Magical Realism In The Film Like Water For Chocolate
Can you imagine inheriting the sensitivity to onions. Or can you imagine being so sensitive to onions that even in your mother's stomach the cook who was half deaf could hear your sobs. Laura Esquivel includes these events in Like Water for Chocolate, a novel written in the magical realism genre. This novel expressed Tita’s emotions through cooking, and Love. Magical realism portrays fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone. Magical realism blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, and it often leaves the reader questioning whether or not certain plot events could actually have occurred. Like Water for Chocolate is a story of love, family tradition, and betrayal which is peppered with magical events. Laura Esquivel skillfully weaves magical realism within the story to reveal the emotional obstacles Tita encounters.
There are many different examples in Like Water for Chocolate where Laura Esquivel uses the framework of magical realism. First one is the birth of Tita in the kitchen table, “Tita was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor”. The image of Tita entering into the world in a flood of tears anticipates the sadness and longing that will diffuse her life. After Tita's birth, the flood of tears dries to leave ten pounds of salt to be gathered and used for cooking.
The next incident where the author Laura Esquivel blends the magical element was when Gertrudis eats the quail in rose petal sauce. When Gertrudis goes to take a shower, she feels that, “her body was giving off so much heat that the wooden walls began to split and burst into flame”. The dramatic imagery of the pink sweat, powerful smell and evaporation of water represents the novel's magical realism. This example impacted the theme love because the roses that Tita puts into the quail were from Pedro which has her feelings into it along with the blood that has slipped into the quail. All these feelings towards Pedro were reflected in Gertrudis’s behavior.
Another example of a magical element is when Roberto was taken away from Tita. “the milk in her breasts had dried up overnight from the pain of her separation from her nephew”. When they took the baby away she was so sad because she loved Roberto like a son. This impacted the theme of love because she loved him so much that her breast milk dried overnight. When Roberto died it impacted her very much because she felt a part of her had died.
In conclusion Laura Esquivel used great and powerful examples to portray magical realism. Laura Esquivel used magical realism within the story to reveal the emotional obstacles Tita encountered. She used the power of Love, to show powerful emotions through food. Tita prepares most of the food in the novel, and she uses food to express her emotions because her tradition forbids her to be married. Her novel follows the tradition of magical realism in its purest form and creates a welcome entry into the Latin American world. In Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel extends the religious-mythical themes of magic realism to the everyday world of the domestic realm of a female-dominated household.
