Water for Chocolate the Book Thesis

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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 of Jane Austen, many similar themes are expressed. The girls in this novel also experience tremendous loss, though of a different nature, and Austen's description of them reads like a less-fantastical description of the wedding guests: "They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future" (p. 17). This comes after the loss of their father and an extreme change in their fortunes, also involving a tyrannical female figure that robs them of their rightful freedoms, and several plots of thwarted or misunderstood love. Both novels deal with the destructive powers that love can have when not properly applied or allowed.

Dialectic Journal #2

Quote: "As Tita was answering this question, saying that her secret was to prepare the mole with a lot of love, Pedro happened to be nearby" (p. 79).

Paraphrase/Context: In this quote, Tita was attempting to explain what it is that makes her cooking good, which is her emotions, which is especially provocative in this instance because Pedro is near her at the mention of the word "love." Mama Elena also sees the look that the two share, and suspects that there is something going on between them. The meal that Tita is preparing contains a rose that was given to her by Pedro, so it contains the secret love between them. This ends up being so intense that Gertrudis sets the shower on fire with her passion.

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Analysis: The love that Tita's meal contains is not translated as sorrow, as was the case with the wedding cake, but instead it is the intensity of subdued love and passion, represented by the rose that Pedro has given her and which she includes in her food. The wedding cake shows the destructive power of unrequited love, and this meal shows the destructive intensity of unfulfilled love when Gerturdis sets the shower on fire. The magical realism of the novel continues further when her scent becomes so powerful that it attracts a soldier to her, whom she rides away with naked. Beyond being destructive, love is also disruptive in the novel.

This meal, and the quote that comes during its preparation, also contributes to the destruction of Tita and Pedro's budding relationship and the destruction of the family as it exists because it is this scene in which Mama Elena begins to see something going on between the two. She sends Rosaura and Pedro away mostly to separate Pedro from Tita, and this meal was the cause of it.

Synthesis: Another novel in which the destructive force that an unfulfilled love can create is unleashed is in F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator Nick notes of Gatsby's obsession with Daisy that "he had committed himself to the following of a grail" (p. 142). Pedro and Tita's love was forbidden and tantalizingly close; the same was true for Gatsby ad Daisy, though Daisy never fully returned Gatsby's feelings. In Like Water for Chocolat, however, the love is at least partially released through the food, whereas in Gatsby it is continually….....

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