English World Lit Essay - The effects of the absence of love in the lives of Tita and Mikage in the novels Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

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World Literature Essay

Essay Title-

The effects of the absence of love in the lives of Tita and Mikage in the novels Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

Love, a strong and positive emotion of regard and affection is an emotion that remains masked in the hearts of Tita and Mikage. This absence of love from their lives was like is a stab in the heart for the two characters, Tita from Like Water for Chocolate and Mikage from Kitchen, as it leads to a life which is hollow and leaves them to be deserted. The absence of love brings about a lot of changes in the way these characters look at life; they pursue exploring substitutes for love. Both these characters use food as a substitute for the absence of love in their lives, which is what links both these characters to the kitchen.

Tita is denied love the moment she enters this world, we can see this from the quote “Tita had no need for the usual slap…because she was already crying as she emerged; maybe it was because she knew… it would be her lot in life to be denied marriage” (Laura Esquivel, 1992, p. 6; subsequent citations refer to this edition and appear in the text). The quote definitely foreshadows Tita’s destiny, the writers lexical field is consisting of negative words such as “slap”, “crying”, “denied” to show us the importance of this event as it suggests that Tita was doomed from birth. This event is quite significant also due to the fact that it introduces us to the “kitchen” in which Tita was born and foreshadows her close relationship with the kitchen.

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Mikage never gets the chance to meet her parents which relates to Tita as they both have not had that love from parents which they would want. “My parents… both died when they were young. After that my grandparents brought me up. From then on it was just my grand-mother and me”(Banana Yoshimoto, 1993, p. 4; subsequent citations refer to this edition and appear in the text). This quote tells us that Mikage has felt the absence of love from her grandmother, who was the one person who Mikage could rely on to bring her up and support her ...

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