Like Water for Chocolate

by Laura Esquivel

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The role and impact of tradition in "Like Water for Chocolate"

Summary:

Tradition plays a central role in "Like Water for Chocolate," significantly impacting the characters' lives. It dictates Tita's inability to marry and forces her to care for her mother, which causes her immense emotional turmoil. The novel explores how these traditions can be both oppressive and influential, shaping the characters' actions and relationships throughout the story.

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What is the importance of tradition in Like Water for Chocolate?

Tradition is an important part of life during Tita's time. In fact, it is tradition that keep Tita and Pedro apart. Tita and Pedro are fiercely in love. However, because tradition dictates that the youngest daughter does not marry in order to care for her aging parents, Pedro fails to gain Tita's hand in marriage when he speaks to her mother. Instead, he is offered Rosaura, Tita's older sister. She is the middle sister and is not yet married. Tradition dictates that daughters marry in order. Pedro agrees to marry Rosaura but only because he sees this as his only chance to be near Tita, for her mother will never allow her to marry.

Tradition continues to be one of Tita's main conflicts during the course of the novel. Family tradition required Tita to remain unmarried so she could take care of her mother for the rest of her life. Similarly, Rosaura, Tita's sister...

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and Pedro's wife, decides that she also will follow this tradition and that her daughter will care for her and remain unmarried. Tita is furious because she recognizes that the tradition is completely unfair; if she cannot marry and have children, who will support her in her old age? She tells Rosaura that she will go against tradition as long as she has to, "as long as this cursed tradition doesn't take me into account."

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What is the relationship between food and tradition in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate?

In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, author Laura Esquivel develops the food motif through the protagonist Tita, who was born in the kitchen and even raised in the kitchen when her mother left her to the care of their Indian cook Nacha. What's more, her dictatorial mother forbids Tita from marrying Pedro, arguing that there is a need to uphold the family tradition that the youngest daughter must remain in the household to care for the parents until their deaths. To overcome her heartbreak, Tita throws herself into cooking. Tita's cooking, before and after her heartbreak, both adheres to and defies traditions. The dual nature of the food motif serves to develop Esquivel's feminist theme.
One example of cooking that adheres to traditions can be seen early on in the novel with respect to the family of women making sausages. The narrator describes "sausage making" as a "real ritual" in the household. The narrator continues to detail the elaborate process:

The day before, [the household] started peeling garlic, cleaning chiles, and grinding spices. All the women in the family had to participate: Mama Elena; her daughters, Gertrudis, Rosaura, and Tita; Nacha, the cook; and Chencha, the maid. (Ch. 1)

The narrator further describes that "they gathered around the dining-room table," making sausages starting in the afternoon until it grew dark. But most importantly, the author reveals this tradition of food preparation as an excuse for Mama Elena to exercise her dictatorial power by commanding when the process would stop with her statement, "That's it for today." Hence, this example of food preparation depicts the women in the family adhering to a tradition of cooking but also adhering to the tradition of yielding to Mama Elena's authority.

A second example of cooking in a way that adheres to tradition can be seen in the moment Tita is forced by Mother Elana to prepare the wedding cake for her sister Rosaura and the man that Tita wanted to marry herself, Pedro. Preparing a wedding cake is an age-old tradition, yet Tita manages to defy this tradition by adding in her own ingredient: the tears she cries as she makes it. While one would think tears would have no effect as an added ingredient, in the novel, anyone who tasted the cake and icing was immediately overcome by sorrow. After tasting the cake, Nacha was so overcome by sorrow for the thought of her own lost fiance that she soon dies of a broken heart. Also, all the wedding guests who eat the cake are overcome by sorrow to the point that they become physically ill. In short, Tita manages to destroy the tradition of the wedding ceremony by adding her own ingredient to the traditional wedding cake.

Tita's ability to wreck traditions in her own way through her cooking is also a way for her to rebel against her tyrannical mother. In particular, Tita is rebelling against her mother's notion that a woman's place, especially the youngest daughter's place, is inside of the home. Hence, Esquivel uses Tita's rebellion through the tradition of cooking to illustrate her feminist theme throughout the book.

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What impact does tradition have on the characters in "Like Water for Chocolate"?

Tradition dictates the lives of the female characters in the novel thanks to the patriarchal forces of Mexican society at this time in history. Even Gertrudis, who rebels against tradition and becomes a general in the rebel army, is impacted by tradition, and Tita and her mother are especially under the control of the constraints of Mexican patriarchy for much of their lives.

All three of these women are impacted by the tradition of patriarchy in their society in the following ways. Duty-driven Mama Elena teaches her daughters according to the traditions she knows, expecting Tita to stay home and look after her mother as youngest daughters do. Gertrudis must have a tradition to rebel against in order to find her own way in the world, and Gertrudis's choice foreshadows Tita's own personal rebellion, which comes later in the novel, when she chooses to have an affair with Pedro.

Even though Gertrudis and Tita both eventually break free of the traditions that dictated their mother's life, without the existence of the traditions in the first place, they would have nothing from which to break free. In this way, all three women are impacted by the role of tradition in Mexican society.

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Perhaps the most important tradition in the novel is the one in which the youngest daughter must stay home, unmarried, to take care of her parents. This shapes the main plot trajectory of the story, in which Tita de la Garza is unable to marry Pedro. Instead, Pedro marries the middle sister, Rosaura. This marriage is unhappy as Pedro and Tita still love each other. The efforts of Esquivel to separate Pedro and Tita lead to Tita's temporary insanity, causing Dr. Brown to be called in to help her recover her health. Rosaura's efforts to replicate this tradition in forbidding her daughter to marry Alex also cause suffering.

A second area in which tradition impacts the novel is through the magical effect of Tita's cooking. That skill was learned from Nacha, the family’s indigenous cook, and includes the ability to infuse food with the power to evoke emotions, part of a native Mexican as opposed to colonial Spanish tradition.

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How are the themes of tradition used in "Like Water for Chocolate"?

Tradition runs deep in the novel Like Water for Chocolate.  It almost exclusively deals with one family too--the De la Garza family.  Like most traditions, some of them keep the majority of the family happy, while other traditions seem to have overstayed their welcome and/or usefulness.  

One prevalent tradition is the cooking and kitchen tradition.  It is passed down from female family member to female family member.  Each recipe is ensured survival in this manner, and the family history and tradition of great cooking and great meals is kept alive.  It's a wonderful tradition because it is focused on very positive attributes.  It brings family together and ensures that a positive memory of ancestors lives on from generation to generation.  

Unfortunately, not all of the De la Garza traditions are so positive.  For example the tradition of preventing the youngest daughter from marrying is a source of conflict for a few of the main characters.  The tradition gets in the way of finding true love.  It seems to evoke more displeasure than anything else, which is why the tradition is abandoned. 

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Where do conflict and tradition intersect in Like Water for Chocolate?

The central conflict is that Tita cannot marry as she wishes to because of the demands of her mother. Tradition dictates that Tita remain at home and care for her mother, sacrificing her own happiness to the well being of her mother. Conflict and tradition come together where Tita's wishes clash against her duty toward he mother.

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