When “God” Smashes You In The Face With A Wooden Spoon

There is absolutely no doubt that the collapse of Tita’s domestic life is marked by the moment that her face crumpled under the force of Mama Elena’s wooden spoon. Everthing she cared for was taken away (Baby, Lover, Pigeons), and she was clearly on the verge of losing her sanity. Many people have gone to great lengthes to explain how such Mama Elena’s cruelty is reprimandable, But is it possible that perhaps Mama Elena’s actions were some miracle of “God”?

Let me elaborate, Tita and Mama Elena went through remarkably similar dilemmas as both were denied their “True Love” by their parent(s). But then why did Mama Elena turn out so differently? The answer is, of course, that her lover went belly up. So she, for one reason or another, adopted the “last girl” tradition which consequently enslaved Tita. Although the reader is probably fed to the teeth with sympathizing with Mama Elena, imagine for a moment that the one person you “loved” most in this world died( A parent maybe? Humour me). Doesn’t it feel cold? Don’t you feel your chest implode? And doesn’t this sound a whole lot like what Tita was feeling for roughly half the book(perhaps to a lesser extent than Mama Elena). What would have happened, pray tell, if Mama Elena had reacted differently, not to the point of crushing Tita’s face? Would she still be on the ranch? What kind of person would she have ended up as? Can a person really bear that much emotional tension without going absolutely nuts?

I ask you: is it possible that Mama Elena’s actions may actually have saved Tita by sending her into Doctor Brown’s caring arms?

- Kelvin

Disagreements and critical rebuttals are welcome

 

The Story with Many Subplots

My favourite stories are filled with many intricate subplots. I’m one of those people that like drawing up all the clues and connecting the dots to figure out the mysteries and who exactly the characters become over the span of the story. 

 

That’s one of the main reasons why I prefer Like Water for Chocolate to writing like Gawain and the Green Knight (in which, there is only one main storyline.. Gawain going on his journey to prove his honour to King Arthur).  In GGK, the storyline is fairly “slow” and the readers can practically predict what is about to happen, as many lines of the text were similar.  (maybe, it is written in a different format that seemed less appealing to me?)

 

In Like Water for Chocolate, the story is told in different segments (chunks of Tita’s long and complicated life).  Even though it is presented in some-what of a sequential order, it allows to readers to contemplate how much time has passed and what new bonds/feelings the characters create between the time that is not mentioned in the novel.  I had time in between the months to think about the fast-paced events in the chapters before.  Also, a handful of secondary characters are added to make the story more complicated, adding in the extra subplots.

 

Similarly, in Big Fish, the many stories told by Edward Bloom gives me an insight to his past life, even though magic realism is present within many of his stories.  However, true facts are embedded deep within his relationships with his friends.  Throughout watching the movie, I pondered about his interaction with the characters and how much of it was indeed fact (not fiction).

 All in all, I enjoy reading stories that have many subplots that ties a perfect knot at the end of the story, finishing any loose ends.  (Even though this is going off topic, I think that many of you might like a compact and intense novel than a slow-paced drama that never ends well (like many Korean dramas that never quite end, even though it’s the end))  Out of all the texts we’ve read over the past five months in English, which text (fast/slow-paced) did you prefer?

 

The Cremation of…

After reading some of the new posts and thinking of things to say, though i never posted them, something else has now come to my mind. This is just something random i noticed but this resembles one of my favourite Stories/Poems The Cremation of Sam McGee  by Robert W. Service a lot. In the poem it speaks of a gold miner from Tennessee working in the north and is perpetually cold. This cold like Tita’s is mainly caused by loneliness or a longing for something. In his case it was longing to be home where it was always nice and warm, while Tita longed or Pedro among other things. The poem goes on to having Sam’s friend promise that when he dies he’ll cremate him so he could be warm one last time, and unable to break a promise he gets his wish in the end and has his corpse thrown into a fire. When his friend opens to check on him he finds Sam sitting in the middle saying it’s cold outside so close the door as it’s nice and warm inside. In both cases it is ultimately fire that destroys them, but the fire in both cases was a good thing as with Tita and Pedro it kind of freed them while for Sam it also gave him what he want, so ya i guess this si similar to random moaning as well. I’m just wondering if anyone knows any good reading that relates to this story that i might be interested in 

 

Cold and the Wind

          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                    

 

my deepest darkest sorrows

why does no one understand me…