Like Water For Chocolate Symbols

This sample essay on Like Water For Chocolate Symbols provides important aspects of the issue and arguments for and against as well as the needed facts. Read on this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, is set in early 20th century Mexico, while The House of Bernarda Alba, by Federico Garcia Lorca, is set in 1930s Spain. Both works delineate the roles of women, as well as the barriers created because of their social and familial situations, which define their experiences.

Mama Elena and Bernarda Alba are the symbolic matriarchs, and Rosaura and Angustias symbolize the zealous followers of the conservative family traditions, and Maria Josefa and Morning Light are the knowing elderly.

However, in spite of their differences, all of the women experience some form of alienation: psychological, physical, or alienation from the wider community. In the works, figurative barriers created by keys, doors and locks underscore the important element of alienation, which is produced partially by the women’s actual or intended perpetuation of conservative family traditions.

Consequently, in both texts alienation is self-perpetuating, and finds its source within the family as much as outside it. Maria Josefa in The House of Bernarda Alba and the Morning Light in Like Water for Chocolate are symbols of wisdom.

The attempted psychological alienation of Maria Josefa and Morning Light is amplified by the recurring motif of literal and figurative keys, locks, or walls although, ironically, none proves totally effective. In the opening scene of The House of Bernarda Alba, Poncia ensures that Maria Josefa is “locked up tight” with the “crossbar up too”, for “She’s got the fingers of a lock-picker” (Pg.

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158). Maria Josefa’s incarceration prefigures what will happen to the young women in Bernarda’s house. She also mirrors the genuine feelings of the daughters.

The House Of Bernarda Alba Movie

This is conveyed when Maria Josefa sardonically describes the daughters as “single women, longing for marriage, turning their hearts into dust” (Pg. 175). She proclaims the truth to the daughters that “not a one of you is going to marry-not a one” (Pg. 175), thus articulates the alienation from normal social relations that they will all suffer. The indirect allusion to doors and walls underscores the imprisonment, confinement and censorship in the house. Such barriers are however, somewhat permeable, as Maria Josefa is still able to communicate her thoughts both cryptically and offensively.

In a less tangible sense, the allusion to doors and walls emphasizes the emotional alienation between characters in the house, for their feelings or thoughts are not able to be voiced nor shared. Maria Josefa, with her “lock picker” fingers, does escape but not for long. Her attempts signify how repressed emotions challenge door and walls. Josefa’s failure relates to the climax, as well as portends the tragedy of Adela’s suicide in Act ?. In Act ? , Adela thinks Pepe, her only means of escape, is demolished.

As a result, she commits the ultimate act of self-alienation- suicide, for without Pepe she can no longer achieve her dreams and desires. Antagonists in Like Water for Chocolate also alienate Morning Light’s wisdom by figurative and literal barriers. Morning Light’s Indian blood prohibits her from enjoying equality in John’s Yankee family. As a result, she and her wisdom are confined in “this room at the back of the house” which “John’s grandfather has built” (pg. 100). The walls of “this room at the back of the house” (pg. 100) reinforce the idea of emotional alienation of Morning Light from the others.

These walls are an allusion to social barriers, for Morning Light is alienated because of stereotypical perceptions that Indians are subservient to Yankees. Ironically, the barriers fail to sequester the wisdom of Morning Light. She heals her father-in-law with her magic healing power. Her eccentric way of singing “strange melodies”, “applying curing herbs”, and her wreathing “in the smoke of copal and incense she burned” (pg. 102) finally receives appreciation; and the wisdom of a native Indian previously overlooked due to prejudice, is recognized for the first time.

It is also interesting that other momentous events in Like Water For Chocolate tend to take place in rooms and compartments separated from the main body of the house, e. g. the shower, the kitchen, the room where Tita and Pedro consummate their love and passion. Apart from walls, doors are another example of figurative barriers that evoke emotional alienation of characters in the houses, in addition to imposing physical alienation on the characters. In Like Water For Chocolate, a door causes the dark room to be disembodied from the main house.

The room, where Tita and Pedro consummate their love, is “dark”. This suggests their love is clandestine. It also suggests their love is likely to be suppressed by figurative barriers imposed by the wider community. As Pedro “slipped silently into the room behind her and shut the door” (pg. 144), he attains the private space required for Tita and his delight. The closing of the door completes the sense of enclosure, effectively alienating the passion of the protagonists from outsiders. In this instance, the alienation transforms into a positive and desirable one.

Yet, if the protagonists are caught they will become social outcasts and suffer a different kind of self-imposed alienation, and Pedro has not got the courage to risk it. In direct contrast, the effect of the doors as social and psychological barriers is suggested when Rosaura is confined in her room. She is alienated from the truth and passion of Tita and Pedro’s affair, for she does not have the potential to light her own “box of matches”. She experiences things from a distance; she sees the ghostly light from the other room, she is “in her bedroom”, “trying to put her daughter to sleep” (pg. 44). Sadly, the bedroom is a lonely place for her, and she is not particularly a good mother.

In House of Bernarda Alba, the doors and walls literally block people from witnessing Adela and Pepe’s illicit love affair. Ironically, these barriers do not prevent the antagonists from figuratively, perceiving the truth, just as doors cannot halt the passion from penetrating a house that is supposedly “decent”. The domination of Pepe over Adela is so profound that there is no actual resistance. Adela confirms Pepe’s control over her as she proclaims that “no one but Pepe commands me! (pg. 209). Unfortunately Bernarda’s persists on perpetuating the family tradition, so that Adela’s love for Pepe cannot continue. Adela’s suicide is the ultimate act of self-alienation. Lorca and Esquivel have figurative barriers like keys and locks to underscore the alienation of characters from the wider community. The stallion in the House of Bernarda Alba is an allusion to the innate desires of the daughters, which are particularly expressed by Adela. The animal yearns to be untethered, but is unfortunately locked up by Bernarda, the key holder.

Like the daughters, the stallion strives to escape the confined space that is in this case, the corral, in order to attain freedom. The stallion’s drive is conveyed as “he kicks against the wall of the house” (pg. 197). The sound is so pervasive and disturbing that Prudencia declares she “quivered” in her chest” (pg. 197). Angustias’ engagement ring is a figurative barrier as well as key to understanding some of the play’s emotions and meanings. Engagement rings are traditionally symbols of commitment, and represent the covenant of love.

The passion within Angustias waits to be unlocked, and the love of Pepe, symbolized by the ring, is the key to it. But traditionally a ring “signified tears”(pg. 198). This foreshadows Angustias’ misery and distance from the happiness of a marriage, imposed by this figurative barrier. Figurative keys and locks inform Like Water for Chocolate. Tita’s ardent emotions, like matches, are held within a figurative matchbox. Pedro’s making love to her acts as the key, which unlocks and releases her passion. The unlocking of emotions is so potent that “it creates a brightness that shines far beyond our normal vision. ” (pg. 19).

A “splendid tunnel” then appears that “shows us the way that we forgot when we were born and calls us to recover our lost divine origin. ” (pg. 220). The long-desired love between Tita and Pedro is finally consummated, as their ultimate act of self-alienation by death allows them to break off all barriers and constraints. Esquivel and Lorca have figurative barriers such as keys, doors and locks to highlight the psychological, physical alienation, as well as the alienation of the characters. Under conservative family traditions, desires and dreams of protagonists like Adela and Tita are difficult to attain.

The actual or intended perpetuation of traditions by matriarchs like Bernarda Alba and Mama Elena exacerbates the suppression. The protagonists, Adela and Tita choose death as the ultimate act of self-alienation. However, the consequences of their deaths are different. Since the situation for Adela has become too much to bear, she retreats to self-destruction. Her search for fulfillment is therefore an ugly failure. In contrast, with death, Tita and Pedro are able to defy all constraints and consummate their love. As a result, their search for fulfillment is a success- they do open locks and penetrate barriers.