like water for chocolate

In the movie ,Big Fish, the title is significant as it portrays the main character, Edward Bloom. In the book ,Like Water for Chocolate, the title also relates to the main character, Tita. “Tita was literally “like water for chocolate”—she was on the verge of boiling over” (p.151). In chapter nine of the book, Tita describes the process of making hot chocolate. Once the water is boiled, you take it off the stove and add the chocolate. After it has been beaten, you place it back on the stove. When it boils over, you remove it again. Once again, you put it on the stove and boil it for the final time (p.178). I think that the boiling water shows the times in which Tita has suffered the most in her life. The boiling water can represent intensity and anger. Tita has suffered a lot in her life: her mother’s lack of sympathy, Nacha’s death, Rosaura’s marriage to Pedro, Roberto’s death, her affair with Pedro while engaged to John, and many more. Tita is like water for chocolate. The boiling water represents Tita’s emotions. The stages in preparing the hot chocolate directly relates to Tita’s life. When the water is boiling, Tita is at a difficult and frustrating stage in her life. When the mixture is taken off the stove, Tita is at a calmer, more relaxed stage. Tita is described in the best way —through her recipes. Chapter eight described Tita like water for chocolate. Chapter nine described the hot chocolate recipe. I don’t think it was a coincidence that these two chapters followed each other in terms of order.

Both the titles ,Big Fish and Like Water for Chocolate, describe the characters in a special way. Big Fish links to Edward Bloom’s stories while Like Water for Chocolate links to Tita’s life and her cooking.

Why do you think the title is called Like Water for Chocolate?

    Hopefully no one mentioned this before. There’s just too many previous posts and comments for me to go through each one. This is what I get for procrastinating and being busy for the last few days.

I found it amusing (yes amusing) how in both this novel and Romeo & Juliet that almost everyone dies. More importantly, the deaths (excluding the lovers and a few others) were good for the lovers. For example, County Paris’ death in Romeo and Juliet allowed Romeo to be with Juliet in the last few moments of his life. Likewise Rosaura’s death and Esperanza’s immigration to USA allowed Tita and Pedro to make love freely and without worrying about people finding them. Additionally, Tytablt seemed to have known something about Romeo and Juliet’s love (this was too long ago, I am unsure if I am making an assumption based on what he said in Act 3 Scene 1 or if he really knew)  because before his death and fight with Mercutio, he said he had to talk with Romeo and calls him a villain, possibly for being in love with his enemy: Juliet. Tybalt’s caused Romeo to be exiled, but it kept his love a secret. In Like Water for Chocolate, Mama Elena’s death finally let Tita have her own life and do as she wishes, which was to love. Did anyone else notice this?

Another obvious connection is that in both texts, the lovers die. Does this show that Shakespeare’s type of trageties carry on throughout history?

Those of you who were not yet registered authors on the blog were given a hand-out before the break with instructions to follow. The handout also contained an e-mail address for me which has not intentionally been publicized on this blog. If you have not yet gotten your authorship status, please follow the directions on the handout. If the 10TOPS blog still does not appear when you login to your account, then, again for security reasons, contact me via e-mail, rather than leaving a comment about it on the blog.

Thanks.

msp.

Hello folks,

I was just able to confirm that whoever has been leaving the innappropriate comments has also been spoofing Mikhail’s name. All the comments that have been left under Mikhail’s name from before do not belong to him, and I’m going to delete them from the blog.

I currently have a few security measure in place to prevent this from happening again.

One- please LOG IN to the 10TOPs blog before you do any posting OR Commenting.

TWO- some of you may find that when you leave a comment, it doesn’t appear immediately. Don’t take this personally. If you haven’t left an approved comment before, it holds your commments in moderation until we can make sure that you are you.

Three- how do we know that you are you? Because you gave us your e-mail addresses. If you leave a comment while not logged in, if the e-mail address you left doesn’t match the one we have on file, then we get suspicious.

And finally, you all have helped diffuse the situation by not taking the bait. A troll will only persist in creating havoc in a place that rewards the bad attention. You folks have redirected the energy of the blog into some amazing discussions. For my part, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions too quickly. I have, in the past, seen mature, intelligent people do crazy things when they get into an online space where they think, eroneously, that there are no consequences to their actions. So it was plausible, though disappointing to me, to think that this might be happening here.

Thank you for your patience,

ms. parrish

I too have been away. The blog is impressive in size and depth. There is so much to read, and I haven’t finished so I hope I’m not repeating what anyone else has said. Anyway, this is a strand about Mama Elena and her possible motives. I’m curious what you think, so please add comments. Here goes…

I am very interested in why Mama Elena chose to keep up the ‘younger daughter’ tradition and not allow Tita to leave or marry. Now, because of the time and place she grew up, we can begin to understand, if not excuse, her thinking. I, however, cannot understand why a such a strong woman would force such an unfair sentence on anyone, not to mention her own daughter. Here are some possibilities:

Perhaps her need to be loved and cared for blinded her better judgement. This is possible; her selfish need to have someone care for her in her old age could have caused her to uphold a morally wrong tradition. Most people fear loneliness and abandonment and, as she aged, Mama Elena may have felt increasing anxiety for being left alone by her daughters. Upholding this wrongful custom may have been the only way she knew to keep someone with her and, out of fear and selfishness, she did it.

Perhaps it was her own love for Tita, displayed by Mama Elena in the only way she knew how, that made her act this way. During the book, she rarely, if ever, displays emotions other than anger or indifference. We know that, in her youth at least, she was capable of love and happiness. I’m sure that deep down she loved her daughters, even Tita. Maybe the only we she could express this was by ‘protecting’ Tita and keeping her with her.

Maybe she was bitter and hardened by her own lost love, and her seemingly heartless actions now were a result of her broken hearted past. Mama Elena’s secret past could have had long lasting effects. Although this might have made her more sympathetic to Tita’s cause, it seems that she took to the opposite extreme; she completely rejects the idea of true love. Could it be that her heart break and loveless marriage hardened her against young passion?

It could be that she upheld tradition for tradition’s sake. Although I don’t think this is very likely, it is possible that she simply wanted to keep this custom going on through generations, just as the family recipes were passed on. Many people cling on to what is old and familiar and are unwilling to change. Maybe this was her only reasoning.

Mama Elena’s actions were selfish and unfair. No matter what her motives were behind forbidding Tita to marry or to be happy, I still believe Tita was in the right. Traditions are, often, unfair and, if you stop to think about them, illogical. This one is particularly unjust and this story brings that to light.

Why do you guys think Mama Elena did what she did?

          Ok first off, as I have been busy for the past few days, I am not only impressed by the growth of the site and the sheer amount of responses, good or bad. But I am also sad that I have been unable to be a part of the growth not only because I will probably be penalised for my lack of input, but because now it has grown so much that I feel out of place to read over everything and post as many of the topics have become old. 

          Now on to my topic, the cold and thew ind. Throughout the story there are various parts of the book where Tita mentions being cold whether it be the cold empty feeling she often feels, mostly after pedro and rosaura get married, or after Mama Elena yells at her. This theme recurrs all the way throughout the book, usually resulting in her knitting of the enormous quilt,  until finally, at the end of the book she feels cold one last time and dies. Being cold has been related to pain in this book several times as well. So to me im guessing that this could be seen as foreshadowing, as in the end she eventually gets cold and dies. However i’m pretty sure you’re now all thinking that, but she didn’t die of being cold, she died being warm and on fire. And now i’m almost positive that some of you are thinking, hey how’d you know i was thinking that? and the rest of you are like hey no i’m not. anyways, this brings me to my next point which is heat. the heat like in janes post (indirectly) can mean fire. However fire was not the only source of heat, as we can see love and food were often sources of heat as well, like gertrudis and the rose petal quail, this produces so much heat that not only does the water evaporate before hitting her, but the shower catches on fire as well, or after tita receives love and escapes her mama’s harsh dictatorship she finally starts to feel warm again. As well john mentions the inner candles that will light and catch fire/create heat once you do soemthing that causes them to catch fire, and in tita’s case it was love. he then goes on to mention that if you find something that can light them all at once you will generate a lot of heat as a result and die, which we see at the end of the story as both pedro’s and tita’s ultimate lighter if you will, was the ultimate climax/orgasm. as you may have noticed or now noticed now that  i mention it, i did not indent and start a new paragraph after saying, ”anyways, this brings me to my next point…”(yes elipsis). the reason for this (the not indenting, not the elipsis) was because it was to show my point which is the recurring themes end up pulling a twist on you, where the cold was always seen as pain and eventually death, and warmth seen as love, life and caring, in the end, it totally changes, and the heat or ultimate fire from all the candles lighting at once and the heat is in some way the ultimate cause of death which opposes the life and caring it had shown previously.

              Now for wind, and no i am not talking about the wind from rosaura after she got sick and bloated. the wind doesn’t exactly play much of a role in proving any point that i have tried to previously make, in fact it doesn’t even relate to anything i previously stated. unless of course if you think wind makes you cold as we can finally see (yay snow), or wind spreadin fire or fanning the flames. actually i am curious what was the point of the whole scene with the chickens fighting causing a whirlwind? was it just to emphasize the fight between rosaura and tita and how animalistic they were acting? if so we must consider that in the animal world it is usually the males who fight for the females and not the other way around. or perhaps it was showing the animalistic behaviour found in pedro and john fighting for tita? however they have never really fought, or could this be a clever and dirty remark from the author about john and pedro hence “cock” fight. as well what about when mama elena revisits tita in the kitchen when she blows in through the door causing the napkin to fly off the bread and givin tita a strange chill, what would the significance of that be? any input would be appreciated                    

  The use of words in Romeo and Juliet can be compared to a similar usage in Like water for chocolate. When Juliet was “buttering” or basically sucking up to her mother prior to the Capulet’s party at the beginning of the play, she says “yes mom, I will do as you wish, and look out for Paris, and only love at your desire.”

  This act can be used to compare with Tita when she uses the  phrase “Mami” rather than Mama. It is said in the novel that Mama Elena prefers to be called Mami, as Mama is a sign of disrespect and she had informed this to her daughters when they were of a very young age. Although it is not of extreme importance, this sort of word choice was used for a similar purpose. That is to avoid trouble from their parents.

  Also, I have noticed that there’s a good usage of adjectives followed by detailed description for that sentence within each section of the novel. For example, phrases such as excessive bulk, extraordinarily swollen, large earthenware pan, supernatural act…   (pgs. 70 – 76) As you can see, not only is the word expressed, but there’s also brief and indepth passages on the phrases. {Which I have not covered here} 

  Finally, as I was reading the novel for the first time, I noticed that there was a lot of drastic changes just within one paragraph and it all seemed like it didn’t make sense. Though , when I got around to reading for the second time, each change has a connecting phrase or two that somewhat leads to the following sentence. For example, in December it seems that Tita having a sexual relationship with Pedro in the dark room, and just within a couple of sentences, Pedro’s already dead from unapparent reason. Though, the book implies that fate has decided to play a crucial role in Tita’s life. It was the conditions that Tita was experiencing that created this type of sentence and paragraph formating.   Therefore, the sudden condition of death for Pedro would have been a result she being too shocked to respond to the parts that have lead up to it. {as Sophia stated}   

In “Like Water for Chocolate” the ghosts of people help move the story forward, and adds problems or gives solutions to other characters. John’s Grandmother came to Tita as a ghost. She helped Tita heal from her broken heart and soul by being a silent friend who appeared to understand what Tita needed. She also “looked a lot like Nacha” (p.110) which must have brought even more comfort to Tita.

It wasn’t Nacha’s ghost (p.243) nor the grandmother’s ghost that had real importance. It was mama Elena’s ghost which really had a lot of influence on the events of the book. She was the only ghost in the book that knew how to talk. Her first visit as a ghost on p.173 confirms for us Tita’s pregnancy. She curses the baby, but that wasn’t important; it was the fact that she came and created more worry for Tita by confirming for Tita that she’s pregnant with Pedro’s child.  Then on p.199, when Pedro was singing a love song under Tita’s window, Mama Elena came again to critisize her daughter. This time, Tita had already found out about Gertrudis’ father, and told Elena as much. In her fiery and anger at being told that she was hated by her own daughter, she became a light and tried to kill Pedro. In some sense, she also killed Tita’s unborn child (maybe?).

The light is another thing. It seems to be connected to ghosts in  the story. When Chencha saw lights in the dark room which was caused by Tita and Pedro, she had thought it was Mama Elena’s ghost. This light represented happiness and joy. (p.158-9)
Then, when mama Elena’s ghost disappeared, she became a tinny “speck of light”(p.199). That light had been an angery light.
When Nacha’s ghost appeared at the end of the book, she was lighting candles, and disappeared after she lit all of them (p.243). It was a light of support.
John’s grandmother, as we find on p.111 is called Morning Light. In this case I think that the light meant hope and a new begining; like the first sign of light in a morning after a night of rain and storms.
On p.54 Gertrudis gave off so much heat that she lit the wooden walls of the bath on fire. Fire is another imager of light, and this time, it represents the heat of passion.

The light is a recurring imagery, but it represents many things. The only thing that is constant is that whenever there is mention of light, we know that something is going to happen or that change is comming. The ghosts as well bring a different mood when they come, and change seem to follow in  their wake.

To help keep things organized, we’ve added some categories to the blog. They’re not listed on the sidebar yet. The categories become visible as people assign posts to them. A post can be assigned to more than one category at a time. Sometimes our world doesn’t fall into tidy groupings, so this is helpful. Comments don’t have categories because comments are always attached to the post to which they are responding.

When you write a post, on the right hand side you’ll see the list of categories, and all you need to do is place a check mark beside the desired category. You can always change it by selecting to edit your post. Only the author of a post (or an administrator) can edit that post.

Here are the current set of categories:

Novel Study Categories:

recurring imagery
recurring themes
recurring motifs
a question of character
connections to Big Fish
connections to Tristan
connections to Gawain
connections to Romeo
connections to other texts (and texts here might include movies, songs, etc, as well as other literature you’ve read or studied)
questions about the author
historical background
magic realism
novel study FAQ (for questions about the novel that don’t seem to belong anywhere else)

Other Categories:
Blog FAQ- for questions of a technical nature about how to use the blog, etc
Assignment/homework FAQ- for questions about what you’re supposed to be doing

Does anybody know of a way to access a view of all the posts (not comments) that have occurred? I find it hard to trudge through a bog of comments/posts/events that have happened in the blog over a period of time. I’d rather just visit each post separately.