Writers hate parents

Ever noticed that in so many books, the protagonist is an orphan? It’s either that or the character had parents, but the writer got rid of them either by killing them or by whisking the characters to a far away place, away from their parents. These two ways are more obvious. Sometimes, another way is used to replace these two. This is less obvious and I call it the “Orphan substitute.” Basically, this refers to a bad relationship between the child and the parents.
It’s funny because I’ve been coming up with the names of famous books and most of them use this theme

-Harry Potter
-Series of Unfortunate Events
-Lord of the Rings (No mentions of Frodo’s parents, in fact not a lot is mentioned about any of the characters in the fellowship)
-The Outsiders
-Eragon

Many classics use this theme as well

-Oliver Twist
-Great Expectations
-Anne of Green Gables
-Jane Eyre
-Wüthering Heights
-Secret Garden
-David Copperfield

Finally, let’s look at the texts we’ve studied. In Tristan and Iseult, Tristan was an orphan. Iseult was not an orphan, but she was given to King Mark as a bride and moved far away from her parents. In Romeo and Juliet, there was a case of Orphan Substitute. The parents were absent even though none of them were dead. It just didn’t seem like the parents had a very close or loving relationship with their children. An obvious example of this would be Juliet’s parents. In the case of Like Water For Chocolate, it was a combination of the Orphan and the Orphan Substitute. Tita lost her father before she could remember and did not maintain a good relationship with her overbearing mother. Finally, for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it is another case of Orphan Substitute. Gawain was not close (distance-wise) to his parents. Whether he was an orphan or not, I couldn’t remember. Anyone else know

Well, look through some of the books you’ve read. This theme is very popular among writers and it’s just kind of interesting. I feel that this is another part of a writer’s scheme plan to sell more books. A distant relationship or no relationship with parents gives the characters more opportunities to experience and do different things. It gives them more freedom to be themselves and allow more development throughout the novel.

Again dear classmates, I ask you for your input. What do you think?

 

The Movie

I’m sure you can all tell what this post will be about.
After seeing the movie adaptation of ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ last week, I’m curious what you guys thought of it.

Often, when adapting a novel for the big screen, they change the plot dramatically, and completely alter the script. In this case however, I was impressed by how true it stayed to the text in-terms of the narration and the dialogue. Much of the script was picked right out of the book. The plot itself was also very similar to the book. There were times when i thought that some adaptation would have been better as video is a completely different medium and must be treated as such, but overall, it worked.

I don’t know about you, but I had imagined certain characters appearances differently than they appeared in the movie. Although, of course, that kind of description is up to individual imagination, I personally had imagined Mama Elena to be slightly older, and dark haired. Tita, I had pictured as having a rounder, smoother face and thicker hair. Gertrudis, i had imagined as being of a darker complexion, particularly as her father turned out to be a ‘mulatto’. I had also imagined many of the scenes to be less formal and extravagant. I am not very knowledgeable about the society, etc at this time and place but I had imagined some scenes, like the wedding, to be less fancy.

Finally, I have to comment on the dubbing. It was appalling. In my opinion, dubbing almost always ruins a movie. When possible, subtitles should be used. The people who dubbed this movie could hardly act. Particularly unbearable were the performances of Chencha and of Dr. John. Chencha’s voice alternated rapidly between a low mumbling and a squealing whine. The doctors voice was this soft monotone that remained void of any expression other than a strange shocked euphoria. The movie would have been far more enjoyable had they left the original spanish speech (which would have added considerably to the atmosphere and the level of acting proficiency) and subtitled it for comprehensibility.

What did you guys think of it?

 

Mexican Revolution Inside and Out

Tita’s personality is so like that of Mama Elena’s (Stuborn and commanding) that it caused them to be constantly at odds with each other. I thought that it’s kinda like a small version of the Mexican revolution inside the house to match the one outside. As Mexican people got tired of the ditator rule in Mexico, Tita got tired of Mama Elena’s absolute power in the house. And like the people of Mexico, Tita Rebelled against Mama Elena.

The absolute power in Mexico was Diaz in the begining of the Mexican Revolution. He started out with good intentions for the Mexican people. In Tita’s home, Mama Elena is the equivalent of Diaz. She was the abosolute ruler of her house and as a mother, she had the best intentions for her daughters. She wanted her daughters to be “proper” so she had her daughters follow her rules.

Madero, who was the originator (in a way) of the Mexican Revolution is like Tita in the De La Garza family. Tita started to rebel against Mama Elena because she thought that it wasn’t right for Elena to be the law when some of her rules - such as the youngest daughter not marrying – are absolutely unfair. For those of you who don’t know, Madero was a democrate, and when he got many people to support him in the up comming election, Diaz had him imprisoned and was therefore reelected.

Like in the Revolution, Elena was not alway in control of Tita. When Tita lived with John, when Elena died, and when Tita used to speak against Elena were some of the times that Elena wasn’t in control (though unlike the revolution, there were only two powers in Tita’s life: herself, and Elena). And happily, in the end of both story and Revolution, respective rebels (Tita and the Mexican people) gained their freedom.

Also in response to Ms. White: 
This connection kind of made me realize how in real life as well as in stories, we can have a happy ending. It’s just that in real life, we often don’t see the “happy endings” because of the tragedies that occur. It’s not there there are no tragedies in stories; that’s not the case at all. When bad things happen in stories, we disregard them when we get to the happy ending. In real life, the death and distruction is very real, and when all is over and done with, a happy ending isn’t so happy at all because people have to fix and mend all the physical and emotional wounds. 

 

Is it unconditional love?

Have you ever noticed how the women in some of the romances we have read always reconsider (at some point or other) if they really love the other person?Of course we all know that there is nothing to reconsider; they love this person eternally. I was concentrating again on connections between all the romances, and found this to be recurring.

In ‘Tristan and Iseult’ , there is a little misunderstanding between the two lovers.On p.172, Iseult believes that Tristan has betrayed her and that his feelings have passed on to another Iseult because of false information communicated unintentionally. She decides to never again see Tristan and shuns him any time he tries to get near, like when he comes disguised as a leper to the church door, or when he comes as a Madman to court. Afterwards, of course, Iseult finds that she cannot live without Tristan and then is forced to admit that she’ll love him eternally.

This happens also in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, though over a span of a few minutes. Starting on line 79, Juliet will insult Romeo, driven by her grief for the death of Tybalt. She talks about how he has deceived her, using many powerful metaphors. However, just a few lines after on line 99, when she has heard these insults coming from the nurse, her opinion changes drastically, and again she admits to herself that she cannot live without Romeo.

This connection also holds true for the most recent romance. In ‘ Like Water for Chocolate ‘, Tita is in love with Pedro since the day she set eyes on him, but when he agrees to marry Rosaura, she reconsiders her love for him. She tries to put him off her mind and move on , but when she learns of his true intentions, that spark that had dimmed, fired back up. A similar thing occurs when Pedro leaves for San Antonio. She establishes a relationship with John and then is not sure who she loves. When he comes back though, we know too well that Tita can only truly love Pedro.

So as you can see this happens in many of the romances. This might be a way the author has to reinforce the strength of the love between the couples. If their love can be broken easily, then there was no real love in the first place. On the other hand, if both lovers cannot forget each other no matter how much time passes or what circumstances change, then that love was always there. Could there be other reasons? Also, did you find this in any of the other stories?

 

Tita’s choice

Tita comes to a fork in the road when she has to choose between Pedro and John. From reading some of the comments that have been posted, it sounds like alot of you disagree with Tita’s choice. Then i also read someone mentioning cartoons and how there is the angel and the devil that represents teh characters thoughts and choices. Usually it’s the right side with teh angela nd the left side with devil. So we would all want Tita, and ourslves to follow the right side, to do the right thing…right?

Okay, so then what about our hearts? Aren’t we always told to follow our hearts? Isn’t it so ironic that our heart happens to be on the left side?  So I was wondering what you guys thought about that. Since obvioulsy Tita chose Pedro, because her heart told her too. Do you think she did the right thing by following her heart?

 

Tita’s Birth and a Made Up Tradition?

I have been pondering about two ideas ever since I came back home, and this is my first question: Why do we see Mama Elena working in the kitchen giving birth to Tita, but once Tita comes out we never see Elena do the cooking anymore?

I believe there could be several possibilities, but my main hunch is that this is probably a product of spite. When Mama Elena had Gertrudis and Rosaura, she probably had Nacha and herself doing a major part of the cooking (p. 1) (thus the other daughters’ lack of experience with the kitchen (p.7-8)). Once Tita was born, Tita was then responsible for doing the cooking and it just so happened that around that point in time Mama Elena had been left to fend for herself with a child that was the product of her and a man whom she did not love. Elena saw Tita’s love for cooking and her place of birth to be in the kitchen, so what I am trying to get at is that because Tita’s domain is in the kitchen and since Elena despises Tita for being the daughter of a husband she did not love, she could probably be avoiding the kitchen for those reasons.

This brings me to my next point: could Elena’s traditions have all been made up?

We all know of how cruel Mama Elena can be and how she tries to give Tita a hard time and most of us suspect it is because of her own selfish desires and spite that she makes Tita work so hard only to receive harsh criticism. In addition, we know that Mama Elena didn’t have to face this, because she did after all have her parents make her marry to Juan De La Garza (p. 137). However, knowing that Elena could not openly express her love for Jose the Mulatto, we know that Elena may have faced other familial values or traditions, so she could have felt that because she had to be subject to such cruel meaningless traditions, she had the right to do the same for Tita.

Well, those are just some random theories I came up with, I hope you guys can think of something too. I hope you people understand what I was trying to get at, because I don’t quite get it either… O_o

 

Love portrayed as “Pure”

Overall, in this course we have studied several fundamental and very interesting books and works of literature, from Medieval times and Shakespearian plays to modern works by Margrett Atwood. What we have touched upon in this course has certainly changed my perspective/view of the way love/ family duty is in either in reality or fantasy or in Magic realism. 

At first, the way that love is looked upon in these texts seemed to be irrational. In reality, there are always situations where love occurs among first sight. However, the irrantionality takes a role when love at first sight immediately leads to the decisions of marriage, as some would consider being superficial. This overall idea can be seen in many, or rather most of the texts that we have covered. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, we see that Romeo enters the Capulet’s party and at first sight, he falls in love with Juliet, a shining light in the complete darkness. In comparison, in Like Water for Chocolate, there is still a love at first sight kind of themes when Pedro meets Tita at a party, and immediately falls in love with her to the extent that would bring marriage. Similarly, all the other love stories have covered this pattern.

As covered before, true love is a type of love that is pure and long endured, not something that happens at first sight. By the way the book is setting it,  it seems like they’ll marry the first person of the opposite sex they see. This point is what that exactly kept me thinking about the meaning of the authors intend to consider true love.      

   Eventually, I came to understand the topic more clearly when I thought of the situation of the times that the books were written and the present times. It was obvious that although these books were of a fanticised world that brought up unreal situations to the modern times, they had a somewhat sense in them. In esscence, it is a time period and irrelative factor that lead to this conclusion, more than anything else.     

Also, in my opinion, there are still similar family expectations/ duties in some parts of the world to the ones of Like water for chocolate. Things such morality, propriety, and social appearence are still intact to many families even today.

What do you guys think about this?   

 

Why why why… again

Throughout the story Like Water For Chocolate, Laura Esquival uses imagery such as cold to represent sadness and heat to represent love and passion. Then, once again, I had to ask why.

Let me pull you back to my previous post, How does this Relate to us? (http://10tops.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/how-does-this-relate-to-us/), by noting that this imagery is not exclusive to this book. If you look at any of the works we studied, and many more that we didn’t, you’ll find this type of imagery. So the question arises, why is this imagery so common? Obviously, there must be a universal understanding of these images.

Let me pull you out of my previous post so that we may explore these images in more depth. What is it that makes the relation between cold and sadness so logical? I suppose that being cold is bad and so is being sad: a distant relation at best. However, there are people who have never expeirienced cold, yet they still understand this metaphor. It seems that this is another thing that people are born understanding… but why?

It is my own personal belief that everything has a purpose; when you look at nature, you see developments that all have purposes: long necks to reach high branches, patterned skin to blend in with surrounding plants, the list goes on. But what I don’t understand is, what possible purpose could such an understaning of heat and passion have? Could nature have made a mistake? It’s not likely. So what is the root of this understanding?

I believe the answer to this question lies in the lymbic brain: the part that deals with instinct. Scientists believe that the lymbic brain used to be much more developed than it is today, however, as humans developed speech and higher concious thought, the lymbic brain was lost and much of our instinct with it. All that remains is that funny feeling that someone is watching you, or that gut feeling you get when you first meet someone. But that leaves us with yet another question; how did people communicate before speech: back when the lymbic brain was more developed?

If we look at our friends the animals, we can tell that they are communicating, yet we can detect no form of communication through speech. This is where my theory lies. I believe that, back before humans had speech, communication was much more rudimentary. In this system, thoughts and ideas were conveyed through emotions and feelings. How these emotions wer transported remains a mystery, however it probably has something to do with the inuition that still remains with us today. This system of communication became obsolete with the development of speech and slowly disappeared, however our innate sense of whichc ideas are related to certain emotions stuck with us.

This may seem a little far fetched, but it certainly explains a lot. I thought about this for a while, and this is the answer that makes the most sense to me, but if you disagree, then please, tell us all what you have to say on the matter: I am intrigued as to what people have to say on this matter. So, as usual, have at it!

 

True Love, Part 2

This post does not deal with the same subject exactly, but it is a discussion of a response that was written there. If you take a look at the comments in the True Love post, you’ll see there was a discussion concerning problems with character development. It was written in a comment that it was possibly due to the fact that it is being told by the daughter of Esperanza, many years later. I am not discrediting this person, actually I think it was a great observation!

So, what I want to discuss is this:
Why does the author tell us the narrator is Esperanza’s daughter? I believe it is completely unnecessary, that fact is never discussed after the first couple of lines in the book! And, in any case I don’t think it should be an impediment to character development… But why do you think the author did this?

 

Fate the Puppeteer

We’ve done a lot of work and looked into numerous materials this year. With Mrs. White’s careful planning, all of the loose ends of the french braid are starting to come together. We are beginning to see how the four texts and two movies (“Like Water for Chocolate” doesn’t count as a movie because I regard it as one of the texts) relate to one another. A motif that occurs frequently in some of the materials we looked at throughout this course is Fate the Puppeteer. Its constant influence brings the star-crossed lovers to their impending doom.

In Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Iseult, and Like Water For Chocolate, the main characters, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Iseult and Tita and Pedro are forbidden to be together. Yet, somehow, Fate made them fall in love. The fight for their love and the feeling of helplessness is long-term. In the end, the ill-fated couples die, making their struggle and pain a form of entertainment for Fate the Puppeteer. They are nothing but puppets. Fate’s playthings.

This motif is something that is used a lot by writers. The reason? I guess writers feel that their audience can relate to this as well as enjoying the story. From the media, everyday experience and those around you, it’s clear that people tend to fall in love with the wrong person. Relationships rarely work out and it’s so hard to find Ms. or Mr. Right. On some level, these tragedies are also a great form of entertainment. The love that lasts through storms and disasters is something beautiful and something that people long for in their own lives.

So dear people, what do you think? What are your thoughts on why the writers use this motif?