Like Water For Chocolate

805 Words4 Pages
LWFC Final Essay A Seamless Ending Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel tells a magical love story of a young woman named Tita who struggles to overcome the innate restrictions of family tradition imposed upon her. The novel presents the central conflict of Tita’s quest for true love against Mama Elena and her traditional values. Esquivel’s structuring of the novel is organized in such a way that each chapter is a month of the year and contains one family recipe. Therefore, the 12th chapter, December, is the culminating episode of the novel. Within this climatic month Esquivel brings a successful dénouement to the story through various techniques. Firstly, events in December occur some twenty-two years after the timeframe of the other eleven chapters, thus providing a base for the dénouement to unfold. Furthermore, the conclusion of the novel is achieved through the effective resolution of the conflict and the skillful use and implementation of magical realism. In the end, the various threads of the plot and characterization are wonderfully united and brought together when all that remains is the recipe book, which after all is what has been used to write the very novel itself. The concluding chapter of Like Water for Chocolate leaps ahead twenty-two years in time to the wedding of Alex and Esperanza. Esquivel employs this time shift in order to provide a base for the dénouement of the novel. The reader is clearly confronted with the vast change in time and therefore anticipates the close proximity of the ending. The long passage of years enables the plot to develop extensively and it further allows for Esquivel to ‘book end’ the novel. For example, the time gap enables the reader to witness the wedding ceremony of Alex and Esperanza. This wedding reinforces the severing of family tradition and is necessary in resolving the major conflict within the
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