Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel Literary Analysis Essay Sample

The story of Tita De La Garza in Like Water for Chocolate is about her growing up caring for her mother, Mama Elena, which centers around the struggles of growing up. The protagonist, Tita, wants to find love, be free, and create her own identity while Mama Elena, the antagonist, refuses to allow Tita to break ancient family traditions. Tita being Mama Elenas youngest daughter has her fate already determined by her mother that pushes the two further away from the bond they never even had. Tita resorts to the kitchen and uses cooking to freely express her emotions in ways her mother can’t dictate. 

Mama Elena has made it clear to Tita, her youngest daughter, that Tita is not allowed to marry or to have love due to her duty of taking care of her mother until she dies. When Mama Elena rejects Titas sweetheart, Pedro, offers of marriage she offers one of Tita’s older sisters, Rosaura, to which Pedro accepts. This devastates Tita. And being the well-rounded daughter Tita is, she listens to her mother's orders to prepare the food and cake for her sister's wedding and to not cause a fuss. 

Esquivel uses magical realism around Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding cake that is baked by Tita. Heartbroken, Tita is sobbing and her tears fall into the cake batter,  “When she finished beating the meringue, it occurred to Nacha to lick some of the icing off her finger to see if Tita’s tears had affected the flavor. No, the flavor did not seem to have been affected; yet without knowing why, Nacha was suddenly overcome with an intense longing.” (Esquivel, 42) When Nacha tastes the flavor of the batter she ingests Tita’s tears of sorrow which leads to her experiencing a similar feeling as Tita. While Tita’s tears had not affected the flavor, they did affect Nacha’s emotions. Following, when the cake is eaten at the wedding guests feel sick after eating the cake, “Everyone there, every last person, fell under this spell, and not very many of them made it to the bathrooms in time—those who didn’t join the collective vomiting that was going on all over the patio.” (Esquivel, 47) Tita’s unintentional magical ability is to let others feel her emotions through her cooking. Tita’s heartbroken tears are baked into the cake and ‘poison’ everyone who eats it leading everyone to feel the immense loss. Just like how Tita feels. Magically, the cake affects the feelings of those who eat it which is predetermined by her tears.  The use of magical realism is used to show the extent of Tita’s sadness towards her true love’s marriage to her sister. The unwritten last ingredient in the cake, Tita’s tears, is truly the most important ingredient.

This conflict connects to the course content by Tita having a cultural dilemma and being forced to make a tough choice and using food as an expressive symbol. The Book of Salt has a lot of similar aspects in that way, as Binh has left Vietnam due to his gay love affair and traveled to Paris and became a house chef. Similarly, Tita is faced with abandoning her mother and traditions in order to marry or have any love interest or staying by her mother's side and caring for her until death. Following that, throughout the course students have analyzed how food can symbolize and foreshadow the future. At the start of every chapter in Like Water for Chocolate, there is a recipe that has something to do with the direction the chapter is heading in, and can be further analyzed to the emotions Tita feels in the chapter. 

Chapter two’s recipe was the wedding cake and frosting, which symbolized Tita’s loss and heartbreak due to her sister marrying her sweetheart. Esquivel most likely does this to set the tone for the chapter and to allow the reader to have a sense of what direction the story is going. The recipe for the wedding cake can clearly be inferred that Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding is taking place in this chapter, and Tita will be baking the cake for them. While the reader does not know that Tita’s tears will cause the guests to fall sick and feel a great loss, like Tita, it can be concluded that the wedding cake will play a significant role for the characters. 

True love can not be controlled. Tita nor her mother can control Tita’s ever dying love for Pedro, despite her daughterly duties. When something is truly meant to be, fate will find a way to make it happen. After two decades, Tita and Pedro’s love for each other never go away, and they die happily in each other’s arms. 

Works Cited

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. Doubleday, 1992.