Analysis Of Like Water For Chocolate By Esquivel

In Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, she argues that kindness is more powerful than cruelty. Unlike kindness and compassion, people will never be fully loyal to those act cruel. The strongest form of loyalty is obedience founded by trust and powered by love, which cannot be replaced with intimidation and fear. When kindness is displayed to a given individual, it is capable of creating a strong core of purpose within oneself, forming loyalty through the desire to be near the one who gives them that affection. In contrast, brutality does the opposite, in hope to break that core enough for the person to resort to dependency Overall, cruelty pushes those under its control to break down, whereas kindness allows for people to strive.

Esquivel

After being banned from seeing her niece, Esperanza, Tita begins to contemplate her options in regards to her future. “John, in contrast, was offering her something different, the opportunity to establish a new family that no one could take away from her. He was a marvelous man; she loved him very much. As time went by, it wouldn’t be hard to fall deeply in love with him” (Esquivel 217). Esquivel uses the word “family”, defining the word as something one is able to create. In this, she argues that those that are truly close to an individual are not those who are handed over at birth, but rather those who present that person with affection and compassion, like John. Furthermore, Esquivel illustrates this family as something that once established could not be taken apart. Through her writing, she explains that something founded with roots of love and kindness cannot be destroyed even by the most cruel

I had learned this by coming to understand that kindness isn’t only kind gestures, but instead a string of acts that conclusively lead to both parties seeing their own self value. It had been during my last years in middle school, a manipulative overlord of a person, someone I had been friends with for years, controlled me. Much like Mama Elena, this person whom I have given the title, “X”, was someone who needed to feel as if she had a tremendous amount of control over others. This person would tell me how worthless we, my friend, Dylan, and I, were. "X" would often blackmail us because of social mistakes like talking out of turn or forgetting to give her things like gifts or homework. Eventually, she successfully distorted our perspectives to make me believe that we had to use every last drop of energy we had in us to please her, to be someone she saw as desirable. What was left was a shell, a sense of hollowness because all of my being had gone to her, I was her possession. Consequently, this emptiness began to feel normal. Word by word, day by day, she had chipped away every last part of my