In Mexico, water was used instead of milk to prepare hot chocolate. The water is first heated to a boil, hot enough to easily melt the chocolate it is immersed in. Similarly, in the film Like Water for Chocolate, characters get hot and engage in bubbling actions that build up due to moments of excitement or passion. The story, however, centers on Tita De la Garza, the youngest daughter of a Mexican family whose knowledge and understanding of life were limited by her life in the kitchen of the family ranch. Since she was practically born and raised in the kitchen, her mother figure and culinary mentor Nacha taught her to become a very skilled and talented cook. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay However, apart from cooking, he had almost no freedom. Under pressure from her fearsome mother Elena, Tita was forbidden to marry and forced to always stay by and care for her mother. In the eyes of mother Elena this was the duty of the youngest daughter, while the other daughters had to get married and continue the family line. Because Tita couldn't speak her mind because her mother wouldn't let her, food became her emotional outlet, which led to people who consume her food having a sensual experience galvanized by such emotions. Two senses that had such an impact were Tita's pain and love. Throughout the film, family and freedom were two guiding themes expressed deeply but also against each other. Tita's expectations as the youngest child almost always limited her freedom to act and speak for herself. Family is obviously bonded by marriage, blood, or adoption, but is usually bonded by love expressed for one another. As for the De la Garza family, the “family” was Tita's primary source of pain and suffering. Tita wasn't allowed to get married or have a relationship driven by philia, but that didn't stop her from falling in love with Pedro Muzquiz. Pedro first loved Tita very much, but mother Elena forbade them to marry and instead made Pedro marry her eldest daughter Rosaura. Although he had agreed to marry Rosaura just to be close to Tita, Tita still felt great pain from such heartbreak. This emotion took over while preparing the Chabela wedding cake for Pedro and Rosaura's wedding banquet. Tita and Nacha shared the burden of cooking for the banquet which required huge quantities of food. Although Tita was already distressed by her situation, mother Elena ignored her feelings and sternly ordered Tita to get over the situation and focus on cooking. Instead of showing love or care as is expected from typical families, her mother and older sister, who knew of Tita's love for Pedro but still agreed to take Pedro as her husband, brought emotional pain to Tita. When mother Elena leaves to sleep, leaving Tita and Nacha alone in the kitchen, Nacha urges Tita to vent her emotions before the wedding. In the absence of her family, Tita gains the freedom to express herself, if only for a short while. At the end she cries profusely, as her tears fall into the cake batter. The tears not only made the cake batter a little soggy, but also caused incessant vomiting and a terrible sense of loss among wedding guests who ate a slice. Through cooking, which is the only freedom she really has to express herself, Tita, for a moment, clandestinely broke away from the chains of family duties to let out the pain she felt in her heart. This freedom, or rather the desire tofreedom, challenged Tita to express her sense of love in atypical ways while fighting the boundaries placed around her. After the death of Mama Elena's husband, Juan De La Garza, Tita's fate was sealed and controlled by Mama Elena. However, cooking has always been his remedy. She had to cook for others many times, but generally had the freedom to cook whatever she wanted. Mama Elena, however, felt an opportunity to reduce Tita's freedom in the kitchen when Rosaura decided to cook for a meal, ultimately competing against Tita in front of Pedro. Although Rosaura's dishes made everyone's stomach ache, Tita's freedom in the kitchen could not be taken away from her. In Jon Holtzman's Remembering Bad Cooks: Sensuality, Memory, Personhood, he particularly highlights "the neglected area of ​​bad cooking and the kinds of messages a supposedly bad-tasting dish should convey about the person who cooked it." Rosaura's dishes were undoubtedly worse than those Tita usually cooks. This, however, presents Rosaura in a different and negative light: Rosaura is not a cook the family can rely on nor would she be able to provide hearty, delicious meals for the family Rosaura and Pedro will soon build. On the contrary, this casts a much more positive light for Tita: everyone, including mother Elena, agrees that Tita is the talented cook of the family, and Pedro realizes this even more and therefore falls in love with Tita even more. Jon Holtzman's main concern is to raise “questions about how the sensuality of food serves to structure social relationships and identities, particularly as they pertain to gender… How does the sensuality of food shape how do we understand and remember those people who prepare the food, the cooks?”. Based on the meal prepared by Rosaura, the sensuality of the food greatly shapes the status of the cook. Rosaura because she cooked very badly lost the respect of those who ate because she was a woman who had no cooking skills. Because Tita clearly cooks much better and much tastier dishes, she is respected and appointed as the official chef, even by those who don't want to admit it. For this family, a woman who knows how to cook can provide for the family, and if she can't, she fails in her duties. As full responsibility for the kitchen reverts to Tita, she is still able to retain a small portion of freedom. Every other part of Tita's life was under Mama Elena's dominion, and even when Tita received roses from Pedro, Mama Elena immediately told her to get rid of them, giving Tita no time in the day to appreciate this sweet gesture. Mama Elena does not see Tita as a whole person, but rather as a daughter whose purpose in life is to take care of her. In The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness Among Malays in Pulau Langkawi, Janet Carsten studies “how, for the Malays of the island of Langkawi, they nourish themselves (in the sense of receiving and giving) nourishment) it is a vital component in the long process of becoming a person and participating fully in social relationships” (Carsten, page 223). Interestingly, Tita uses cooking to actually be a person who can somewhat, if not fully, take part in social relationships. Mama Elena has no control over the sensual possibilities that meals can bring. So, instead of getting rid of the flowers altogether and wanting to respond discreetly to Pedro's affection, Tita used the rose petals and quails to create a dish of sexual appetite. “Food creates both people in the physical sense and the substance – blood – with which they relate to each other. Personality, relationship and feeling are intimately connected." With every bite he took, Pedro had the sensation-104438642