Literature Discussion Group: Just what is it about "water for chocolate?"

22 January 2015

Just what is it about "water for chocolate?"

Like a Simile

Eventually, in your reading of this month's book, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, you'll encounter the title in the text, and when you do, pay attention! This simile and the way it's used in the novel provide a clue to some of the major themes of the book (not to mention the tone).

And speaking of tone...

What do you make of all of this cooking instruction interspersed with the action of the story? What is the overall effect of all of the recipes, and why did Esquivel bother to include them?

Those are just a few of the questions we'll be discussing when we meet on February 5th. In the meantime, as you prep for the discussion, I invite you to contemplate the questions below.

Please come with a thoughtful, well considered answer to at least one of the following:

When and where is the novel set, and why does this setting seem important to the events of the novel?
What do you think of the tradition that prevents Tita from marrying? Does it make sense at all? Why or why not? Find an example from another culture of a practice that dictates a person's role or limits their possibilities in life and compare it to the De la Garza family tradition.
Which De la Garza sister is the strongest, and why?
Consider the men of the novel. Which of them are honorable, and which of them are not? Explain.
Sex and sensuality play a large role in the novel, but to what end? Do they add to the narrative, distract from it, or completely take it over? Is Esquivel trying to send a message? If so, what?

Reminder: Our starting time is shifting ever so slightly from 10:30 to 10:45am (which means our ending time is shifting by 15 minutes as well, to 12:15pm).

Until then, happy reading!

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Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.

Literature Discussion Group

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