Lit. Analysis #2

1) Like Water for Choclate by Laura Esquival is about a family made up of three daughters and a widowed mother. The youngest daughter is Tita, the middle child is Gertrudis and the eldest child is Rosaura. Mama Elena has to watch over the home and ranch therefore she assigned Nacha, the cook, to raise Tita. Tita grew up in the kitchen and fell in love with a man named Pedro. Mama Elena said she was not allowed to marry or experience love becasue what she had to do for the rest of her life was take care of her until the day she died. Pedro comes one evenning after dinner to ask Elena for Tita's hand in marriage and Elena says he can't have her but that he can marry her older daughter Rosaura and he does in order to stay as close as possible to his true love, Tita. Tita suffers thtough the whole marriage but can't show it or else her mother will punish her. Rosaura and Pedro have a child named Robert whom Tita feeds. Pedro and Rosaura leave to live in Texas as part of Mama Elena's plan to keep Pedro and Tita seperate from each and the baby, Robert dies because he was no longer getting fed from Tita's breast. Tita rebels on her mother because too much has gone wrong in her life thanks to her. Nacha, Tita's second mother has died as well and now Robert. Mama Elena tells Jophn Brown, the village's doctor to take Tita to a home for the crazies but instead he takes her to his home becasue he has fallen in love with her. Rosaura dies but her and Pedro had a new daughter named Esperanza whom marries Alex, the doctor's son. Pedro and Tita are left to finally fall in deep love and while making love Pedro dies and Tita "kills" herself to follow him into the afterlife and she succeeds. Mama Elena has died as well and now all that are left are Esperanza and Alex, Gertrudis, and John Brown to live their lives. All Tita wanted was to be happy with Pedro and have no one to stop them from being together.
2) The theme of the novel is Love vs. Authority. Tita is not allowed to do what she wants because Mama Elena one way or the other always stops her. Tita fights against her mother's authority several times throughout the novel but doesn't succeed and doesn't get to be with Pedro until her mother dies and her mother's ghost is completeley banished from their home.
3) The author's tone is romantic, sincere and reflective.
Romantic: "Pedro placed Tita on the bed and slowly removed her clothing, piece by piece. After caressing each other, gazing at each other with infinite passion, they released the infinite passion..."
Sincere: " Tita's voive stopped him. That melodious voice had not spoken a word for six months. 'John! Please don't leave!'"
Reflective: "From what he'd said said, Tita realized that the woman she'd sat with so often was John's dead grandmother."
4) Five literary elements/techniques I observed that strengthened my understanding of the theme and my sense of the tone are:
-Imagery: "Tita looked up, her eyes vacant, and stared at Chencha as if she had never seen her before."
"Under her blouse, her breasts moved freely, since she never wore a brassiere. Drops of sweat formed on her neck and ran down into the crease between her firm round breasts."
-Similes: "She heard, as she passed, the whispers in the church, and she felt each comment likr a stab in her back."
“She could pick up the watermelon and give it a single blow against a stone, in a particular stop, and like magic the watermelon rind would open like the petals of a flower leaving the heart intact on the table”
 “It went through the window and shot out onto the patio, like a firecracker out of control”
-Metaphors:  “Seeds didn’t have that kind of problem, they didn’t have a mother to be afraid of or a fear of those who would judge them.”
“It was definitely true, Pedro had turned into a monster of selfishness and suspicion.”
“Tita liked to take a deep breath and let the characteristic smoke and smell transport her through the recesses of her memory”
-Personification: “She felt she had the best chance of “educating the innocent child’s stomach,” even thought she had never married or had children.”
“But once, Tita managed to convince them to join her in watchin the dazzling display mad by dancing water drops dribbled on a red hot griddle”
“Now she admired the way they opened their skin and allowed the water to penetrate them fully, until they were split asunder to make way for new life. She imagined the pride they felt as the tip f the first root emerged from inside of them, the humility with which they accepted the loss of their previous form, and the bravery with which they showed the world their new leaves.”
-Hyperbole:  “Yes, a thousand times. From that night on she would love him forever”
“Her heart burst into a seething passion”
“The house became a battlefield. Slammed doors were the order of the day.”