Like Water For Chocolate: A novel by Laura Esquivel

Despite this novel being written by a woman for the audience of a woman, I enjoyed it quite a bit.  The unique style in which Esquivel makes her point that food is the equivalent of love, and can also reflect other emotions we may feel when making this food.  The incorporation of recipes throughout the novel was the main thing I found so unique about this novel.  Personally, I love to cook and always have.  Being the oldest of two, my mother, a fantastic cook, has always used me as a helping hand in the kitchen.  I think that this ia large part of the reason that I enjoyed this novel so much.  Now, put this book in my brother's hands who may be compared to Gertrudis in the kitchen, and I doubt he would enjoy it as much as myself. The reason that I say that someone who may not be as in tune with their culinary skills as many wish to be would not enjoy this book as much as someone who is highly skilled in the culinary arts is simple.  People who cook understand that love is as big and as necessary an ingredient as any other you may use in a particular recipe.  Through Esquivel's various forms of magical realism her point is relayed to the reader in a sometimes humorous manner than I found to be highly entertaining.  One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Tita has been sent to the insane asylum by Mama Elena and she is grabbing her quilt that she knits every night due to her insomnia.  When she goes to grab the quilt it is so unbelievably large that it simply cannot fit inside of the carriage that is taking the Doctor and Tita to the Doctor's house.  The quilt, in an unrealistic fashion, drags behind the carriage for all to see Tita's many many colors.  I think that Tita's quilt of never ending colors serves as a metaphor for her life in some ways.  Because of the unpredictability of available yarn Tita encountered while making this quilt, Tita's quilt is a random mess of colors (at least that is the sense I got from reading about it), which when made into one gigantic quilt looks unique and amazing.  This ceaseless quilt also represents the length of someones life.  Every night when Tita should have been sleeping, she knitted her quilt in an obsessive manner.  She knitted so much that when she died, the quilt covered 3 hectares if my memory serves correct and was sent into a ball of flames.  Tita never knew what color she would work with next in her quilt, much as she never knew what insane obstacle would help to shape the person she became before she died.  But in the end, no matter what color Tita knitted into her beautiful gigantic quilt, or whatever soul grinding task Mama Elena put Tita through, what became of everything was beautiful and interesting.  The quilt, or the life of this lovely woman.  Both are beautiful no matter how they are shaped.  It is just important that they are shaped in some way.  Character's in life such as Rosaura are boring and self-centered.  Rosaura was so boring and obnoxious because she was not shaped at all.  She was more like a lifeless blob of a character, which seemed to be Esquivel's intention.  I think it is important that Esquivel hints that boring people are the people that follow rules(Rosaura).  Instead, be more like Gertrudis and make your own rules.  Although being a little shallow for her lack of cooking expertise, she is an interesting and unrepressed woman for the unique path she paved in her life.  Because she forged her own way, I see Gertrudis as a fascinating character although not a lot of the story revolves around her.  Not only did she ride away from her families ranch while making love on the back of a horse, she came back a refined woman and a general in the revolutionary army.  Although she worked in a brothel for an entire year after leaving the ranch, she turned out fine.  This is another important point that Esquivel brings up.  Here, I think she is telling us that if we enjoy ourselves and do what some others may perceive as crude, this can actually work out well for us in shaping who we become.  I can certainly relate to this in the very recent past.  I recently had a baby that was out of wedlock, which a lot of people in this country and many other countries around the world would consider an appalling thing.  But, since having Aslynne (my daughter) in my life, my life has done a one hundred and eighty degree turn.I seem to have found a new purpose to my everyday existence.  Although many people around the world, and even in our country would condemn me for having a child out of wedlock, I can honestly say that after only 16 weeks of being a parent it has started to shape me into the man that I hope to be for the rest of my life.  One that would do anything in his power to help his daughter.  In conclusion, not only did I enjoy this fascinating novel immensely, I also found the underlying themes that Esquivel brings to our attention to hold very true in my eyes.  The symbolism that Laura Esquivel uses with her intriguing style of writing makes her points a lot more apparent than she could have given another means of communication.  Esquivel uses magical realism to her advantage for the comprehension of the meaning of her novel.