Alyssa Q. Batuhan

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NICHOLAS SPARKS’S A WALK TO REMEMBER

NICHOLAS SPARKS’S A WALK TO REMEMBER
A Book Review by Joel Cardinal
IV- Madame Marie Curie
Two lovers being tested upon by a condition that seems to be rarely seen among any relationships. This story has been the most remarkable among the previous once that I had read. Striking and reminiscing always in my mind. A two-hundred six-page book that will surely made your heart beat untimely. It’s something you could finish reading in one Sunday.
A Walk to Remember is set in Beaufort, North Carolina in 1958. The story focuses upon 17 year-old Landon Carter, who falls for Jamie Sullivan. Jamie happens to be the daughter of the town's Baptist minister. The story unfolds during Landon and Jamie's Senior year of high school. I'd love to tell you more, but it would involve disclosing major plot details. I was pleasantly surprised about how much I enjoyed this story. It was far from the sappy, hokey love story I was expecting. Though the main characters are teenagers, their experiences are adult in nature and very touching.

The author has selected his words very carefully, so that several of the readers' emotions are affected. This book made me laugh, cry and everything in between. A word of caution however: sensitive people will be bawling at the book's ending. Sparks has written a sweet tale of young but everlasting love, and though he's told us to expect both joy and sadness, the tears will still come. Sparks once again demonstrates skills built on a sure understanding of his characters and the scene and times in which they live. A well written love story.

I don't feel there are any drawbacks to A Walk to Remember. I was able to predict the plot's events before they happened. However, I'm not sure that was such a bad thing in this case.

This short Nicholas Sparks novel should only take a day or two to read, so it makes an ideal library selection. A Walk to Remember also makes a good gift. It offers wonderful lessons in love and faith from which anybody could benefit.

A story that is full of different themes of profound love, trust, faithfulness and fortitude that happened throughout the story. A story that will surely make your heart pumped fast and be overwhelmed. This story can be a plot of all the memories of the year.

Like water for Chocolate

Like Water For Chocolate
Laura Esquivel
Some times love is really out of our realms

Like water for chocolate is a story that has this theme, of which sometimes love is unfair and not on our side. This book shows trials of love, and life; the life and experiences of Tita. This book is written by Laura Esquivel, with passion on recipes, romances and home remedies.
Laura Esquivel (born September 30, 1950) is a Mexican author making a noted contribution to Latin-American literature. She was born the third of four children of Julio César Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and Josefa Valdés.
In her first novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), released in 1989, Esquivel uses magical realism to combine the ordinary and the supernatural, similar to Isabel Allende. The novel, taking place during the revolution in early twentieth century Mexico, shows the importance of the kitchen in Esquivel's life. Esquivel believes that the kitchen is the most important part of the house and characterizes it as a source of knowledge and understanding that brings pleasure. The "title refers to a colloquial phrase used by the Spanish that means an extremity of feeling. It refers to a boiling point in terms of anger, passion and sexuality." The idea for the book came to Esquivel "while she was cooking the recipes of her mother and grandmother." Reportedly, "Esquivel used an episode from her own family to write her book. She had a great-aunt named Tita, who was forbidden to wed. Tita never did anything but care for her own mother. Soon after her mother died, so did Tita." "The book has been a tremendous international success: The No. 1 best-selling book in Mexico for three years, it's also been translated into 23 languages."
Like Water for Chocolate was developed into a film, which was released in 1993 concurrently with the book's English translation. In the United States, Like Water for Chocolate became one of the largest grossing foreign films ever released in the US. Esquivel earned the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures award; she received eleven in all, from Ariel Awards.]
Esquivel's second novel, The Law of Love (1996) takes place in the twenty-third century Mexico City and combines romance and science fiction. Reportedly, "the theme of romantic love, particularly love thwarted, appears repeatedly throughout her novels, as does the setting in Mexico."

The story revolves on the way Tita lives her life, the way he make choices on her love Pedro. Tita, when was still a child has this bad memories of loneliness which is onky healed with the presence of her grandmother Nacha. Nacha is her only ally, which she also prefers as her mother unlike Mama Elena, and is really good in cooking. Tita was born on the kitchen, which might explain her excellence on cooking like her grandmother Nancha. But sometimes tings are not always what we expect of them, Nancha died before the wedding of Tita’s sister Rosaura.
The wedding was one of the greatest twist in the story, the wedding of Rosaura and Pedro. Pedro was Tita’s only love and life, likewise , Pedro also love Tita but because of this twist and turns of fate he turn-up to be with Rosaura, the elder sister of Tita. And this begins the story of love, trials, and sometimes miscommunication on te family pertaining to Rosaura, Pedro and Tita. The end is also quite unexpected, not like the ordinary happily ever after stories. The twist and turns led it to a fiery ending in the ranch.
Tita is the main character on the story of Like water for Chocolate of Laura Esquivel, Pedro’s true love, Mama Elena’s daughter.
Pedro is the love of Tita and the husband of Rosaura
Rosaura is the wife of Pedro and the older sister of Tita
Mama Elena is the so strict mother of Tita
Nancha is the grandmother of Tita and her only person to run to during her problems, she is also the one that teach Tita on her cooking skills
Gertrudis is also a sister of Tita
The story was this unique taste of a love story turn to every bad turn which makes it a perfect thriller for the readers. The part of the recipes, cooking, and remedies also fits the sequence of the main plot, which also gives some idea on what Tita is feeling on the story with her life and her love.
This also proves that love can also find a way, parallel to what they say in science that nature will find its way. Love, love, love is some awesome thing presented in this book of Laura Esquivel, finding some answer on the way to the peak of Tita’s own love life


Andy M Guevarra
IV-Marie Curie

Tale of Genji - Book Review by Rhomuell C. Bernardo

Murasaki Shikibu's epic-length novel, The Tale of Genji, probes the psychological, romantic and political workings of mid-Heian Japan. The novel earned Murasaki Shikibu notoriety even in the early 11th century, some six hundred years before the printing press made it available to the masses. Court society, which served as the subject of the novel, sought out chapters. Ladies-in-waiting and courtiers even pilfered unrevised copies, according to legend. Some thousand years later, Murasaki Shikibu and her novel continue to delight an enthusiastic audience. Stamps, scrolls, comic books, museums, shower gel, movies, parades, puppet plays, CD-ROMS: Murasaki Shikibu and her creation Genji have achieved National Treasure status in Japan and admiration all over the world.

The tale spreads across four generations, splashed with poetry and romance and heightened awareness to the fleeting quality of life. Murasaki Shikibu's tale of love, sex, and politics explores a complex web of human and spiritual relationships. This focus on characters and their emotional experience, as compared to plot, makes the novel easily accessible to the modern reader. It explains, in part, why many scholars consider Genji to be the world's first great novel.

Readers through the ages have especially admired Murasaki Shikibu's depiction of the Heian court society's deep aesthetic sense. Beauty—in flesh, flowers, sunsets, musical notes—moved and influenced the society. The title character, Genji, flourishes in this atmosphere. He is a master of speech, poetry, music, manners, dress.

Many Japanese scholars cite as an influence Chinese poet Po-Ch-I's classic narrative poem, The Song of Unending Sorrow. Murasaki Shikibu writes in her diary of reading the poet's work to the empress. She also refers to it several times in The Tale of Genji. Importantly, the novel also marked Japan's liberation from Chinese influence. According to Richard Bowring in Landmarks of World Literature: The Tale of Genji, "Japan had just emerged from a time of substantial Chinese influ-ence and was going through one of its periodic stages of readjustment, during which alien concepts were successfully naturalized. The Genji is thus the product of a native culture finding a truly sophisticated form of self-expression in prose for the first time."

The Tale of Genji has had a pervasive influence on later Japanese and world-wide art. It has inspired Noh theater, waka poetry, scroll paintings, pop music and dances. It has had an especially profound influence on Japanese literature. Court fiction for hundreds of years after openly modeled itself after Genji. Present-day writers, including Kawabata Yasunari in his 1968 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, still cite The Tale of Genji as a great influence.

The Tale of Genji centers on the life and loves of a handsome son, Hikaru Genji, born to an Emperor during the Heian Period. In the story, the beloved concubine of the Emperor gives birth to Genji and dies soon after. Raised within the Royal Family, Genji has his first illicit affair with Fujitsubo, the young wife of the Emperor. She gives birth to a boy who was raised by the unknowing Emperor as his own son. Although feeling guilt because of this affair Genji goes on to have numerous other affairs with other court ladies including Utsusemi, Yugao, Murasaki-no-ue, and Hanachirusato. At one point, Genji's adultery with a lady of the opposite faction results in his being exiled for a period to Suma After a short time, he returns to the capital, where he rises further in status and position being appointed to high official ranking reaching the apogee of his career. However, his newly wed young bride, Onna-Sannomiya, has an illicit affair that results in a child, Kaoru, reminding Genji of his own similar past actions. Then Murasaki-no-ue, Genji's real love and wife, in fact, if not in law, of more than twenty years, passes away. Left in deep despondence Genji decides to leave the capital to enter a small mountain temple. The Tale of Genji continues, although without the hero Genji. In his place are Kaoru, his grandson, and Niou-no-miya, Kaoru's friend. These two youths carry on the Genji tradition with the princesses in the palace at Uji. The story centers on the young lady, Ukibune, whose heart and mind is set a flutter by the courtship of these two young men.

A Book Review on Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”

A Book Review on Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”

By Marian Denise G. Basallote

I. INTRODUCTION

A. About the Book

The God of Small Things (1997) is a politically charged novel by Indian author Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins who become victims of circumstance. The book is a description of how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives. The book won the Booker Prize in 1997.

The God of Small Things is Roy's first book, and as of 2009, is her only novel. Completed in 1996, the book took four years to write. The potential of the story was first recognized by Pankaj Mishra, an editor with HarperCollins, who sent it to three British publishers. Roy received half-a-million pounds (approx. $970,000 USD) in advances, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.


B. About the Author

Full name: Suzanna Arundhati Roy

Born: November 24, 1961

Mother: Christian woman from Kerala

Father: Bengali Hindu tea planter, whom Roy barely knows and prefers not to speak about

Arundhati grew up in Aymanam, until she was 16 years old, when she ran away to live in a squatter's camp. She eventually attended the Dehli School of Architecture, and married a fellow student, Gerard Da Cunha. Four years later, the marriage ended and Roy took a job at the National Institute of Urban Affairs. A film director discovered her on the street, and she had a small role, but she got a scholarship to go to Italy to study architecture. While in Italy, Roy realized she was a writer and met her current husband. Together they wrote several TV scripts before Roy decided to focus on writing her book.

1997: God of Small Things is published to immediate acclaim, and wins the Booker Prize in England. Roy was the first Indian woman, and the first non-expatriate Indian to win the award.

1997: Also the 50th anniversary of India's independence from Britain.


II. SUMMARY OF THE CONTENT

A. Plot

The novel The God of Small Things reveals a young woman’s painful journey of recollection into her gloomy childhood. It tells about a mysterious love affair that is suppressed by the conventions of a society in India with the caste system deeply etched in its custom and traditions.

Rahel, the protagonist in the story, returns to her family home in Ayemenem after twenty-three years to find her long lost twin brother, Esthappen. Slowly, she recalls her childhood and the dreadful drama that has caused a drastic change in their lives. These memories mainly revolve around the roots and consequences of the tragic accidental death of her young cousin, Sophie Kochamma.

In their childhood, the young two-egg twins, Rahel and Estha, were inseparable, had a very special tie between them, and felt as if they were one and the same person. They lived with their mother, Ammu, along with their uncle, Chacko, grandmother, Mammachi, and grandaunt, Baby Kochamma. in the Kochamma family home. When Chacko learned that her former wife, Margaret, lost her second husband named Joe from a car accident, he invited her and her daughter, Sophie, to India.

The story reaches its climax when Mammachi finds out from Velutha’s father the forbidden love affair existing between Ammu and Velutha, an Untouchable or Paravan, who is a handyman around the Kochamma house and a trusted employee at the factory of the Paradise of Pickles and Preserves, owned by Mammachi. Mammachi, with rage and anger, locked Ammu in her room. Ammu got frustrated and quick-tempered with her children, sending them away.

Meanwhile, the twins, already feeling insecure with their mother's love, were severely affected by their mother's sharp words. The unexpected tragedy occurred when the twins, together with Sophie, ran to the river near the Kochamma family home late at night. With the boat that Velutha built for them, they decided to cross the river and to go to the abandoned house, known as the History House, situated on the other side. Their boat got turned over by the current. Fortunately, the twins, who have often swum in the river, survived and were able to reach the other side. Sophie, on the other hand, was drowned and was found dead the next morning by a fisherman.

In order to protect their family’s name and reputation, Baby Kochamma went to the police and accused Velutha of rape. She insinuated that he had abducted the children. The police set out to find Velutha, who coincidentally was with the twins on the other side of the river, particularly in the History House, where he and Ammu meet each night. When the police found Velutha, they beat him to death. Baby Kochamma cajoled the twins to falsely accuse Velutha by threatening them that something bad will happen to Ammu. Ammu tried to tell the police the truth after Sophie’s funeral, but it was too late.

Chacko, with a poisoned mind, expelled Ammu from the Kochamma home. Sad, sick and alone, Ammu died at the young age of thirty-one. To complete the cover-up, the twins were separated. Estha was sent away to Calcutta to live with his father, Baba, and his father's second wife as Rahel remained in the family home. After the tragic event, Estha became a withdrawn and reserved person who uttered no word at all and did not communicate with the rest of the world. He lived in his own silence. When his father worked abroad, for after so many years, he returned to Ayemenem. Likewise, Rahel felt a permanent emptiness inside her. At a young age, she went to live in Delhi and studied architecture. When her marriage with an American fell apart, she also returned to India, specifically to their old home in Ayemenem.

B. Characters

Ammu Kochamma

 She is Rahel and Estha’s mother. She is a beautiful and sardonic woman who has been victimized first by her father and then by her husband. While raising her children, she has become tense and repressed. She grew up in Delhi, but because her father said that college was an unnecessary expense for a girl, was forced to live with her parents when they moved to Ayemenem.

 Ammu’s latent “Unsafe Edge,” full of desire and “reckless rage,” emerges during Sophie Mol’s visit and draws her to Velutha. After the horrific climax to the affair, Ammu sent Estha to live with his father and left Rahel in the Ayemenem House. She looked for work, but lost a succession of jobs because of her illness. She died alone in a cheap hotel at the age of thirty-one.

Baby Kochamma

 Nicknamed “Baby,” Mammachi’s sister, Navomi Ipe Kochamma, is a judgmental old maid with tiny feet. She lived her life backwards as she renounced the material world when she was young, but became very materialistic when she was old. Throughout her life, she was an insecure, selfish, and vindictive person.

 During the time of Sophie Mol’s visit, she is a nuisance who pestered the twins because she disliked them and Ammu. She is later revealed to be cruel and insidious. In her old age, she became a bitter and lonely woman addicted to the television.

Chacko Kochamma

 He is Ammu’s intellectual and self-absorbed older brother. He was a charming but a very unclean Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He met Margaret while she was working in an Oxford café. Deeply in love with Margaret, in part because she never depended on him or adored him like a mother, he married her without telling his family. But after a year, she grows tired of his squalor within and divorces him.

 With his divorce and her daughter’s death, he grew fatter and became obsessed with balsawood airplanes, which he unsuccessfully attempted to fly. He was also unsuccessful at running the pickle factory, which started to lose money as soon as he attempted to expand the operation. A “self-proclaimed Marxist,” Chacko attempted to be a benevolent employer and even planned to organize a union among his own workers.

Estha Kochamma

 He is Rahel’s twin brother. He is a serious, intelligent, and somewhat nervous child who wears “beige and pointy shoes” and has an “Elvis puff.” His experience of the circumstances surrounding Sophie Mol’s visit is somewhat more traumatic than Rahel’s, beginning when he was sexually abused by the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man at the Abhilash Talkies theater.

 He never went to college and acquired a number of habits, such as wandering on very long walks and obsessively cleaning his clothes. He was so close to his sister that the narrator describes them as one person, despite having been separated for most of their lives.

Mammachi Kochamma

 She is an elegant woman in her old age, although she is nearly blind. She is Rahel and Estha’s grandmother. Brutally beaten by her husband, she nevertheless cries at his funeral and shares many of his values, including an extremely rigid view of the caste system. She began the pickle factory and ran it successfully, and she was an “exceptionally talented” violinist. She loved Chacko with blind admiration and deeply disliked Margaret Kochamma. Nevertheless, she tolerates and even facilitates Chacko’s affairs with factory workers.

Margaret Kochamma

 She is Sophie Mol’s mother and Chacko’s ex-wife. She is from a strict, working-class London family and was working as a waitress in Oxford when she met Chacko. Marrying him because of his uncontrolled personality that made her feel free, Margaret soon realized that she did not need him to accept herself, and she divorced him. When her second husband Joe died, she accepted Chacko’s invitation to Ayemenem for Christmas, and she was haunted by this decision for the rest of her life.

Rahel Kochamma

 She is Ammu’s daughter and Estha’s younger sister by eighteen minutes. An intelligent and honest person who has never felt socially comfortable, she is something of a drifter, and several times the narrator refers to her as the quality “Emptiness.” When she was a girl, her hair sits “on top of her head like a fountain” and she always wears red-tinted plastic sunglasses with yellow rims.

 Although Ammu often chastises her for being dirty and unsafe, she loves her very deeply, and Rahel is equally devoted to her mother. She also loves Velutha and her brother, with whom she shares a “single Siamese soul.” She was traumatized by Sophie Mol’s drowning, Velutha’s death, and Ammu’s death. Although these events did not seem to deprive her of her quirkiness or brightness, they contributed to her sense of sadness and lack of direction in later life. She entered an architecture school but never finished the course, married an American named Larry McCaslin, and lived with him in Boston until they were divorced.

Kochu Maria

 She is the Kochamma family’s “vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, midget cook.” She does not speak any English and, although she has always “noticed everything,” she eventually stops caring about how the house looks and becomes addicted to television.

Sophie Mol

 She is Chacko and Margaret’s daughter. She is a frank and spirited English girl characterized by her bellbottoms and her go-go bag. Although the twins prejudged her because they have been insistently instructed about how to behave when she arrives, she managed to win them over. This was partly because she is charming and outgoing, and partly because she rejected the advances of Chacko, Mammachi, and Baby Kochamma in favor of befriending Rahel and Estha.

Velutha

 An Untouchable worker at the pickle factory and a close friend to Rahel and Estha, he was blamed for killing Sophie Mol and raping Ammu. But, in fact, he had nothing to do with Sophie Mol’s death. He carried on a brief yet passionate and voluntary affair with Ammu until Inspector Thomas Mathew’s police officers beat him to death.

 His name means “White” in Malayalam, so-called because he has such dark skin. Mammachi noticed his prodigious talents in making and fixing things when he was young and convinced his father to send him to the Untouchables’ School founded by her father-in-law. He became an accomplished carpenter and mechanic, and acquired an assurance that scared his father because it was inacceptable among Untouchables.

C. Themes

The God of Small Things is dominated by powerful themes pertaining to social discrimination, freedom suppression and oppression, family disintegration, and unpredictability of circumstances.

Social Discrimination
Velutha, an Untouchable worker at the pickle factory, assumed a low position only because of his social standing. He belonged to the Untouchable caste and thus, he was deprived of many other privileges that the others could enjoy. He was even accused of something he never did. He was beaten to death by the police even if they have not proven him guilty of rape. He lived in a society where injustice, prejudice, and inequality ruled over.

Freedom Suppression
Ammu and his twins were suppressed with freedom because of things they never intended to happen. Ammu fell in love with Velutha, who was way below her level, and so their illicit love affair was stopped immediately. She had no power and no voice at all to protest against her family, who thinks only of their name and reputation. She never had a choice to do what would make her happy. Her life was solely dictated by the conventions of the society that she lives in. When it comes to her twins, they were deprived of the freedom to love, to belong to a family, and to discover who they really were. They were confined in the barriers of frustration, emptiness, and misery.

Unpredictability of Circumstances
The precarious turn of events was evidently shown in the story. Ammu and Velutha extracted only one small promise from each other each time they parted because they knew that things could change in an instant. Estha experienced the quirk of fate when he, still on the verge of innocence, was sexually abused by the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. This brought him trauma and made two thoughts linger in his mind (“Anything can happen to anyone.” and “It is best to be prepared.”)


III. ANALYSIS OF TEXT

The God of Small Things is a highly stylized novel that tells the story of a very fractured family from the southernmost tip of India. Through flashbacks and flashforwards, it gradually unfolds the secrets of the characters’ unhappiness and misery in life. First-time novelist Arundhati Roy twists and reshapes language to create an arresting, startling sort of precision. The average reader of mainstream fiction may have a tough time working through Roy's prose, but those with a more literary bent to their usual fiction inclinations should find the initial struggle through the dense prose a worthy price for this lushly tragic tale.

The great pleasure of The God of Small Things flows from its language, and its delight in verbal comedy. Arundhati carefully played with words. One way she does this is through repeated phrases. Some of the most often repeated are "A viable, dieable age." and "Little Man. He lived in a caravan. Dum dum." Likewise, she regularly used symbols for depth and profundity. Roy’s use of language was so imaginative, vivid, eloquent, and convincing that it made us immerse in its creativity. Thus, I believe Roy exemplified the intelligent qualities of writing – logical, realistic, simple, clear, and persuasive.

As quoted by Roy, “It is not just about small things, it's about how the smallest things connect to the biggest things - that's the important thing. And that's what writing will always be about for me… I'm not a crusader in any sense.”


IV. EVALUATION

Personally, I enjoyed reading The God of Small Things and loved everything about it – the impressive style of the author in writing, complex storyline, and amazing characters. Moreover, I appreciated the lessons it had left behind and the values it had inculcated to its readers. I learned that a family’s support in one’s endeavors would always portray a crucial role in molding success in his/her life. I realized that anyone who becomes a victim of freedom suppression and oppression would always feel emptiness and misery in every fiber of his/her being. Lastly, I discovered that anything that we do could alter the course of our lives both in positive and negative ways. Earning four out of five stars, The God of Small Things is indeed an exquisite and outstanding novel written with truckloads of color, craft, and ambition.

BOOK REVIEW - Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate

Like Water for Chocolate


I. INTRODUCTION

THE BOOK

A magic realism made by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. The title, Like Water for Chocolate, refers to the temperature that water must be brought to in order to melt chocolate; it is also used as a slang to describe anger, sexuality, and passion. A magical book it is. The original Spanish version, Como Agua Para Chocolat, was the top-selling book in Mexico in 1990. As a work of Latin magical realism, it can't be topped by any other work to date. Tita, youngest of three daughters, was born to one of the vilest mothers ever, Mama Elena, the cruel matriarch of the family estate, the De la Garza ranch. Tita is rather special: even while still in Mama Elena's womb, she wept so violently as her mother chopped onions that she caused an early labor which meant that Tita quite literally was born on the kitchen table where a fragrant noodle soup was being prepared. Tita was both blessed and cursed to be one with the food — more than a mere cook as her cooking is truly magical.

It was made into film in 1992. The film based on the book, with a screenplay by Laura Esquivel, swept the Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures, winning 11 in all, and went on to become the largest grossing foreign film ever released in the United States. In 1994, Like Water for Chocolate won the prestigious ABBY award which is given annually by the American Booksellers Association. The book has been translated into thirty languages and there are over three million copies in print worldwide.

LAURA ESQUIVEL
From bookbrowse.com

Laura Esquivel was born on September 30, 1950 in Mexico City, Mexico. She was born third of the four children of Julio César Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and wife Selena Quintanilla. She began writing while working as a kindergarten teacher, writing plays for her students, and then went on to write children's television programs during the 1970s and 1980s.

Her writings often explore the relationship between men and women in Mexico. She is best known for Like Water for Chocolate, an imaginative and compelling combination of novel and cookbook, published in Spanish Mexico in 1989 and in English in 1992. The movie version, written by Esquivel, was released in 1993 and became one of the largest grossing foreign films ever released in the US; and in Mexico it won the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures award. Once married to director Alfonso Arau, Esquivel is divorced and lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

II. SUMMARY OF CONTENT

PLOT

In a style that is epic in scope yet intensely personal in focus, Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate tells the story of Tita De La Garza, the youngest daughter in a family living in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Each installment features a recipe to begin each chapter. The structure of Like Water For Chocolate is wholly dependent on these recipes.

Like Water for Chocolate tells the story of Tita De La Garza, the youngest daughter in a family living in Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Tita's love, Pedro Muzquiz, comes to the family's ranch to ask for Tita's hand in marriage. Because Tita is the youngest daughter she is forbidden by a family tradition upheld by her tyrannical mother, Mama Elena, to marry. Pedro marries Tita's oldest sister, Rosaura, instead, but declares to his father that he has only married Rosaura to remain close to Tita. Rosaura and Pedro live on the family ranch, offering Pedro contact with Tita. When Tita cooks a special meal with the petals of a rose given to her by Pedro, the still-fiery force of their love has an intense effect on Mama Elena's second daughter, Gertrudis, who is whipped into a lustful state and flees the ranch in the arms of a revolutionary soldier. Meanwhile, Rosaura gives birth to a son, who is delivered by Tita. Tita treats her nephew, Roberto, as if he were her own child, to the point that she is able to produce breast milk to feed him while her sister is dry.

Sensing that Roberto is drawing Pedro and Tita closer together, Mama Elena arranges for Rosaura's family to move to San Antonio. This separation devastates Tita. A short time later, news arrives that Roberto has died, most likely due to his removal from Tita's care. The death of her nephew causes Tita to have a breakdown, and Mama Elena sends her to an asylum. Dr. John Brown, a local American doctor, takes pity on Tita and brings her to live in his house. He patiently nurses Tita back to health, caring for her physical ailments and trying to revive her broken spirit. After some time, Tita is nearly well, and she decides never to return to the ranch. No sooner has she made this choice than Mama Elena is injured in a raid by rebel soldiers, forcing Tita to return. Tita hopes to care for her mother, but Mama Elena bitterly rejects Tita's good will. She refuses Tita's cooking, claiming that it is poisoned. Not long after, Mama Elena is found dead from an overdose of a strong emetic she consumed for fear of poisoning.

The death of Mama Elena frees Tita from the curse of her birthright and she accepts an engagement proposal from John Brown, with whom she has fallen in love. In the meantime, Rosaura and Pedro have returned to the ranch and have produced a second child, Esperanza. Immediately, Pedro's presence throws into question Tita's love for John. The night that John officially asks Pedro to bless the marriage, Pedro corners Tita in a hidden room and makes love to her, taking her virginity. Soon after, Tita is certain that she is pregnant and knows that she will have to end her engagement to John. The affair between Pedro and Tita prompts the return of Mama Elena, who comes in spirit form to curse Tita and her unborn child. Tita is distraught and has no one in whom she can confide.

In the midst of Tita's despair, the long-lost Gertrudis returns to the ranch. Tita is overjoyed at the return of Gertrudis, who is just the companion she seeks. Gertrudis forces Tita to tell Pedro about the pregnancy. He is gladdened at the news, and he drunkenly serenades Tita from below her window. Outraged, Mama Elena's ghost returns, violently threatening Tita and declaring that she must leave the ranch. For the first time, Tita stands up to Mama Elena and, in forceful words, declares her autonomy, banishing her mother's spirit, which shrinks from an imposing presence into a tiny fiery light. As she expels the ghost, Tita is simultaneously relieved of all her symptoms of pregnancy. The light from Mama Elena's ghost bursts through Tita's window and onto the patio below where Pedro still sits, setting fire to his entire body. After rescuing Pedro, Tita is consumed with caring for him and helping him recover. John Brown returns from a trip to the United States and Tita confesses to him her relations with Pedro. John replies that he still wishes to marry her but that she must decide for herself with whom she wishes to spend her entire life with.

Years pass, and the ranch focuses its attention on another wedding, this time between Esperanza and Alex, the son of John Brown. Rosaura has died, freeing her only daughter, Esperanza, from the stricture that had previously forbidden her, as it had Tita, from marrying. With Rosaura dead and Esperanza married, Tita and Pedro are finally free to express their love in the open. On their first night together, Tita and Pedro experience love so intense that both are led to a tunnel that will carry them to the afterlife. Tita turns back, wanting to continue in life and in love with Pedro. Once she does, she realizes that Pedro has already crossed over. Wanting desperately to be with him, Tita attempts to ignite her inner fire by eating the candles that had lit the room until they extinguished themselves at the moment of Pedro's death. When she succeeds in recreating the climate of true passion, she reenters the luminous tunnel and meets Pedro in the spirit world. The final union of their bodies and spirits sets fire to the entire ranch, and the only remnant left of their love is the recipe book in which Tita recorded her wisdom.

CHARACTERS

Tita - The protagonist of the novel. Tita is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, prohibited by family tradition from marrying so that she will be free to take care of her mother later in life. The novel follows Tita's life from birth to death, focusing mostly on her tortured relationship with Pedro and her struggle and eventual triumph in pursuit of love and individuality.

Mama Elena - The tyrannical, widowed matriarch of the De La Garza clan, Mama Elena is the prime source of Tita's suffering. Her fierce temperament inspires fear in all three of her daughters. She keeps Tita from her true love, Pedro, and it is later revealed that Mama Elena herself once suffered from a lost love, embittering her for the rest of her life.

Pedro - Tita's true love, and the father of Roberto and Esperanza. Denied marriage to Tita by Mama Elena, he agrees to marry Rosaura, breaking Tita's heart. Nevertheless, he asserts his continued love for Tita throughout the novel and pursues her secretly. Pedro dies after he and Tita are finally blissfully united while making love at the novel's end.

Rosaura - The second daughter of Mama Elena, Rosaura marries Pedro, much to the despair of Tita. Rosaura leaves the ranch when Mama Elena sends her and Pedro to San Antonio to keep Pedro and Tita apart. Her first child, Roberto, dies as an infant; her second child, Esperanza, was prohibited like Tita from ever marrying but weds Alex after Rosaura dies.

Gertrudis - The eldest daughter of Mama Elena, Gertrudis escapes the ranch after reacting mysteriously to one of Tita's recipes. She runs away with a rebel soldier and eventually returns to the ranch as a general in the revolutionary army. It is eventually revealed that Gertrudis is the offspring of a hidden, extramarital affair between Mama Elena and her true love, a mulatto man.

Dr. John Brown - An American doctor who cares for Tita when she experiences a breakdown, and the father of Alex. John eventually falls in love with Tita and helps rehabilitate her soul, revealing to her the nature of the fire that resides in each individual. Tita becomes engaged to him, but eventually denies him marriage to pursue Pedro.

Roberto - The first child of Rosaura and Pedro, Roberto dies in America after being taken away from Tita's care.

Esperanza - The second child of Rosaura and Pedro, and the mother of the narrator of the novel. She is raised by Tita in the kitchen. Her marriage to Alex breaks the De La Garza family tradition that disallows the marriage of youngest daughters.

Alex - The son of Dr. John Brown, and the father of the narrator. He marries Esperanza.

THEME

In Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel extends the religious-mythical themes of magic realism to the everyday world of the domestic realm of a female-dominated household. Though not a story of the battles, great figures, and moral challenges generally associated with the epic form, Esquivel elevates this story of women, and one woman in particular, to such proportions. This strategy leads the reader to explore the feminist properties of Like Water For Chocolate, which are evident in the depictions of Tita's struggle to gain independence and develop her identity, and also in the fact that this struggle is depicted at all. In creating this female-centered cast of characters, Esquivel imagines a world in which men are physically present only occasionally, though the legacy of sexism and the confinement of women to the domestic sphere persist. Esquivel does not offer her readers the vision of a utopian sisterhood, but rather insight into the way women are restricted by standards of societal propriety perpetuated by other women.

III. ANALYSIS OF TEXT

Like Water For Chocolate belongs to the genre of magical realism. The structuring of Like Water for Chocolate as "A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies" as it is subtitled, establishes the filter through which the reader will experience the world of the novel. Like Tita--whose knowledge of life is based on the kitchen-- the reader must explore the work through the role and power of food, guided by the recipes that begin each chapter. The division of the novel into "monthly installments" conjures up the image of serial narratives published in periodicals. This organization, along with the matter-of-fact weaving of recipes and remedies into the fabric of the narrative, underscores the fact that the novel offers substantial opportunities for feminist analysis.

IV. EVALUATION OF THE TEXT

I love the book. It was written creatively. Esquivel uses cooking as an extended metaphor throughout her story. The recipes and their preparation fit in with the story. The story often takes on aspects of fable or myth that sometimes seem out of place with the very matter of fact presentation of the story line. For example, the magical tunnel and Mama Elena's reappearance who tries to kill Pedro.

There are also elements of spiritualism and magic that make this book difficult to classify as straight fiction or as a fantasy. For the most part, the text reads as like a typical historical novel, but with increasing frequency toward the end of the novel, Esquivel includes obvious fabulous elements.

One could read or study Like Water for Chocolate at whatever depth desired. One could analyze the symbolic meaning of the various foods, the connection between the increasing number of fabulous events to Tita's decreasing faculties of love, desire, and mental abilities. Esquivel leaves the door wide open for a multitude of interpretations. And yet, the plot is a relatively simple story of a woman who is an expert in preparing food and very inexpert in handling her own life and affairs.

Presented by: Rochene J Relator of IV-Madame Marie Curie

Like Water For Chocolate book review - Laarnie Casil

“Like Water for Chocolate” is Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel’s first novel and was published in 1989. This novel serves as the start of Esquivel’s magical realism genre. This book has been made into a film, translated into 23 languages and was the best-selling book in Mexico for three years.

The story centers on Tita, whose family lives in a ranch near the US-Mexico border. Her family is comprised of Mama Elena, her iron-fisted mother, and Gertudis and Rosaura, her older sisters. Pedro, Tita’s admirer tries to ask to marry her, but Mama Elena refuses because of the family tradition that the youngest daughter must never marry to take care of the mother until she dies. Pedro marries Rosaura instead. Even though he insisted that he married her just to get closer to Tita, she was still heartbroken. Tita expresses her sorrow through her cooking. Unconsciously, Pedro is lured with the power of Tita’s creations. To prevent Pedro and Tita from being together, Mama Elena forces that Pedro and Rosaura go to San Antonio. The two lose their son, Roberto. Later , Rosauro is made sterile after the birth of their daughter, Esperanza.

Tita, having learned about the death of her beloved nephew, blames her mother who then beat her with a wooden spoon. Tita then locks herself in and refuses to come out until Dr John Brown talks her into coming out. Mama Elena thinks that Tita a lunatic and says that the ranch didn’t need someone like her and wants her to be put into a mental institution. Dr Brown takes her away, but not into an institution. He takes her into his home and takes care of her. Eventually, they get into a relationship even though Tita still has feelings for Pedro.

Without Mama Elena to stop them, Pedro and Tita can freely love each other. For the first time, they finally make love. It was so passionate that Pedro dies while making love with Tita. Upset by the sudden death of her love, Tita lights and lights matches. This causes a fire in the ranch and the two are burnt to ashes. Nothing remained except for Tita’s cookbook. Tita’s niece, Esperanza later marries Alex, Dr Brown’s son in a previous marriage.

The story’s setting was chosen perfectly. The kitchen is considered the very heart and soul of a Mexican household. The title really means the boiling point or explosion of emotion…an explosion of feelings that the two separated lovers released. It exploded like the steam coming out of a pot of boiling water. Had it not been forced inside, it would not have caused much damage and the two would still have been alive.

It was a very touching story, but I did not like the ending at all. It would have been better if the two had just run away with each other. But, Tita only became rebellious later on the story. But, the story opens the reader’s eyes on a very real social problem. Even in today’s modern society, even without old family traditions, parents still try to control their children’s relationships and want to make decisions for them. I think that people should read this novel.