Themes: Love as a Potent Force
Love emerges as the most formidable force within this story. It is associated with bright light and warmth, whereas its absence brings a chilling cold. A simple glance can spark a fire. Tita, feeling lonely and cold, pictures Gertrudis, who left the ranch in a fervent escape, looking at a star: "Surely the heat from her body, which was inflamed by love, would travel with that gaze across an infinite distance, with no loss of energy, until it landed on the star she was watching." The strength of this force is so great that
those immense stars have survived for millions of years by ensuring they never absorb any of the passionate rays sent up by lovers around the world, night after night. To avoid this, the star generates immense heat within itself, breaking the rays into countless fragments. . . . This is why the stars shine so brightly at night.
Like fire, love demands careful handling. As John Brown explains to Tita,
each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves. . . . Each individual must discover what will trigger those explosions to live, as the combustion that occurs when one is ignited nourishes the soul. ... If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches becomes damp, and not a single match will ever be lit.
Once ignited, however, the fire can become uncontrollable. John cautions,
You must of course take care to light the matches one at a time. If a powerful emotion should ignite them all at once, they would produce a splendor so dazzling that it would illuminate far beyond what we can normally see, and then a brilliant tunnel would appear before our eyes, revealing the path we forgot the moment we were born, and summoning us to regain the divine origin we had lost.
That powerful emotion is, of course, love. At the height of their passion, when they finally have the freedom to express their love, it opens that tunnel for Pedro and Tita, sending out radiant sparks and setting the ranch on fire for everyone to see. The flames consume the ranch for a week, and the resulting ashes fertilize the land, making it the most productive in the area. Such intense love is both stunning and dangerous, but without it, we are incomplete. When asked why she had Tita and Pedro die at their moment of ecstasy, Esquivel explained that there's no room in the world for their kind of love. Their love, so intense and long-repressed, erupts uncontrollably. However, when handled with care and allowed to grow naturally, love can and should be the ultimate joy in life.
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