Summer Reading Blog Posting 1

[Mrs. Teresa Ballas]

You will have until 11:59 p.m. on Friday, August 12, 2011, to post a 300-word minimum posting on Like Water for Chocolate. Students whose last names end with A - K should write about something from pages 5-117. Students whose last names end with L - Z should write about something from pages 123-246. In the text box, share the quotation that you found provocative, disturbing, intriguing, etc, and then write your 300-word minimum response. You may make connections with other texts, your own life experience, and/or history/current events today. You may also comment on the author's writing style and/or the literary devices used in a given passage and how those devices underscore the themes or big ideas in the novel. (This is the classic "What did the author do and how did she do it?" approach to deconstructing a passage that is the fundamental construction of all prompts for the AP Lit and Comp free response questions on the AP Lit and Comp exam.) Simply click on "reply" underneath the directions in the "Summer Reading Blog Posting 1" and change the subject line to read as your first and last name's Blog Posting 1. EG: Pam Fischer's Blog Posting 1.

[aftongoins]

"'Señorita Tita,________I would like to
take advantage of_____this opportunity to be
alone with you to tell you that I am deeply in love
with you. I know this declaration is presumptuous,
and that it's quite sudden, but it's so hard to
get near you that I decided to tell you
tonight. All I ask is that you
tell me whether I
can hope
to win
your
love.'"

At first glance, the poorly-read witness to this paragraph would probably close the
book and check to be sure they've not picked up Twilight instead. No, surely
not; the main character of that, ah, "novel" is called Bella, not Tita, and she's
certainly not Hispanic; not to mention there are no vampires to be found. But here
it is, the declaration of "love" from one inexperienced young person to the next,
with a handful of shared glances as the height of communication between them,
just as Edward and Bella had two weeks and a Bio class at school under their
belts before they deemed themselves "unconditionally and irrevocably in love".

So how on earth could the pair possibly be in love? Well, I could answer that
question but to say it outright would probably turn a lot of people off. It should be
mentioned that love is rarely so easy a thing to discover; there are millions and
millions of aspects to each person and if enough of them disagree in a pair there
is nary a hope for a lasting, true romantic relationship. This fact is what causes
divorces every day the world over. Thus, unless the tiny, fleeting looks Tita and
Pedro shared were loaded to an extent as of yet unknown to man, there is hardly
any chance that they actually indulged in any form of love; "lust" would be more
apt a term here, I think.

So here is the basis of our supposed romance: Tita is forbidden to marry, and as
such the prospect of loving someone would be ridiculously attractive to her; whereas
Pedro, as it has been mentioned in the book, has never seen a naked woman
before Gertrudis made her escape: his experiences with matters of the heart are
clearly few. Both are a hundred times more likely to be in love with the idea of
loving someone than actually to be in love with each other. This fact alone threw
me out of the book entirely; how is anyone to enjoy a romance based on foolish,
teenager-style animal attraction?

But then again, perhaps that was the whole point.

[kellybenz]

"The way Nacha told it, 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."

[/blockquote][/color]

This quote, placed in the very beginning of the book, really brings forth the idea that Tita was born experiencing emotions that she would be accustomed to feeling for the duration of her life: sadness and despair. Being forced to take care of your mother until she dies wouldn't exactly be something to look forward to in life. Ms. Esquivel takes the emotion of sadness and brings it to life by describing the sadness spreading throughout the kitchen, Tita's true happy place. This can be taken to mean that the sadness wholly affected Tita's life, not only in family matters, but also in other aspects, particularly concerning her affection for Pedro.

Furthermore, the quote above highlights the theme of uncontrollable destiny. Tita had no choice of what she wanted to do in life, unlike many of us today that have myriad options for our futures. Tita's life, her destiny, was to simply take care of her mother, and all other things were to become secondary to this task. Clearly, however, it was difficult to live without having a say in such a destiny, mostly because we are all very independent people and have different goals and ideals for ourselves. A similar situation to Tita's takes place in the caste system used in India. These castes are used to decide a person's place in life, including their job, level of income, and formerly, the people they could associate with. Today, castes in the urban areas of India are allowed to mingle, but in the past, castes would not be allowed to communicate with each other. The Indians see this as normal tradition, but think of how you would feel to be one of the few Indians that detest the idea of being given a destiny in life that you had no control over. This must be how Tita felt in her struggle to retaliate what was regulated in her culture.

Sadly, Tita's destiny was not something she could change herself. She just had the misfortune of being born the last daughter and being the one that had to fulfill the tradition. Tita couldn't say, "Oh, things will get better tomorrow, things will be fine," because this destiny was to last most of her life. It takes a strong person to be able to defy society's rules, and Tita surely had the strength and desire to do it.

[kimyannarudolph]

"I know who I am! A person who has a perfect right to live her life as she pleases. Once and for all, leave me alone; I wont put up with you! I hate you! I’ve always hated you!”
Tita had said the magic words that would make Mama Elena disappear forever...

This quote, coming from Tita, in my opinion, came to be the boldest in the entire book. In this quote, she stood up for herself for the first time. More importantly, she stood up to Mama Elena. I don’t think she would have stood up for herself if Mama Elena were still alive. But still, she took control of the situation and set Mama Elena straight once and for all.
Throughout the whole story, Mama Elena has treated her very rudely. First, she had been told that she was not allowed to marry because she was the youngest. Tradition says that the youngest has to take care of the mother until she dies. Next, Mama Elena insisted that Pedro, her true love, be married to Rosaura, her older sister. This really hurt Tita. Mamma Elena was an evil woman, and throughout this story, she tried to make Tita’s life a living hell. She felt great pleasure in tormenting Tita and her cooking. The only way Tita would feel some relief, was when her mother died.
Overall, the things that Tita said to her mother in this quote really showed how she had been feeling throughout the whole story. She had been holding in everything she had been feeling for so long, unless it came out through her cooking, that, one day, she just snapped. Tita is a lot stronger and braver than me. I wouldn’t have been able to take it like she did. Mama Elena disappearing forever brought a sigh of relief over Tita for the first time in her entire life.

[kirstenbrueggeman]

"My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help" Page 115

I found this passage really interesting because it was explaining something that was, in a sense, magical, through proven scientific facts. I also thought that the character of Dr. John Brown was very . For instance, he is believed to be a good man, but earlier in the novel, his inner monologue is about his desires for Tita. I think the author likes to give little hints in her writing about each character. With John Brown I get a “too good to be true” vibe and that is because when he first meets Tita with her sister, he could only think about his “attraction” to her. I feel like the author wants to keep her audience on edge because life isn’t fair. However just because bad things have happened before does not mean you should judge someone without getting to know them, and when I read this passage, and the whole interaction between John and Tita, I started to really like Dr. John Brown. I also began to think he was just what Tita needed to get on with her life. He was like her hero. He had saved her from her crazy, naked, covered-in-poop episode and took her away from her controlling mother. This makes him her hero. Yet is he? John Brown kind of reminds me of V, the mysterious freedom fighter in the graphic novel, V For Vendetta. Both men are viewed as heroes from one point of view and perceived as villains from another. And just like in V For Vendetta, Tita, the person who he saves, must decide which point of view to view him. So far Dr. John Brown has been a hero to Tita and she is beginning to trust him, but what of his true intentions? Is he really a good natured man who is helping a beautiful girl overcome her struggles with inspirational stories of science in magic, or is he a man with a plan? A plan to use this girl for his own goal, to bed her. Hopefully he is a good man, but you never know.

[ashleyking]

"And the saddest thing was that she knew what set off her explosions, but each time she had managed to light a match, it had persistently been blown out."




This particular quote is not a saying made by a character. Rather, it is a realization made by Tita about her life. This epiphany came to her while Dr. Brown was sharing with her the wisdom his grandmother shared with him. The way that Laura Esquirel explained Tita's life and why it is that she can not seem to find happiness was brilliant, yet still elementary.

Tita had to live a life that no one would be able to understand unless they experienced it themselves. Her every move was always determined by her mother, Mama Elena. Tita has made it through what would have caused most people to go insane. She is not allowed to marry or have children, her sister, knowingly, married the love of her life, her closest sister, Nacha, and her nephew, Roberto died, and she was sent off to an insane asylum by her mother. Every time she seems to find a little joy, her mother always seems to find a way to take it away from her.

I have grown to have respect for her. Tita has a level of patients that i do not have. Fortunately, i do not have the issue of having to give up my own life to serve my mother for the remaining years of her mother's life because I was the youngest daughter. If my sister were to die, I would not be able to handle it as well as well as Tita did. Mama Elena did not offer her any sympathy towards anything Tita might have been feeling. My mother is very concerned with my feelings, needs, and wants. She is nowhere near as strict as Mama Elena. If one of Mama Elena's daughters disobeyed her orders in the slightest of ways, she will give them extreme punishments. She will even disown her children if they did something bad enough by her standards. I have a deep reverence for Tita because she went back to take care of her mother even after she basically hoisted her off to an asylum for grieving the loss of her only nephew that she helped nurse only a few months before.

It is actually a shame that she has a better relationship, it seems, with another person's deceased grandmother than she did with her own mother.

[kourtneyyamafuji]

“Carefully studying the delicate form of the doll, she was thinking how easy it was to wish for things as a child. Then nothing seemed impossible. Growing up, one cannot wish or the things that are forbidden, sinful. Indecent.”


When you're a child, the one thing you look forward to is being able to finally get into that PG-13 movie alone, driving yourself anywhere you want to go, or just growing up. Nothing was out of reach for “adults.” They get to do all the fun stuff, right? Well, at least that’s how it appears to seem.

“When you grow up, your heart dies.” This was stated by a teenager from a famous film. It’s not to be taken literally, but really meaning that when you grow up, you have to do things that you don’t want to do; forbidden to do things not considered proper or traditional. Tita is not allowed to marry Pedro simply because she’s the baby of her family. Meaning her one purpose in life is to take care of her aging mother until death do they part. In the eyes of Mama Elena, marrying Pedro was forbidden, thinking about him was sinful after his marriage to Tita’s sister, and finally being with him in any sort of way was indecent. One shocking discovery in this novel is revealed over the discovery of Mama Elena’s very own secret lover, meaning she had the same problem that Tita faced. Yet, it doesn’t make Mama Elena anymore sympathetic for her youngest daughter. This fact is revealed to exaggerate the differences between mother and daughter.

Since Tita is not allowed important choices, she seems to grow up through her cooking, as the author tries to make it clear, since cooking can’t be considered forbidden, sinful, or indecent. Mama Elena couldn’t stop Tita’s emotions though her cooking. Ms. Esquivel purposefully added all of these recipes to coincide with Tita’s own life experiences at whatever month the chapter is on. I found the recipes and months to be a clever device to foreshadow to the reader what Tita’s emotions are and how much time has really passed. In the beginning of chapter twelve, the recipe explained, chiles in walnut sauce, is to be meant as the main meal for Tita’s impending marriage to John Brown. This seems to represent Tita giving into the fact that she couldn’t marry Pedro, hence becoming what society accepts

But of course Tita and Pedro do eventually end up together, which, to me, represents Tita finally growing up and making her own choices based on herself and herself alone because I believe a big part of growing up is not doing what others tell you is right, but deciding for yourself.

[manderson53]

“If I couldn’t marry, was I at least allowed to experience love? Or not even that?”

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Cinderella story but if not it is about an Evil Step Mother who is forced to take on the care of her Step Daughter after her father dies, her name, Cinderella. This quote, which is located at the beginning of this Romantic novel, explains what I think to be, “The Twisted Cinderella Story.”
Tita, who resembles Cinderella, is forced to cook, clean and take care of her mother, Mama Elena who resembles the Evil Step Mother for the rest of her life. This means she can’t marry or leave home. But as we all know Cinderella does find love in one way or another and is rid of her Step Mother. Pedro, who resembles the Prince, loves Tita and wants to marry her. Although according to the evil mothers traditions love is not allowed for the youngest child. Now for a true Cinderella story there has to be some competition for the guy. Now we bring in Rosaura, who resembles the Evil step Sister, but really she is just Tita’s sister. Giving the fact that Tita can never marry Mama Elena offers her middle child to Pedro the Prince. And they get married and have a child. But the love between Tita and Pedro is still there no matter how hard they try and hide it, and this starts secret love affairs. After years of fighting, yelling, torture and the madness between Tita and her mother Tita finally snaps and her mother calls to have her taken away to an asylum for Mama Elena cannot bare the shame her daughter is bringing down on her family. But loan behold the Fairy God Mother shows up just in the nick of time! In our case a Fairy God Father, Dr. Brown. From previous visits he knows that Tita isn’t as crazy as her mother makes her out to be. So instead of taking her to a hospital he takes her to his house where he cares and loves her. The Fairy God Father, Dr. Brown, truly rescued her from what could have been a worse situation.
In every Cinderella story you read the good guys win and the bad guys lose. I think in this case it is both. Eventually Mama Elena the Evil Mother dies which was a small relief for Tita. But even in her grave Mama Elena can’t be satisfied. No, she comes back as a ghost to haunt and watch over Tita to make sure she isn’t ruining Pedro and Rosaura’s life. But eventually Mama Elena does die off all together, but results in the death of her Prince, Pedro. The good thing is that Tita got away from her evil mother.
“If I couldn’t marry, was I at least allowed to experience love? Or not even that?” Even if this book didn’t turn out the way it did Tita still learned the hardships of love. I believe that Tita should have the right to experience love. I think that it is safe to say that everyone out there has a special someone that they are supposed to be with, whether young or old. You just have to fight for what you believe in and get your true love just the way Tita did. She really proved that love is forever, even in the darkest and hardest of times.

[jaredrobinson]

"THEY were so filled with pleasure that they didn't notice that in the corner of the room Nacha lit the last candle, raised her finger to her lips as if asking for silence, and faded away."

Fantasy Realism. The style in which this romance, seeming almost as a myth, is told. In the novel Esquivel weaves a love story with many threads, some that feel real and solid ( a girl who is not allowed to wed, a man carrying a love he may not pursue) but also some that are--without a doubt--of a fantastical nature (emotions channeled through food, the flock of mad chickens or a ghost.) It is the latter which takes this novel to a level beyond that of your ordinary book, and move it into a realm more artistic and abstract.

In the novel, Esquivel uses a construct similar to that of a musical in that when an emotion becomes to strong there is an other worldly event, or in the case of a musical: a song. The way Esquivel will lead us to the cusp of very strong emotion--the place where the speaker simply cannot resist any longer--and then BAM! We experience events that we know to be fantastical but that exist as albeit strange but true events in of the novel, is what puts this story into the genre of fantasy realism.

The event i have chosen to highlight comes at the end of the novel when Tita and Pedro are finally allowed their love. A love, mind you, that has been sought after, mourned, fought for and now finally after twenty years, realized. The events that follow this passage are, of course, what makes up the climax and resolution of the love affair between Tita and Pedro. However, I believe that this particular moment is of grave importance both syntactically (as it is its own paragraph) but also to to the resolution of the novel. The idea of a candle within ones own heart that is ignited and kept alive with love and put out with the dying of that love.

At this point in the novel Tita's love has has been put out, rekindled and very recently questioned but now that she is with Pedro her candle has a definite flame the runs the risk of consuming her (and later does just that.) In this scene the candles represent the love that has been burning between Tita and Pedro for years and their being lit by Nacha gives us a kind of security that finally the two lovers will find the peace she sought for but was not allowed in her own life. This tiny but beautiful moment helps to add just a touch more closure to the novel in a way that is so subtle that is could almost go as unnoticed as the fact that neither Tita nor Pedro know who truly lit the candles.

[donovanwilson94]

"To tell the truth, no! Of course not! Because this love is one of the truest loves I've ever seen."

When you think about love, what do you see? Is love something that just happens or do you have to work for it? Does love occur when you aren't ready for it? Is love even real? Those are all question one has to answer for themselves. People spend hours on end trying to figure it out.

Those questions are the hardest to answer. I have been through those same questions over and over in my head. Whenever I thought I had the answer, something or someone came along to change my whole thought process. Whenever "love" was spoken between someone else and myself, it didn't feel right afterward. I can't say that love exists in my personal experience. It could exist, but I don't have the answer to the questions for me personally.

In the book, all of those questions are answered for Tita. Tita loved Pedro at first sight, but it was at the wrong time because she had to take care of Mama Elena. When she tried to work for love with John, she ended up leaving him for Pedro. Love truly existed for Tita, even in the afterlife. Tita had even shared the love with everyone else at the wedding from her cooking.

Speaking of the cooking, Esquivel uses it to good use to show how emotions are conveyed. She made it so that Tita's soul was poured into each meal she made. It emphasized how Tita was feeling by ways of having others feel the same emotions to an extreme. Cooking also was Esquivel's way of showing Tita's growth through the book. Tita went from watching Nacha to being the one doing all the cooking by force to doing it because she wants to. She grew as a chef and as a person. Tita was able to grow into her love with Pedro over time.

We have come full circle. We are back to love. Love is what you perceive it to be. Tita and Pedro just happened to have the purest love in the eyes of Gertrudis.

[adrianamccullough]

"....Ah, and let me suggest, next time you fall in love, don't be such a coward!"

One of the most enjoyable parts of the book came from this line. The whole time your thinking, Get it girl! Even though she goes back to him in the end; this is the first step to Tita's independence, and that is what her life needs. Independence.

That is how the woman learned to survive without men. Before independence the so called woman were like a prize to them. Well little did they know that women were their puppet masters back then, and now we don't even need the puppet. When Pedro explained to Tita that he still loved her, he switched the role of the puppet and master. He toyed with her, and hurt her just like a two year old does with his toys. That was until this miraculous moment happened, telling him off.

Pedro is the furthest thing from a good puppet master. Maybe that is because he destroyed his karma in the beginning, or most likely it is because he was never meant to be able to control her. Out of this reading I feel not a soul was supposed to control her. Looking back, everyone who had tried had something bad happen to them. Mama Elena dies, Rosaura dies, and even Roberto the infant dies. The infant tried to control her by her being his wet nurse, granted it was her fault that the accident happened in becoming his wet nurse, but he still had her in some control. Mama Elena and Rosaura tried to destroy Tita and Pedro's true love. Therefore they were eliminated.

Though if you notice, Tita had control of herself, for the most part. That was well up until the end. The moment she lost control of her independence was the moment she reached her down fall. Its almost tragic really. She spent her whole life building up this independence and now once its gone, she has fully disappeared in to the realm of the afterlife. Tita had lost by her own fault. If she had independent she would of survived, but beacause she gave her independence to her true love Pedro and he to her, they both died.

Love works in the weirdest of manners.

[sarayoung]

“The light from the lamp helped a little, but not enough– it didn’t reveal the shadow that slipped silently into the room behind her and shut the door.” –page 155
Oh, no, Tita! Watch out! I can’t believe that Pedro pretty much raped her. And when she was so happy with John and engaged to him. I think he’s just jealous that she’s getting married happily, and it’s not to him. It’s a little too late, Pedro. He should’ve just ran away with her when he had the chance. Then they’d be happy together and have kids and not have to worry about getting caught or any of that. Although, I don’t think they would’ve been that happy once the lusty stares and all of that had stopped. Then they’d probably be a bickering old married couple. I feel like she’s going to get pregnant though, and turn into her mother. Her mother had an affair and became pregnant, and she turned into a bitter old woman.
If she is pregnant, I think she shouldn’t tell John. She should just run away and not marry anyone. I could see John turn into a hostile person and either goes after Pedro and tries to kill him because he messed with John’s fiancé, or I could see John beating her for letting it happen. He seems like the type of crazy person that is totally fine until something makes him snap, and then he hurts everyone in his path. I think Tita doesn’t love John like that anyway. She’s definitely grateful to him, though. Because he’s been so kind to her and helped her, she thinks she should love him, and so she does. I know she didn’t love Pedro, and she’s starting to see that.
This book is like the Mexican version of Twilight. Pedro just walks into Tita’s life and they fall into a weird love full of lust in a short amount of time, just like Edward and Bella. Then John comes into the picture, and she starts to like him because Pedro isn’t available, just like when Edward leaves, Bella goes after Jacob. But this story is a lot better than Twilight because by the time Pedro wants to run away with Tita, she doesn’t fall for it because she loves John. Although, Pedro and Tita do end up having sex and Tita gets pregnant with Pedro’s baby, but hopefully this baby isn’t born in a few months, and hopefully Tita doesn’t die from having it.

[mackenzieeverett]

"Mama Elena was merciless, killing with a single blow. But then again, not always. For Tita she had made an exception; she had been killing her a little at a time since she was a child, and she still hadn’t finished her off."

Mama Elena can be compared to a cold, heartless killer that is tearing away at Tita and everything she has. Tita is not obedient to her mother causing Mama Elena to kill Tita a little at a time. Rosaura and Gertrudis learned the first time to obey their mother, however Tita has a hard time coping with obedience. Tita is so set on not obeying her mother because she does not believe in traditions, she only wants to believe in what makes her happy. Throughout the book that is all Tita is searching for, happiness.

However, she never truly finds happiness because she is too overwhelmed with what her mother would think, almost making herself think she is being haunted by her mother's ghost at one point. Tita does not allow herself to be happy so therefore Mama Elena will not allow Tita to be happy. Mama Elena killed Tita a little at a time because Tita would not let go of what her mother would think about her actions. Mama Elena seems like she is the one that makes Tita unhappy, but really it is just Tita limiting herself to be truly happy. Tita was too afraid of Mama Elena to actually do what she felt was right which made Tita miserable, even after her mother died.

The message in this passage can be connected with anybody at any time. If someone is too worried about what somebody thinks about them then they will not be able to be the happiest they can be. If someone has to feel like they have to make the right move just because they are afraid of other people's opinions then they will feel like they have been tied down to form to other people's requirements.

[brooketaylor]

“The truth! The Truth! Look, Tita, the simple truth is that the truth does not exist; it all depends on a person’s point of view.”

Tita was heartbroken from the very minute that Pedro decided to marry her sister. How could the person she loves commit to something so wrong? In Pedro‘s point of view he was doing the right thing; he was just trying to be close to Tita. Rosaura was the naïve girl caught in the middle. In some instances, she truly believed that Pedro loved her. So when Tita thought she was pregnant she didn’t know how to break the news that Pedro actually loved her.

In society today, this quote still holds true. Truth is dependent on a person’s point of view. We all see right and wrong in different ways. When Hitler and the Nazis were murdering thousands of innocent people, he thought he was doing the right thing. In reality he was doing one of the most horrific things ever. Denial is where truth depends on point of view. If you were to get inside the head of an alcoholic, your perspective or truth would be that you have no problem. When actually family, friends, even strangers can clearly see the alcoholic has a serious issue that needs attention.

Rosaura was in denial. Rosaura could not see the truth about her relationship with Pedro. She truly believed that Pedro loved her. Her lust for Pedro was blinding her from reality. Even as she begins to realize that Pedro may not or is not in love with her, she goes to Tita to get advice on what to do. Tita didn’t know how to tell Rosaura that Pedro loves her and she is pregnant with their child. Gertrudis tells Tita that deep down Rosaura knows the truth and understood the marital situation she was getting into. In the end I believe that it was this denial that killed Rosaura. In order to show truth we must pull people out of their denial so all parties have the same point of view.

[calvinmendel]

“Surely Pedro had died at the moment of ecstasy when he entered the luminous tunnel. She regretted not having done the same. Now it would never again be possible to see that light, because she could no longer feel anything. She would but wander through the shadows for eternity, alone, all alone. She would have to find some way, even if it was an artificial one, of striking a fire that would light the way back to her origin and to Pedro. But first she had to thaw the freezing chill that was beginning to paralyze her.” (Page 244)

Upon reaching the end of the book, I realize how Pedro’s selfish acts result with miserable lives for himself, his wife, and his lover that eventually go up in flames. While reading the first few chapters, my first reaction to Pedro’s decision to marry Rosaura was: “This cannot end well.” Even his father thought it was a foolhardy choice. First of all, this decision meant that Rosaura could never have a true love (although she probably would have had a tough time finding one anyway) and that she would be bound to a man that did not love her. If I were Pedro and I loved Tita this much, I would have walked away from the offer to marry Rosaura and wait until Mama Elena died to marry Tita. I find it dishonest and disgusting to marry a woman in order to be close to her sister. His selfish desire made him unfaithful to both women especially because I can’t believe that putting Tita through that many tortuous years is the correct way of showing his love for her.

This brings me to a bigger point about the general misery of the book that most of the characters had to deal with and the author’s eventual revelation of the effects of their actions: The characters and their decisions are far too passive, and the ill effects of these choices are shown throughout the book and especially near the end. The only domineering or powerful character was Mama Elena, and so she was able to control everything and everyone. If Tita and Pedro truly love each other so much, why wouldn’t they run away from the ranch and start a new life? This was a failure by both lovers- neither of them could stand up to Mama Elena and instead gave her just what she wanted: complete control.

Their lives dragged on, and they were never actually able to properly express their love for each other until the end of the book. Whatever love they have for each other seemed doomed from the beginning and when the two finally are together without any obstacles, the ranch burns down with their deaths. The author uses fire and flames quite often in this book, with the candles, Pedro burning himself with the oil lamps, and the climactic end. I believe one possible meaning for the flames is that life for our protagonists is essentially a living hell and that the author’s use of flames throughout has given us this impression. The author’s wild ending is a proper cap to the craziness contained in this book, but I do wish she would let us know whether Pedro ever regretted his choice of marrying Rosaura.