Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Identity is like soup, with a long line of different traditions: people either keep it the same or they add new flavors to it. Some families would add onions, others would add peppers, and after a list of traditional recipes they end up putting them together. In Like Water for Chocolate written by Laura Esquirel, it’s about a Mexican young girl who is born in a very traditional, old fashioned family. She realizes that the Mexican family tradition has completely ruined her love life with Pedro. However, she continues to still love this man, but because of Mama Elena’s overprotection she still can’t be with him. She begins to realize that the tradition should not continue because it gives people the reason to forget who they really are, or how they really feel. In the novel, Tita, the main character, is being watched by her mother, and controlled by the society’s beliefs about the youngest girl born in the Mexican culture. There are drastic changes from pre-modernity to modernity, where she wants to change the tradition in her family from a girl who is born and raised in a kitchen and can’t move on to live her own life. She wants her own identity, not the one that her mother has given to her throughout the novel. She’s on a journey to seek her own identity. She continues to find her inner self and her true individuality, what she really wishes, and her desires. At the end of the entire novel it makes a clearer view, and understanding of the nature of tradition, and against modern society. The novel goes from showing a well productive family to a dysfunctional family. As the story continues with Tita’s struggles for her independence, her mother incarcerates her from reality, holding her back from her true character. As Tita grows i...

... middle of paper ...

...part of the theme is that women don’t just lose their pregnancy, but pregnancy is a nine month burden that women have to face. Once women deliver then she automatically feels this relief in her body. As if she’s no longer holding anything heavy. She delivers her feelings, how she really deliberate and it sets all the modern women free.

Every family has a tradition, every family has a routine that they follow, and it take one person through the long line of ingredients to change it. Tita changed hers, but she kept the book of recipes behind to keep in her family. The idea of the last daughter staying home to take of her mother wasn’t going to proceed in this Mexican family. Young girls are now born into books and school. Some barely know how to turn on the stove. The youngest is the one that’s most likely common to leave their parents and go off to college.