Like water for chocolate

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of

food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that

lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense

emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes

by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to

discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the

combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes

the soul. That fire, in short, is its food.

If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the

box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among

the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself,

unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenseless, is

capable of providing that food.

                                                        -Like water for chocolate

The first time I read the name “Like water for chocolate” was the book mentioned in one another book, where the protagonist  of the book was assigned to read this book as a school assignment.

The first time I read these words, I felt the book must be some kind of romantic novel which has this conversation. I tried looking for the book but couldn’t find it online in form of  a pdf. I even told one of my friend to look for its hard copy in library, but before we could search for it one night I suddenly found it.

As I started reading the novel I felt it’s a great combination of the foody book as well as a story book. I read and read and read until I finished the last page. And felt the feeling we get after savoring a really nicely prepared dish for a long time.

So here’s my review of like water for chocolate.

The story is of a young girl Tita, who is in a Mexican household which is controlled by her mother, mama Elena. In her youth she fells in love with a boy named pedro, who happens to be fall for her too. He and his father comes to mama Elena for asking Tita’s hand, but mama Elena refuses this by saying that she is the youngest daughter of house and so that means she cant marry anyone, but stay at home and take care of her mother. (I really didn’t get who and why invented such cruel and inhuman tradition.) so then mama Elena don’t just stop at refusing her hand but also says that pedro can marry Tita’s elder sister Rosaura instead of her who is just 2 years older than her. Pedro agrees to this match so he could stay close to Tita. Since he will be living on the same house with all of them, even though Tita is aware that her mother has destroyed her dream and stole her boyfriend and gave it to her sister, she also knows that why pedro has married to Rosaura. But due to stern mother in law Elena he is not able to be near to Tita as he had expected. Tita is an exquisite cook who cooks dishes as if they are piece of art, What I loved about the frequent comings of recipes in the novel that they were giving it a different kind of phenomenal touch so that the scene which was going on was even more imprinted with smells and tastes. Tita has learnt the art of cooking under the teaching of a old cook servant who dies on the day of marriage of Rosaura and Pedro. Tita feels really empty but even then she continues to live on her life in her mothers watch and her infinite work and of course cooking.

One day Tita’s another sister Gurtrudis runs away with a sergeant from army when she cant any longer stay in her house. She gets in trouble and Tita and all family receives a news that she has been working at a brothel.  After watching pedro still has eyes for Tita after fathering a child from Rosaura named Robarto (who Tita adores very much and love his as his mother), Mama Elena decides it will be better if Rosaura and Pedro left home to live in San Francisco.  After they leave Tita becomes very lonely and very sad for her life, since all she ever does is what her mother wants her to do, and her this prison treatment would go on till her mother dies.  One day a news came that the son of Rosaura died due to wrong diet he could no longer abide. Tita gets very angered and throws something on her mother when Mama Elena tells her to continue work and not ever cry again. Mama gets angry and breaks Tita’s nose by a spoon. Tita then goes up on terrace and cries a lot. Elena calls up a doctor from town who is a widower having a son named alex.

The doctor somehow calms down Tita, and brings her down when her mother tells him to put her in a asylum. But instead he takes her with him to his house and treats her till she gets recovered from the attack. The doctor john also likes Tita , he confesses so to her and asks for her hand when she gets perfectly alright from her panic. Tita who feels the opportunity of getting freedom accepts him, and decides never to return to the Ranch which is her house.

But she soon receives an news that her house was attacked by the army during the revolution days and her one servant was raped and her mother had a attack of paralysis due to all this. Tita has no choice but return to the house to take care of her ill mother and handle the house hold. After the return when she prepares meal for her mother, Elena angers and tell her that her meal tastes bitter. Tita gets very upset by her mothers this behavior but continues to stay there. Her fiancé often comes to visit her and treat her mother finds no defect in the meal yet agrees to send a new cook to her next day. After all the cooks have tried mama don’t stop her tantrums and fuss, she somehow survives a month and dies. After her death they discover she had been taking a poison from which she slowly died. Tita feels no sorrow from her mother passing until one day she finds out a box of letters sent to Mama Elena from her lover who was a Dark officer in army. He was a illicit child of a beautiful dark lady and a army officer. When Mama Elena’s parents find out about it they immediately ties knot of her and Titas father.

Although Mama keeps contact with the love of her life, and her first daughter Gurtrudis was an illicit child of him and Elena. Once she finds out about this she plans to run away with him but on the very night someone kills him and Elena has no way but to continue her life with Tita’s father. After Tita’s birth when her father goes to a club to celebrate, some one breaks the new so of Elenas behavior to him , and he passes away by a heart attack.

After finding out the truth Tita feels pity for her mother, and cries on her funeral and decides never to break this secret to anyone.

The very day Pedro and Rosaura returns to the house and starts to live with the. When Pedro finds out about the marriage proposal Tita has from Dr. john he fumes and tells Tita to reconsider the opportunity. Since her mother dead now they can get married. Tita snaps at him by saying that he cant tell her what to do with her life, when he wasn’t brave at the time. Since she never told him not to marry her sister, he also has no right to tell her whom to marry. Sooner Pedro and Rosaura has another child , a girl named Esperanza, and due to birthing complications Rosaura left to have no childrens further.

When john and his son Alex comes to visit Esperanza , the little boy excited after seeing the beautiful child expresses his wish to marry the girl when he is older.

But Rosaura laughs and says she is a only and daughter of house so she wont be married but will live her life with her parents to take care of them. Tita decides never to carry off this tradition on to Esperanza and make  her suffer as she did.

John soon leaves to bring his aunt from US for the wedding and Tita is left with Pedro and Rosaura and the child. During those days one time Pedro takes advantage of Tita and claims her virginity.  Tita is confused with the thoughts of getting back together with Pedro or having a new life with john cant decide what to do. Soon she suspects of being pregnant and that makes things even more complicated. The ran away sister Gurtrudis returns to house married to the sergeant she ran away with, and offers help in Titas decision. She reveals to pedro that Tita is pregnant and he is filled with joy so that he can get his life with Tita as they both had wished. But after few days Tita find out that she wasn’t pregnant and it was a false alarm. Mean while Rosaura becoming the second version of mama Elena tells Tita to carry her love affair with pedro after she is dead, and she will not let those two allow invade their image as a descent family. She takes charge of Esperanza and tells Tita never to come near her daughter. Tita left with jalousie behavior of Pedro and her sisters anger on her for this matter cant really decide the decision to take.

Later in the story , we discovered Pedro and Tita dancing in a wedding, which is the wedding of their daughter  Esperanza to Alex (the boy of doctor).

We are left with the end that Tita refuses to marry doctor, and choses to stay with her love instead. Pedro and Tita makes a treaty with Rosaura that they will never reveal their affair to anyone, Tita sends Esperanza to school, teaches her ancient recipes , makes her a capable lady and allows her to marry the love of her life ,while her mother Rosaura is angry over invading the tradition. But before one year of Esperanza’s marriage she dies of a illness. After the marriage of Esperanza and Alex is over, Tita and Pedro are left alone which leads to a romantic meet of those two who had waited for long time for the love of their life but during that period pedro dies of sudden,  making the saying in above lines true that

 “You must of course take care to light the matches one at a time.

If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once they would produce

a splendor so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can

normally see; and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes,

revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and

summoning us to regain the divine origin we had lost.”

Tita commits suicide in order to continue on the path Pedro has lead, making their long awaited love come true.

Ha… so that’s the story of Like water for chocolate. Well certainly I think it might not be a great piece of literature but its very skillfully explained. I laughed at some points where the humor goes with the situation, I also cursed the bitch Mama Elena for her behavior with Tita, I was hoping to find and explanation for her hate towards  Tita but it wasn’t explained. Yet I had thought Tita will choose Dr. john than pedro but I think she knew him better than I do(:D) since she stayed committed to him even after he married, fathered two childrens, left her, and got jealous when she was finally having some happiness in her life. But perhaps love like water for chocolate, always keeps boiling, when egos are forgotten, insults are forgotten. A nice story with a different manner of narrating.

J Like water for chocolate…