Book Reviews and Analysis

como agua para chocolate

Analysis: (Spoilers)

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ALLEGORY:

Each chapter and even per paragraph, is a new allegory for food mixed with life experiences (but almost as though life is an arbitrary/expendable extension of the food not the other way around) inverting the importance of food. Food is heralded as was orchestrates/dictates her life's exploits. 

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The exposition describes how although an onion can provoke tears you can prolong them, in spite of its potency initiating it, once released, the cathartic torrent is difficult to stop. The motif of onion-induced tears initiates the tale with the bad omen surrounding Tita's birth; the sobbing of the child induced premature labour on the kitchen counter upon which the onions were being prepared foreshadowing a life just as dictated by tears and cooking as her birth. Apparently such a birth was a premonition for her future lack of marriage and happiness and the occupation which would almost govern her every waking moment. Lots of her childhood and even womanhood is dictated by tears to the extent that there appears no distinction between happy and sad tears they are just an unwavering presence in the pivotal moments of her life.

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Later, Tita must break the neck of a bird for later consumption and the metaphor is drawn between herself and the bird which she cripples rather than kills. She is much like the maimed bird; doomed to an excruciatingly slow and painful existence. 

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Throughout, an allegory describing the brevity of life's opportunities is utilised, particularly in finding what ignites the soul, it is implied there is an irreversible time limit which means if the flames of the soul aren't ignited in time - it is lost in irrevocably extinguished flames. Unfortunately for Tita, Mama Elena is the frigid fire retardant blanket to her soul fire. Profoundly, John, an unexpected (and I think perfect suitor) negates Tita's insistence that her matches are unignitable and slowly rekindles her will to live. 

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ABSURDITY/DISPROPORTION:

There are paralleled moments where the author farcically exaggerates of the volume of tears produced by characters. Which is then further hyperbolised and fantasised in that this torrent is then literally incorporated into the recipe; the tears, once evaporated conveniently leaves an abundance of salt to be used as an ingredient in other recipes - her emotional experiences fuels and pays forward to the next recipe which sparks another emotional response - cyclical structure, perpetual motion 

HERITABLE KNOWLEDGE:

Tita's knowledge (as a result of her guardian + mentor Nacha) became instinctual + inherent.

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PUNISHMENT:

Tita's mother can easily be described as a special kind of hypocrite; having engaged in her own illicit affair and been victim to the malady that is star-crossed love she is especially vindictive in purposefully recreating her own hellish life in her daughter's. By making Tita her sole carer till death with no chance of matrimony or liberation, Tita not only has to watch her lover marry her sister at her mother's bequeathal but to further aggregate her pain she makes her responsible for all the preparations for her sisters wedding. Despite experiencing the same pain of forbidden and lost love she malevolently castrates every aspect of Tita's life. 

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COOKING/FOOD:

For Tita, the 'joy of living and eating are synonymous' which shows that, having been taught and nurtured by a woman whose literal only knowledge encompassed food, the same ideals became entrenched in her behavioural traits through the potency of nurture. In her mind, food can bring serenity to the most tumultuous of souls. 

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Cooking is imbued within almost every excerpts of figurative language - even the most human and primitively/intrinsically carnal moments are compared to cooking scenarios liking being dropped in. boiling oil like she feels both analogously and cooking is a 6th sense. 

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Cooking is the only source of autonomy for Tita, as a result of the cruel machinations of her mother, so when asked to bake the cake for her sister's wedding, the pinnacle and focal point of the wedding preparations she pauses from cracking the last egg. A small act of anarchy, by impeding the completion of he recipe she is renouncing her involvement in her self-destruction and reclaiming autarchy. At least in this one process (cooking, over which she is the presider) she is displaying her grief, an inimitable act of defiance in the macrocosmic world outside the narrow view of baking. 

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When describing sensations, the terminology used is distinctly culinary (continuing the tone of the recipe book) particularly in instances of anger, indignation, vehemence, volatility bubbling, boiling water is an iterated metaphor. 

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FAMILIAL HIERARCHY:

Within the familial structure is a clear and overwhelming assignation of maternal authority - unassuageable and insuperable. Even in following Nacha's story the perpetual and long-standing nature of such traditional roles is clear; Nacha anticipated a wedding and a life just the same as Tita after her and yet is analogously denied a happy fate by the whim of her mother. This also establishes an empathy between the characters and explains their kindredness. 

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Nacha, a personal favourite for Tita, mainly for the compassion and tenderness she displayed her unconditionally as a child, expounds an explicit hierarchy in how she allocates favouritism; she rates the children based on their appetite, cooking proficiency and eating habits. 

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Ironically, despite seeing tita's miserable existence, Rosaura sees the interminable tradition of condemning your unmarried daughter to look after you until death, as a comfort even thoughher duaghter would have to undergo the same indentured/obligatry servitude many daughters had before her. 

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​INSTANCES OF MAGICAL REALISM:​

When making her sister's wedding cake, her tears are literally incorporated into the batter of her sister, invisibly tainting it with her grief.​ However, as if manifesting the toxicity and disquietude of Tita's inner state the cake is imbued with the symbol of her grief; her tears, and this appears to directly lead to a vomit fest which Tita miraculously missed. However, this is just the first in a chain of events all exacerbating the misfortune of Rosaura which ultimately seems karmic justice.

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Fuelled by an intrinsic need to provide food to the hungry is remarkably and miraculously able to lactate to feed her nephew. Even at his baptism, Tita's contentedness with her nephew is again incorporated in to her cooking - iliciting euphoria in all diners. 

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In Tita's absence, others are prevented from cooking successfully, miraculous weight loss, scraps causing a frenetic chikcen melee, perpetually raw food. Mama Elena manifests a bitter taste in her food paranoid that Tita is poisoning her which is then ironically concluded with her death as a result of the precautionary medicine she took to mask the 'poisonous' tase of Tita's cooking. 

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GOSSIP:

Like in Garcia Lorca's ''La casa de Bernarda Alba' - gossip is a prominent pastime for these rural villagers - even the suffering of people in that era of Spanish communities seems paramount. Infamy or celebration are interchangeably celebrated and lauded; the people enjoy the scandal especially at the expense of Another. It is not necessarily vindictive but the existence of gossip is so entrenched in society's ecosystem and its survival. Lexical parallelism draws more connections between the two books in the foregrounding of the phrase 'el que diran' demonstrating an almost ubiquitous obsession with one's reputation in society. 

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MATRIARCH: 

Like many spanish households before it, the roost it ruled by a strong matriarchal figure who is an extremely transposable trope figure across Spanish literature it seems with parallels easily laced between Mama Elena and Bernarda Alba. certainly this is directly comparable with Mama Elena's coarseness + heartlessness and not even shedding a tear when her grandson dies much like Bernarda Alba's frigidity and emotionlessness when her husband died.  ​​

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Tita adequately describes her with a lexical field of Spanish words beginning with the prefix 'des' which implies removal or dismantling. She utilises a torrent of words to emphasise how her mother is the epitome/harbinger of loss and decay using a clever list of associative words. 

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FEMALE REPRESSION:

Tita, sexually and physically inhibited by her mother and the societal rules she imposes must live vicariously through her sisters and being witness to their emancipation. Rosaura is liberated through marriage (one of the unique forms to escape familial astringency/asceticism and Gertrudis is granted corporeal emancipation through her sexual exploits. 

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SOCIETY: 

The novel gives an interesting insight into the idiosyncrasies of Spanish society; in social situations it is apparently deemed customary and widely accepted that religion and politics are taboo topics. ​

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LA REVOLUCIÓN MEXICANA:

el rancho representa México, Mamá Elena la dictadura, y Tita y Gertrudis la revolución.

​Spanning roughly 10 years from 1910, it was a national revolt, due to political crises involving presidential elections with several phases largely propelled by changes in leadership or figureheads. The revolution started largely in rejection of the Diaz regime led by his opposer Madero. An estimated 1.5 million people died.