Like water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel: short SUMMARY

Like water for Chocolate is a novel that was awarded as one of the best Spanish novels of the 20th century and was written in 1989 by Laura Esquivel. The play is about a woman named Tita who explains her day-to-day love stories and her family relationships that she lives in her house.

Everything is set through the importance of the cuisine and gastronomic recipes of Mexico, so important for this leading character. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to explain summary of Like water for Chocolate.

Like water for Chocolate is a play set in Mexico which introduces us to a girl named Tita as the protagonist of this story. Tita's life has always been very kitchen related her starting from the beginning of her life in which her mother gave birth in a kitchen. Her father died within a few months of life and that marked the course of her history forever.

When Tita is 15 years old she goes to a family reunion where she meets Pedro Muzquiz, her great love from her adolescence. After a few months of their relationship, the boy proposes that they marry her and she accepts on the condition that she first has to ask her mother's permission. The novel's first surprise comes when

Tita's mother does not accept and she tells him that she, being her youngest daughter, she must let her sisters marry her and she has to take care of her mother until she dies, without being able to have any relationship with a man.

The mother then decides to marry one of Tita's older sisters, named Rosaura with this young boy Pedro. Curiously, he accepts and Tita, full of pain, tries to ask him for an explanation. The boy tells her that he, in reality, is still in love with her, but that he marriage with his sister it's the only way they can spend more time together.

On the day of the wedding between Rosaura and Pedro, Tita is in charge of bring the wedding cakeher, but before putting it on stage she cries thinking about what is about to happen and she sheds some tears on the cake. When the diners taste the cake, a feeling of complete sadness invades them, to the point that Tita's sister called Nacha dies of nostalgia. Her mother blames Tita for bringing ruin to her family on such a special day.

After a while Rosaura and Pedro have a son Tita takes care of it, since they don't have a babysitter. After a while, the baby dies unfortunately, however, that does not prevent Tita and Pedro keep seeing each other secretly and continue to fan this flame of love so real that there is between them.

When 22 years have passed, Tita has achieved marry another man her although she is still in love with Pedro. Finally, the two lovers decide to leave everything to be together again with the misfortune that this one dies suddenly for a heart attack.

Immediately, Tita, carried away by grief, fills the whole house with her candles and commit suicide taking a lot of pills. When she passes out from the pills, the candles set the house on fire, burning everything except for a book called Like water for Chocolate.

The work mixes throughout its course Mexican cuisine recipes and deals with topics closely related to the kitchen on numerous occasions. Despite being a very dramatic work, love is also very present, contributing to each page that ray of happiness which, with the end of the book, is consumed forever.

The book of Like water for Chocolate has a very marked structure that helps the reader to understand the passage of time in a very organized way. It is structured in 12 chapters, one for each month of the year that begins with a mexican recipe of the typical food in that season of the year.

At the beginning of the chapter you will only see the recipe ingredients and to know the elaboration you should continue reading, since it is found in fragments fused with the story of Tita. It is through Tita's recipes where you can see the love she has for cooking.

The gastronomy is the tool that the protagonist has to express her emotions, just as an artist captures her feelings in a painting. Her dishes show the essence of Tita and everything that she does not dare to say out loud, but she is silent and she suffers from silence.

That is why her pain is transmitted through her tears on the wedding cake and when diners taste it, they are able to empathize with the same feelings as her. The story not only sets us in the house of Tita and her family, but also takes us to a reality of twentieth century Mexico.

Now you know the summary of Like water for Chocolate. If you are interested in continuing to learn about this topic or one related to it, do not hesitate to consult the reading section.