JUDES Charles

Prof. Scanlan

English 2400

10-28-20

Like water for chocolate: Midterm final draft

Like water for chocolate is a novel by Laura Esquivel set in Mexico where two young lovers Tita and Pedro were ceased from getting married by Mama Elena, who is the mother of tita because of a family tradition, The novel became successful and was later adapted into a movie by Alphonso.

When books are adapted into movies there are three possible choices of translations, traditional, radical, and literal and they all have their own way of showcasing a story, in this particular case some changes were made of the changes one of them was Rosaura death, Rosaura was one of the most important characters in the story she was mama Elena’s favorite daughter and she was a mother and the wife of Pedro before she died, her death in the novel was honored with a funeral even though “many people did not attend because of the unusual odor”, in the movie her death was ignored and for a character that was important, it feels too vague.

love is an intense feeling of affection, in this novel love played an important part in many of those characters life I can say that it basically shapes the story of those characters. in the case of john and Tita they fell in love and they knew what they desired which was to get married but they were not able to get married because of mama Elena family tradition, Pedro took an alternative way in order to get close to the love of his life tita, which was to get married to Tita sister Rosaura, but told tita that “he only did it just to get closer to her” it’s strange to marry the sister of the love your life because someone would end up getting hurt either way but because of how much Pedro loved tita he did not seem to care very much.

Love was complicated when it comes to mama Elena, she loves loved  Rosaura more than tita, because of that Rosaura could get away with things that tita couldn’t such as being a picky eater, but tita couldn’t get away not eating her least favorite food. I say she was complicated at loving because she didn’t get to live with the love of her life since he was killed trying to get away with Elena, later on, her parents forced her to marry Juan de la Garza. But she, later on, forced her favorite daughter Rosaura to marry someone who did not love her because of the family tradition, it seems complicated for her to love also because you would think that she would’ve shown more affection toward Gertrudis because she was the daughter of the love of her life it didn’t seem that way at all towards her, she was giving off the aura of angry women throughout the whole story, even after she died she couldn’t be happy for tita she was trying to get her away from the family.

Gertrudis which is tita sister had a baby which was a mulatto because of his “grandfather who was mama Elena first boyfriend which was killed” it was approached differently in the movie they did not show the kid, it was important because Gertrudis real father was the reason why mama Elena husband Juan de la Garza passed away and was about to cost Gertrudis her husband until tita stepped in and show the letter mama Elena was hiding for her entire life which proved that Gertrudis wasn’t cheating.

another important difference was mama Elena death is also an important death which was drastically changed in the movie, in the novel she died of “horrible pain, spasms and violent convulsions which were caused by a syrup of ipecac which she was secretly taking” it was not good for her health, but in the movie she died because she was pushed off a cliff when the group of bandit that came to the ranch, it was a different case in the reading because this specific scene was put together with another part that happened in the movie, my thoughts on this was to save time because the movie was already fast-paced.

When it comes to the translation type it couldn’t be radical because the story was not reshaped extremely, at first I thought it was strictly a literal translation because the majority of the story stayed the same with some minor changes, when I take my times an analyze the part that was changed it seems more of a tradition because when you looked at the scene that was changed, such as mama Elena’s death, Rosaura death, Gertrudis baby, they were changed in order to fit the narrator goal, I said the story feel fast-paced maybe he did not have the budget to recreate those scenes, that why I feel that the movie is a traditional translation.

The story itself is interesting it has many factors that keep you engaged in the story I was getting Romeo and Juliet aura because of the family drama and the love complications they had a lot in common.

I think this is something that will always with movie interpretations of books to a movie there will always be some changes, that why there are 3 different types of translations which are traditional, radical, and literal translation and the movie I feel like it’s a traditional translation because it’s very similar to the novel which it was inspired by with changes I wouldn’t particularly say they are changes because they still happened in the movie just different from the book. I learned that that film would try to tell the stories in their own way even when it is not a documentary either the movie compliments the text, or it made it more confusing