Food has many different uses in literature. This semester food has been analyzed in different ways, showing how it can transform and affect the character more then the character alone. In Jessica Soffer novel Tomorrow There will be Apricots, she presented the readers with an overwhelming ordeal that has uprooted a family and affected more people than thought. Though the use of food Soffer develops each character differently. While food changes Lorca and Nancy, Tomorrow There will be Apricots can be compared to another short story we have read earlier in the year. “Tender at the Bone: The Queen of Mold” by Ruth Reichl also uses food to help show how different people can be. In this essay there will be a theme of what each of these authors have done with developing each character differently with food, and how food styles each character. While reading each piece it is apparent that each story has comparative properties showing that food can be used to develop a character more then without food. This will be a comparative analysis of the two stories mentioned above.
Lorca’s mother, Nancy has done everything best for herself and Lorca, her daughter. Nancy still faces tribulations that test her as a single parent; she is unable to show love and affection to her daughter in a normal way. Being a prized chef Nancy spends most of her time at her restaurant instead of helping her daughter grow into a proper lady. This has a negative effect on how Nancy and Lorca’s relationship develop as they have left her husband to continue her joy of cooking professionally. Cooking food is how Nancy distraction herself to help get her mind off of the pain Lorca is causing to her. Nancy accepts that she struggles to show her love toward ...
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...people who have grown apart, create a distraction from a looming situation, and as a way to bring people together. Though each character is different in both stories they all have the same ideals that food develops a character into more then just themselves. Food helps them love, without it Lorca and Nancy would have nothing in common. Food also brings people together. As Reichl and her mother cook for the party, happiness and affection is put into what her mother is making. Even though everyone gets sick from the food, Reichl learned how people are developed by food, and how food can create love, hope and a new start.
Works Cited
Soffer, Jessica. Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots: A Novel. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1013. Print.
Reichl, Ruth. "Tender at the Bone: The Queen of Mold." : Food + Cooking : Gourmet.com. Gourmet.com, 2009. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
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Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. [secondary source]
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