Like Water For Chocolate Character Analysis Essay

After reuniting with a close friend, Tita cries so heavily that she floods her doctor’s house. This is an event from the novel Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel. This novel follows the life of Tita De La Garza, a girl living with her family on their ranch in Mexico. Throughout the book, hyperbolized actions often follow Tita, such as her tears that can flood a house. Because of this, her emotions throughout the book are fairly obvious. However, the causes of these emotions are not as obvious. Tita lived a life filled with traumatic events and unfair expectations. As the youngest daughter of her family, she could not marry and had to dedicate her life to caring for her mother. Mama Elena was a cruel woman, who for much of the novel,

As the the only person who seemed to care about Tita, Nacha’s death traumatized her; consequently, leading to Tita experiencing prolonged grief. Between her father’s death, her mother’s torment, and society's expectations, Tita’s childhood also left her traumatized. Tita’s trauma hampered her with emotional immaturity and an inability to deal with conflict. Perhaps her most serious issue, which both stems from and affects her other issues, is Tita’s depression. Throughout the book, she has mood swings, insomnia, and a lack of interest in her favorite things. All of these symptoms and more prove that Tita has depression. She is a psychologically complex character displaying hyperbolized indicators. Tita presents a great deal of indicators of depression, childhood trauma, and

She experiences symptoms such as sadness, a change in appetite, and, in a positive light, a new meaning in life. According to Healthdirect, a website run by the Australian government whose content has been approved by doctors, grief is defined as “the natural emotional response to the loss of someone close, such as a family member or friend”(1). Tita faces this emotional response multiple times over the course of the novel. The symptoms of Tita’s grief often overlap with the symptoms of depression, but these symptoms are specifically in response to loss. The article “Prolonged Grief Disorder” adresses this overlap. Written by doctors and experts on the subject of grief and published on Psychiatry Online, they recognize that “Major depressive disorder has several overlapping characteristics with prolonged grief disorder, including sadness, crying, social isolation and withdrawal”(1). Grief hit Tita the hardest after Nacha’s untimely death. “Her unfortunate death had left Tita in a very deep depression. With Nacha dead she was completely alone. It was as if her real mother had died”(Esquivel 48). She felt isolated after Nacha’s death, as she lost an important person in her life. Probably the worst effect of grief for Tita specifically, grief can “Change the way you eat (lose