Like Water For Chocolate Character Analysis Essay

In Laura Esquirel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, the character Tita’s acceptance and conformance to the to the strict traditions that define her conflicts directly with her desires to find love and individuality. In society, tradition prevents fulfillment and progress. It limits choices by creating social and behavioral bounds. During the Mexican Revolution strict traditions were common. Specifically traditions of recipes and marriages are evident within the De La Garza family. First unaware of these bounds, Tita later learns that she must abandon everything she has ever known in order to gain her autonomy. Born into such an authoritarian and traditional world, Tita’s emotional feelings and desires are suppressed and she struggles to find reconciliation between her life as nurturer and her desire for freedom and defiance.

She discovers a new way of existing in the world not constrained by the borders Mama Elena inflicts. Before she was under the care of Dr. Brown, Mama Elena forced Tita to perform a routine, much like a maid, that she completed “day after day, year after year” (109). Because this role no longer confines her, later in the novel, Tita alters the relationship with her mother by banishing the ghost of Mama Elena with just her words and states that she has “a perfect right to live… as she pleases” (199). In these actions, Tita discovers the traditional values her mother enforced no longer restrict her. Although her actions were once “strictly determined” () by Mama Elena, Tita could now take the time to “stare at her hands” (108) and decide for herself. Tita’s opportunity to think and care for herself without the limits of Mama Elena leads to the start of her development to find