Like Water for Chocolate

Introduction to the novel:

Family Traditions,
Magical Realism, and Structure
Camile Betances
Associate Teaching Spring 2007
Family Traditions
 Family traditions or Family tradition, also
called Family culture, is defined as
aggregate of attitudes, ideas and ideals, and
environment, which a person inherits from
his/her parents and ancestors.
 What large family tradition do we learn about
in Chapter one?
 How does it affect Tita and her family?
Magical Realism
 "My most important problem was destroying
the lines of demarcation that separates what
seems real from what seems fantastic."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 A chiefly literary style or genre originating in Latin

America that combines fantastic or dreamlike elements
with realism.
 A narrative technique that blurs the distinction between
fantasy and reality. It is characterized by an equal
acceptance of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Magic
realism fuses (1) lyrical and, at times, fantastic writing with
(2) an examination of the character of human existence
and (3) an implicit criticism of society, particularly the
elite.
 Magical Realism was made famous in the literary world
by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, and other
Latin authors.
 It is especially prevalent in Latin American Literature
 The term magical realism was coined around
1924 or 1925 by a German art critic named
Franz Roh what he called magical realism
was simply painting where real forms are
combined in a way that does not conform to
daily reality.
 In magical realism we find the transformation
of the common and the everyday into the
awesome and the unreal. It is predominantly
an art of surprises. Time exists in a kind of
timeless fluidity and the unreal happens as
part of reality.
 “Tita was literally washed into this world on a
great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the
table and flooded across the kitchen floor” (p.6).

 Significance: The quote describes an occurrence of

childbirth. The author has combined the reality of childbirth
with the fantasy of a baby being washed into the world on a
large body of water. The deeper meaning of the quote is
that Tita is born prematurely due to a sensitivity to onions
which foreshadows the pain she will endure in life. An
aesthetic image is created by contrasting the strong, sharp
smell and taste of an onion instead of stating that Mama
Elena will be cruel to Tita because she did not want her.
While Mama Elena in her treatment of Tita could easily be
compared to the step-mother in Cinderella, the author has
used magical realism to show the cruelness in a unique
way.
Structure
 Twelve “monthly installments with recipes,
romances, and Home remedies”.
 Each chapter is divided by month and begins
with ingredients and a recipe.
 Told from the POV of Tita’s great-niece.
THE END