How Does Laura Esquirel Use Magical Realism In Like Water For Chocolate

In the novel, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel, magical realism plays a critical role within the emotional, and physical responses in the book, and the audience. Magical realism helps set the tone throughout the book and allows the audience to empathize, and understand the characters in Like Water for Chocolate. The author uses repetition of dream-world, and fairy-tale like occurrences to distinguish between the reality and emotions of a character.

According to Bjorn J. Berger, “magical realism today is often connected to literature, especially Latin American works”( Berger, Bjørn J. Web.) which explains the connection, and involvement in Like Water for Chocolate. The setting of the novel takes place during the Mexican

According to Alberto Ríos, “It employs various techniques that endow all things with a deeper meaning and reveal mysteries that always threaten the secure tranquility of simple and ingenuous things.” In the novel, Gertrudis, Tita’s sister, was also affected by Tita’s cooking; Tita prepared Quail in Rose Petal Sauce from roses that Pedro, the man she loved deeply, gave her. She was forced to throw the flowers away by Mama Elena but found a way to use them in her meal instead. Pedro LOVED the meal, Mama Elena also liked the meal, but failed to compliment Tita to avoid any tension between her oldest daughter and Tita’s cooking soon became a way of communication between Pedro, and anyone else who ate her food. On page 52 the food Tita made was described as “the way that she entered Pedro’s body, hot, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous” – it was a new way to communicate with the man she loved, but it also caused her sister to spiral out of control, in which she ran off with a man from the military and worked in a brothel; “Tita was the transmitter, Pedro the receiver, and poor Gertrudis the medium, the conducting body through which the singular sexual message was passed.” (pg.