Like Water for Chocolate 1

Shannon Wong
April 5, 2009
Chapters 1-4

The narrator begins by telling us his/her experience with chopping onions and confesses that when they’ve chopped onions that they can’t help but cry. “Mama used to say it was because I was especially sensitive to onions, like my great aunt. Tita” (Esquivel 5) The protagonist of this novel, Tita, is swept into the world on a tide of tears. Tita’s father died two days after she was born, and Mama Elena’s breast milk dried of shock. With teas and different remedies, Nacha, the house cook, took care of Tita in the kitchen, where Tita was culinary educated. Tita grows up in the kitchen, and creates her realm of isolation from her older sisters Gertrudis and Rosaura. Mama Elena demands a steady routine of cooking, sewing, cleaning and prayer at her Ranch, also a family tradition that the youngest daughter has to take care of her mother until the day she dies. Pedro Muzquiz, a suitor comes to pay the De La Garza family a visit, to ask for Tita’s hand in marriage, and being that Tita is the youngest daughter, Mama Elena offers her second daughter, Rosaura’s hand instead. Privately, Tita questions her family’s traditions and maintains her relationship with Pedro. Nacha overhears a conversation with Pedro and his father, to agree that he will marry Rosaura to be closer to Tita in the house. Tita’s favorite food, Christmas Roll couldn’t cure her sadness. Suffering from insomnia, Tita works on a bedspread.

Tita and Nacha are to prepare a Chabela Wedding Cake for Pedro and Rosaura’s wedding, requiring 170 eggs, and 200 roosters to be served as capons. Tita begins to hallucinate from shock and depression and even Nacha began to breakdown. When Mama Elena leaves the kitchen, Tita is encouraged to let her emotions release her emotions before she does at the wedding, and she cries while Nacha continues to cook. The next day, Tita runs into Pedro in the garden after picking apricots. Pedro tries to explain himself, but Tita refuses to listen to him. Tita and Nacha continue preparing the cake, Tita’s tears soak the icing, so Nacha insists that she get’s rest, then she tries the icing to taste if it has become salty, the flavor is unchanged, but suddenly she feels emotional and remembers her own lost of youthful love. She becomes sick, and cannot attend the wedding. At the wedding, Tita is harassed by the guests of their comments about how her love married her older sister. She is forced to face Pedro, and he confesses to her that he still only desires her, and she is then filled with warmth. She takes a piece of cake and leaves the party. Then every one at the wedding party was feeling of heartbreak and longing, like Nacha before. People began vomiting and the wedding party was ruined. Mama Elena and Rosaura were furious and convinced that Tita had poisoned the cake. Tita could not seek defense finding that Nacha dead with a portrait of her lost lover.

With Nacha dead, Tita inherits the role of the ranch cook. Pedro secretly gives Tita roses, and she prepares a meal of qual in rose petal sauce. Nacha transmits secrets and gives her the recipe. The family is ecstatic about this dish, and pedro give a good response by always complimenting her cooking. Rosaura get’s very self conscious because he doesn’t pay her much attention or affection. The dish takes extreme effect on Gertrudis, as a aphrodisiac, arousing her for sexual desire. The emotion pulses to Pedro and Tita and they become in a trance at the dinner table. Afterwards, Gertrudis goes to take a bath from the pink rose aroma sweat that she emitted. Her heat and passion caused the water to evaporate and the contact set the structure on fire. She fled from the bath completely naked and was taken away on a galloping horse with a soldier in the revolutionary army drawn by her scent. They rode off, leaving Pedro and Tita envious that they couldn’t make love freely and run away together like Gertrudis.

Pedro and Rosaura are expected to have a baby and Tita prepares a special meal for the baptism of her nephew. She has unexpected joy and her faith in her relationship with Pedro is restored. The narrator tells about how during Rosaura’s labor the federal troops were occupying the village and there were no doctors around. Pedro left to fetch a doctor and Tita stayed with Rosaura to birth the baby. It was a difficult delivery, but Nacha’s spiritual voice guided her through the steps. Rosaura’s body didn’t produce milk for the hungy child, Roberto, so Tita tries to nurse him with milk. He rejected. She offers him her breasts, as a pacifier, and somehow she was full of milk. Pedro discovers Tita’s secret ways of nursing Roberto and they keep it from the family, making a stronger bond between the two of them. Mama Elena senses a connection from the two of them and she becomes suspicious. For the party to congradulate the birth and baptism of Roberto, Doctor John Brown has an attraction to Tita, seeing that she's grown up. Mama Elena tells him that she cannot break the family tradition. She tells new about sending Roberto, Rosaura and Pedro to San Antonio, saying that there will be better medical attention there for Rosaura. It’s devastating news for Tita to be away from her nephew and Pedro. "Meanwhile, Mama Elena had managed to ruin the party for her. The first party in her life that she had enjoyed." (Esquivel 81)

Literary Elements:

Foreshadowing: “Tita had no need for the usual slap on the bottom. Because she was already crying as she emerged, maybe that was because she knew then that it would be her lot in life to be denied marriage.” (Esquivel 6)

Metaphor: “The way Nacha told it, 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.” (Esquivel 6)
“Tita liked to take a deep breath and let the characteristic smoke and smell transport her through the recesses of her memory” ((Esquivel 8)
“Their voices grew less and less audible, drowned out by the crackling of dried leaves beneath their feet.” (Esquivel 15)

Hyperbole: “Yes, a thousand times. From that night on she would love him forever” (Esquivel 25)
Simile: “Isn’t that something? Your ma talks about being ready for marriage like she was dishing up a plate of enchiladas!” (Esquivel 14)
“in one sharp, quick blast she was so cold and dry her cheeks burned and turned red, red as the apples beside her.” (Esquivel 14)

Personification: “She felt she had the best chance of “educating the innocent child’s stomach,” even thought she had never married or had children.” (Esquivel 6)
“But once, Tita managed to convince them to join her in watchin the dazzling display mad by dancing water drops dribbled on a red hot griddle” (Esquivel 8)

Alliteration: “she didn’t speak a single word to her.” (Esquivel 12)
“The eggs are place in a cask containing crumbled sheep fodder” (Esquivel 25)

Symbolism: “That world was an endless expanse that began at the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house, whereas everything on the kitchen side of that door, on through the door leading to the patio and the kitchen and herd gardens was completely hers-it was Tita’s realm.” (Esquivel 6)

Theme: The theme for the beginning of the book is the about self pleasure/ needs vs. respect to your family. Tita, as anyone would, in this situation sneaks around and lies to her family. She is very connected and dependent on Pedro, and that may harm her for any future evens that may happen.

Thoughts: This novel started out pretty well, I was enjoying it until i got to the middle of the book, Tita has a very tragic life, being the youngest daughter of the De La Garza family.