’s rage after she found out about Tita’s so called “adulterous affair with her brother-in-law.”…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Like Water for Chocolate

    • 2599 Words
    • 11 Pages

    The characters in the novel are Tita, the youngest daughter prohibited of loving a man since she will never marry as her life purpose is to care for her mother. Pedro Muzquiz, Tita's forbidden lover. Elena de la Garza, Tita's controlling mother who prohibits the marriage between Tita and Pedro. Rosaura, Tita's older sister which marries Pedro by suggestion of Mama Elena. Gertudis, The oldest sister which is later revealed in the novel of being the love child of Mama Elena's true love which was also forbidden being a mulato there was no way that their love would have been accepted during those times. Nacha, the family cook that taught Tita everything she knew in the kitchen. Nacha cared for Tita since she was a baby and was more of a mother figure than her mother…

    • 2599 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Tita, the main character, learns the intensity of love through oppression and misfortune. According to the De la Garza family tradition, Tita faces a solitary life without a husband. The De la Garza family tradition clearly states that the youngest daughter can not marry in order to ensure that her mother is well taken care of; unfortunately for Tita, she is the youngest daughter. Mackenzie E. Dennard gives another theory as to why Mama Elena acts unkindly towards Tita: "Her mother is jealous of Tita and Pedro's love, not because it is wrong, but because it was something that she once had. She won't allow Tita to be happy, prohibiting her from having the life that she wants and in order to do so, she forces a ridiculous tradition upon her". In the novel, after Mama Elena dies, Tita finds Mama Elena's letter from a secret lover. After this discovery Tita realizes her mother did not permit her to marry because she was discontented with her own love life. Misfortune also contributes to Tita's unpleasant reality. For instance, Tita falls in love with Pedro who intends to request for her hand in marriage. Mama Elena refuses to let Tita marry but decides that Pedro is a suitable young man for Rosaura, Tita's older sister.…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    It is viewed that in Latino culture, men are the dominant gender, and women are submissive to their male counterparts. However, in “Rain of Gold” written by Victor Villasenor, the character of Dona Margarita, a wife and a mother, possessed strength that was even able to boldly reprimand the character of her husband. Dona Margarita’s strength and support was valued in the book as one of the reason of fulfilling the family’s dreams. She was able to express her anger and frustration on her husband, Don Victor, when he gambled and got drunk. Her family felt hope when she did not give-up her hope that her daughter, Sophia, was still alive. Although she wanted to give the leadership role to her husband Don Victor, the book made it apparent that she is the strength of her family. However, the story also depicted Dona Margarita as a housewife whose primary role is to raise her children and manage the…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tita is more of a Victim than a Creator. Tita is a person that in times has a tendency of victimizing herself by not doing anything in a situation or makes an excuse to not do it. One of the ways Tita is a Victim is when she blames someone else in a situation than herself. At Mama Elena’s funeral Tita had gotten a moment to see Pedro, her endless love. Pedro had approach Tita with a hug after her sister, Rosaura. But Tita was still hurt with Pedro and the decision he had made by living her behind. Pedro, Rosaura, and Roberto starting a new life at San Antonio. “Pedro didn’t deserve to have her love him so much. He had shown weakness by going away and leaving her, she could not forgive him” (Esquivel 139). In Tita’s situation…

    • 1489 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Rain of Gold Term Paper

    • 2596 Words
    • 11 Pages

    The book Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor portrays the life of his ancestors and their families from both sides of his family, his father, Juan Salvador Villasenor, and his mother, Maria Guadalupe "Lupe" Gomez. The book shows the story of his parents and their journeys to the United States across the border as undocumented immigrants from Mexico in an effort to escape the Revolution of 1910. The book depicts the differences between the two families ' difficult journeys of survival yet, portrays their similarities and how their journeys culminate in the joining of the two families through the marriage of the youngest son of the Villasenor family and the youngest daughter of the Gomez family. The two families experience contrasting journeys as Juan 's family was poor in Mexico after once being rich, however, in the United States, his family becomes better off due to Juan 's entrepreneurial activities. Meanwhile, Lupe 's family does not experience the same fortune as they leave Mexico as a lower-middle class family that supported itself through its serving food to miners and occasional finding of gold, and they are not able to obtain economic prosperity when crossing into the United States and struggle to settle down and are continuously moving as they work in the fields picking crops from one place to another following the harvest. Despite the difficulties that these two Mexican families suffer in their attempt to escape the Revolution and in their hope of a better life in the United States, Rain of Gold depicts the social and economic struggles of Mexican families and the prejudice they experience in the United States and how Mexican immigration is similar to African immigration as well as Chinese and Japanese immigration into the United States.…

    • 2596 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Like Water For Chocolate

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Like Water for Chocolate, Nacha acts like a mentor and mother, changing Tita to view the world through the lens of the kitchen and establishing the centrality of food to the story, in addition to demonstrating the cyclical nature of time.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Like water for chocolate

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Nacha is something like her mother figure. Tita grew up in the kitchen and Nacha is the house cook so she always clings to Nacha especially when she has a problem in. Mama Elena is very mean to Tita and takes away her chance for love. This is why they are not close.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Locos

    • 2536 Words
    • 11 Pages

    In responding to the questions, use complete sentences and support your answers with text (quotes) from the reading.…

    • 2536 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We came up with certain hypothesis that are based on our predictions: “Users experience an “illusory correlation” when they are asked to rank the generic brands.” Users tend to think that the generic brand would be less tasty even though in reality that’s often not the case. However because it is a generic brand they have prejudices against it. We expect participants to create an illusory correlation between the brand, its quality and the price. In our case, the generic brand is expected to be the worst and the one with the lowest price. The opposite correlation is observed with Nutella: expected to be the best one, with the best quality and the highest price. This effect was shown by Chapman in 1967. He made his experiment about how people would remember more some words than others given the context and aspects they linked to an object. “Due to the ‘mere exposure effect’, Nutella is the most preferred brand and is also considered as a ‘status mark’.” Mere exposure effect is a physiological phenomenon where people develop a preference for a stimulus due to the high frequency of exposure. G. Fechner first described this effect in 1876 but the most known scientist is R. Zajonc. In the 1960s, he conducted a series of experiment on the liking of Chinese characters by people who didn’t speak Chinese. Results show that participants tend to prefer characters they were exposed to earlier in the research. Other experiments have been conducted and this effect spreads to many other things like paintings, objects, sounds etc. In our case, we are expecting people to chose Nutella as their favourite one because it is the one we are mostly exposed to, the prototype for hazelnut chocolate spreads (the representative of the category). Although this effect seems to…

    • 754 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics