Like Water for Chocolate

            When I was eighteen I didn’t get along with my overly religious mother. My spirit is one that is more carefree, spontaneous, untraditional, and not so good at taking orders from authority. Things got so bad that I left home. My values in life aren’t against my Christian up bringing. I just believe that once a child reaches a certain age then they need to be able to harness their individualism and not be oppressed by someone just because they do not agree with what the child wants. Everyone needs to be allowed to live life how they deem necessary.

            This feisty spirit against overbearing authority, made reading Like Water for Chocolate very difficult for me.  I hated Mama Elena from the beginning. No one has the right to control someone’s life past adolescence. Mama Elena forced Tita to stay single for the entirety of Mama Elena’s life.  Tita wasn’t allowed to find her own happiness. Mama Elena paired Tita’s boyfriend, Pedro, with her sister Rosaura instead of allowing Tita to be married and leave Mama Elena’s side.

            Rosaura is nothing more than a spoiled, selfish brat who whines and also expects everyone around her to serve her every whim. She doesn’t care that she betrayed her sister or married a man she knew didn’t love her. All she cared about was following tradition and making her mother happy. The fact that she became so physically revolting amused me greatly.

            Pedro can be seen as both a hopeless romantic who married into the family to be, as he stated, close to Tita. He can also be seen as a chauvinistic pig-man who monopolizes women. Personally, I think he betrayed Tita. He could never make either of them happy by being married to her sister and making babies with Rosaura.

            There was one character that I highly enjoyed following! I found the most relatable to be Gertrudis. Granted, it was a bit extreme that she left the ranch by running naked across a field and having sex on the back of a horse. Also, unlike Gertrudis working in a brothel for a year, I never became a stripper or hooker. It was the fact she broke free of her mother’s oppression and of strict tradition. It reminded me in a way of when I left my parents house.  Lastly, I have no skill for cooking.

This book is ALL about food, passion, love, and how everything can affect the other elements. Tita’s emotions flow through her cooking. When she is baking the cake with a broken heart it makes everyone who tries it so sad they get sick. When Pedro gives her roses, she makes them into a sensual dish that ignites sexual desire in everyone who tries it. Whenever anyone asks for her recipes she simply answers that it was made with love.

Nothing I have ever done has been by tradition.  I left home by packing my things and leaving while they were both at work. I met my husband on www.hotornot.com, asked him to take me on our first date a few weeks later, and eventually I bought a ring and proposed to him. The way that Tita stayed under her mother’s thumb for so long angered me. I begged the author to let her go! When Tita snapped and went to the hospital I felt sad. I wanted her away from the ranch, but I didn’t want her to live a life of sadness and heartache. The way the story ended just seemed right. The lovers died together and the horrible traditions with them.

Not just a picture book for adults: Zorro

            While I was growing up I used to read the comics in the paper every Sunday with my dad. Never once have I picked up an actual graphic novel because I was under the impression that they were nothing more than glorified comic strips. I have now learned that I was severely incorrect.

Zorro opened my eyes to another world of literacy. It showed me that graphic novels aren’t just adult picture books for short-lived entertainment. Every little stroke of the pen is struck in a manor to inflict the reader with an emotion. The words are placed in text bubbles and are in a font that strikes certain feeling into ones heart. The text bubbles are shaped to reflect the emotion inferred by the text it carries. The way each frame it set up also reflects the way the story plays out. Smaller frames overlap the larger picture in some areas to act as a build-up for the overall scene. The pictures themselves are in magnificent detail! Every character has emotion etched into their faces to convey to the reader the exact feeling of the scene. If the scene is a battle, then the illustration is a bloodbath, the rapes are graphic, and the love is overwhelming. One cannot help but be sucked into the story as if they were watching a movie and not reading a novel.
          One particular picture that captured my attention is in the second chapter when the pirates attack. The picture itself isn't completely in color. Diego is hiding behind his mother who is wielding  two swords, in preparation for battle. This picture is meant to catch attention and keep the reader interested in what happens next. The way the blood is shown, as the only color in the picture, lets one know that something graphic is about to happen. Human curiosity keeps the reader turning the pages. Later in the chapter when the attack actually happens, the warrior within Diego's mother emerges and she sacrifices herself for her son. Her face shows no signs of fear, and when her blade goes through a man's throat, the illustrator graphically depicts pieces of flesh and blood spewing out of the exit wound. Graphic novels even add in text to put sound affects into the reader's mind.

Zorro himself speaks to the reader in ways to captivate them. As a mestizo, half Indian and half Spanish, he is already in the oppressed minority. Most people are considered a minority in some way and upon learning Zorro’s heritage feels connected to him already.  Zorro’s Christian name is Diego de la Vega. His milk-brother, and best friend, is Bernardo. Bernardo is an Indian who acts as Diego’s servant. Their friendship grasps the reader’s attention and allows them to relate even more to the characters.  After the tragic experience against the raiding pirates that killed their mothers, Bernardo never speaks, and his friend’s mute tongue reminds Diego what fuels his desire for justice. The hate for the pirates, the remembrance of his mother, and the soldiers cruel acts against the minorities give him more than enough reason to embrace his talents with the sword and fight for justice.

After completing this amazing novel I have decided to investigate other graphic novels that I have been recommended. I am going to look more into Serenity; a novel based off the hit TV show Firefly, and Manga novels. 

Vertical Horizons (Response to Borges)

            Borges is extremely unique, but not in a way that is distasteful to my mind. From what we have experienced in class discussions, I’ve gathered that most scholars don’t appreciate his timely, untimely fashion.  His style reminded me of Paramore’s song “Brick by Boring Brick”. So one day he found her crying, coiled up on the dirty ground. “Her prince finally came to save her, and the rest you can figure out. But it was a trick, and the clock struck twelve. Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick or the wolf's gonna blow it down. Keep your feet on the ground, when your head's in the clouds.” Borges tricks you with his timing. I got lost in his stories but my subconscious kept me looking for the magical realism.

 I agree that “The Garden of Forking Paths” was ridiculously difficult to follow, and that piece of work I did not care for. However, I found “The Gospel According to Mark” was very intriguing! This man goes from this life without conflict, to living on a ranch where the aides don’t seem to understand him.  Their ignorance ended up crucifying him. I see this everyday in different settings. My biological mother didn’t finish high school.  There are things that I think would be common sense that she doesn’t understand because she didn’t receive the education. Her lack of refinement, for lack of a better term, has prevented her from being able to make more than what is barely necessary financially in life.

 Ignorance is not bliss.  The band, Jellyfish, can tell Princess Toadstool all day that her fear would only be more excessive if she knew why she existed, but if someone is oblivious to what possibilities life has in store, then they can’t properly prepare for these obstacles. (“Ignorance is Bliss” by Jellyfish)

I went through a lot of traumatic experiences as a child. Ignorance is not a luxury I had about the world, however, imagination is.  Emma Zune is a character I can easily relate to. The instance of her father’s suicide caused her to take drastic measures against the man she felt was responsible. In the end she created her own reality of what happened, in order to make herself feel better. Granted, my situations never brought me to the point of murdering anyone, but I can understand how replacing the truth with something less harrowing is done. I never forgot what happened, but I don’t think of it in the way it happened. The nightmares these unspecified situations bring on make alternate realities easy to create, just to get away from actuality.  Sometimes some of us just need to escape….

“Honestly, can you believe

We crossed the world while it's asleep?

I'd never trade it in

'Cause I've always wanted this and

It's not a dream anymore, no

It's not a dream anymore

It's worth fighting for”

- Paramore “Looking Up”

Breathe in, Breathe out (Reflection of stories by Márquez)

     When reading stories by Márquez, it seemed to me like a child’s story that you were supposed to find the deeper meaning of the character’s actions and learn some lesson from them.  In both “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, one’s fantasy of what is acceptable in society takes over. The citizens take one's appearance and turn it into what they have been brainwashed by the commonwealth to believe those attributes signify. For instance, the American society has a bountiful amount of jokes about blondes being dumb. This prejudice eventually leaves an impression on one that blondes are dumb. Being blonde, people in America automatically assume I am dumb, which I argue against of course.
    The angel in the first story is bald and ugly with wings that are tattered and full of mites. He didn’t speak the “language of the gods” or perform helpful miracles. The villagers reject him as a holy being because he doesn’t fit the description handed down from the church. Instead the family who found him uses him as a sideshow to collect money. They house him in a chicken coop because, of course, since he and the chickens have wings, they must be near the same species… Then the spider girl came along and the money quit flowing in. The angel flew away in the end…I wasn’t sure about the metaphorical point of the story. I didn’t particularly like the “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. I found it dull and, quite frankly, uninteresting.  Most likely this is because of my lack of understanding.

     The drowned man in the second story amused me greatly. I loved this story! The women fantasize about the dead man and who he must’ve been, how impressive his size was… everywhere… how inadequate their men now seem, and what his life must’ve been like. Their fables played in their heads as they loved, lost, and moved on in life. The fact that it was published in Playboy just made it even better. It shows that fantasy isn’t reality. None of these women knew Esteban, as they came to call him, yet the site of him set them on an emotional rollercoaster, just as the airbrushed, digitally-enhanced women in the magazine do to men in today’s world. Márquez is a genius for his punctuation in this story as well. The way the marks make you pause, continue, and expel so many lines in the same breath, mimics breathing during intimacy.

     

Works by Julio Cortázar

            While reading things by Cortázar, I would try to watch for the twist, and avoid the trickery. Alas, he always sucked me in.  I became the reader in the chair, the wake crasher, and the axolotl. The story about the wake was my least favorite. I found it humorous, as it was intended, but also offensive. Funerals and wakes are a sacred time for many people. I understand that it was supposed to mock the hypocritical mourners, but for those who are truly anguished, the crashers are just prolonging their grieving process. My favorite mind twisting adventure was the first one we read by Cortázar. The Continuity of Parks brought me to a point where I was looking over my shoulder at the end of the story, and double-checking my chair to make sure it wasn’t green velvet. I enjoyed the story about Axolotls but it just left me with the impression that the guy was crazy and needed to get a life in his new location. Supposedly he felt a connection with the Axolotls but honestly he could have looked for a human who felt the same imprisoning feeling of displacement.  One thing I have learned in my many life experiences is that there is always someone, somewhere who feels the same. You are never the only one… Unless you are Tigger. 

Popol Vuh: the Dawn of Life

My initial reaction to this piece of literature was astonishment, mixed with an arbitrary understanding that most religions are similar in context. I grew up in a strictly Christian home and attended mostly Christian schools. In these environments, they taught that other societies branched their religious writings from the Bible, but that the Bible was the "original" source, and "the only true" view of creation. The astonishment I experienced, was a product of the violence that the gods in the Popol Vuh demonstrated towards each other, as well as their creations. The destruction of Vucub-Caquix, in chapter 5 of the Popol Vuh, could be compared to the Bible's depiction of the casting out of Lucifer from Heaven. Differences being it is more gory that Lucifer's demise. Personally, I think it was gracious of the Mayans to kill Vucub-Caquix instead of having him sentenced to eternal damnation. According to Christian belief, Lucifer is suffering unendingly in Hell. Overall, it has become evident to me that, in more than just the religion of Christianity, it is ill advised for one to become vain, greedy, and proud. I enjoy these different worldviews since I have been sheltered from them for most of my academic life. I’m also very excited about what other eye-opening pieces this quarter will bring.