In Laura Esquivels Like Water for Chocolate, and Ariel Dorfmans Death and the Maiden, both central women characters are aggrieved and both embark on a search for amendment. Though the emotions of inability to love and anger experienced by the charac
The Search for Atonement: Readers’ Response
Atonement is a stage of recovery every victim looks for. Whether the motive is retribution or placation, the desire for reparation of a wrong exists. In Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, and Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, both central women characters are aggrieved and both embark on a search for amendment. Though the emotions of inability to love and anger experienced by the characters in the two events are fairly similar, Esquivel’s choice of diction and character development serves to justify Tita’s search for atonement while Dorfman’s use of such literary techniques creates the antithesis effect for Paulina. As a result, readers support the actions of Esquivel’s character but do not take complete sympathy with that of Dorfman’s.
In both works, the author starts with a “crime” and then transitions into the theme of atonement. Tita, the youngest daughter of the De La Garza family, is denied marriage to Pedro by Mama Elena and is further hurt when Rosaura marries her true love. Paulina is kidnapped and raped by a vicious doctor whom she never saw. Both these “victims” experience analogous emotions. Tita feels a ‘permanent chill’ inside her and is unable to love: “Tita felt her body fill with a wintry chill…That overpowering chill lasted a long time and she could find no respite” (Esquivel 15). Similarly, Paulina cannot move on with her life and her capacity to love is repressed as well: “I want you making love to me without ghosts in bed…I want you in my Shubert that I can start listening to again” (Dorfman 56). The authors then make it evident that the only way these two characters will love again is if their “victimizers” atone for their actions. Tita wishes for Rosaura’s mouth to be “burned to a crisp” (Esquivel 150) and for her words to “have [been] swallowed” (Esquivel 150) and kept “deep in her bowels until they were putrid and worm-eaten” (Esquivel 150). In Paulina’s situation, she wants to have Roberto raped, to “have someone fuck him” (Dorfman 40) but then decides on wanting him to confess: “I want him to confess. I want him to sit in front of that cassette recorder and tell me what he did…That’s what I want” (Dorfman 40).
