Like Water For Chocolate Summary Essay

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Food not only fulfills our hunger for nourishment but our hunger for emotions. Food is used for a symbol of life. Food is what binds generations and the past history of the family so that they are closer together. These reasons are why Laura Esquivel used food imagery throughout her novella Like Water for Chocolate. Regardless of the situation going on, every scene someone is either making or eating food, it is the sole most important feature of the whole novella. Like Water for Chocolate is a novella that takes place in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The main protagonist is Tita, which the novella follows from life to death, who is madly in love with Pedro and cooking food. She is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena. Due to being…show more content…
In the novella Like Water for Chocolate, food is used as the medium to express Tita’s feelings. Due to Tita being mostly the one who does all the cooking, her emotions seep into the food that she is making accidentally and without her own control. In the novella, she was told to make all the food for her sister Rosauara wedding to Pedro. While she was making the food, her tears feel into the food as she was making it. Due to this, the entire guest at the wedding started throwing up once they ate her food. Her sadness due to the wedding was transferred to the guest through the medium of food. In another incident during cooking one of the meals, her undying passion for Pedro seeped into the meal. That same meal caused a fire of passion in Gertrudis while eating it and caused her to run outside and strip naked. She was soon whisked away by an army man on a horse. During this incident, it showed both Tita and Gertrudis secret feelings. Tita’s secret feelings were her undying passion for Pedro and for Gertrudis it was her feelings of being able to be free and do something empowering. Besides those incidents, the food used as a medium for feelings is found in the title of the novella. The phrase like water for chocolate is a Latin American saying that water needs to be brought to boiling several times before it can be used to make hot chocolate. Just like the water being heated, emotions are just
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