Like Water for Chocolate Characters Tita Description/Significance The protagonist, strong willed, passionate, rebellious, maternal, virginal,

forgiving, sacrifices her love for Pedro. Transfers her joy, love, sadness and anger into her cooking. The tyrannical, widowed matriarch of the De La Garza clan. Mama Elena is the main source of Titas suffering. Her fierce temperament inspires fear in all three of her daughters. She keeps Tita from her true love, Pedro and it is later revealed that Mama Elena herself once suffered from a lost love, embittering her for the rest of her life. Strong, self reliant, authoritarian, proud and stubborn. Mama Elena believes in order, her order. Although she observes the strictures of church and society, she secretly had an adulterous love affair with an African American, and her second daughter, Gertrudis, is the offspring of that relationship. Known as the selfish conformist. He only has personal ambitions. He has no desire to contribute to the common good as all he wants is as much as he can get. He is not able to get Tita directly, so he takes Rosaura in order to be near Tita. He sees his own good only in terms of satisfying material or physical desire, marrying into a prosperous family, sex, respectability as a family man etc. - Like Rosaura, he has no imagination. However, he does not believe in the rules of the rule makers. He merely accepts them because he lacks the imagination to think of alternatives. - His love for Tita is impure, since it is motivated by jealousy and lust (the desire to possess) and does not comprehend her more essential qualities as a bearer and innovator of culture, a nurturer and a liberator. He is not interested in being liberated. He just wants to satisfy himself. He wants Tita as the object of his desire, not his companion. Quotes/symbolism

Mama Elena -

- the ghost of Mama Elena and when it vanishes.

Pedro

Rosaura

Also known as the ideological conformist. She has no will of her own; instead she takes all her ideas and motivations from the dictator, her mother. Like Mama Elena, she enforces the tradition on her daughter, not caring whether she suffers. She is soulless and her matches are all damp. Having no passion or imagination, she cannot respond to the things that could make life delightful. For instance, Titas food. She is incompetent and is not able to do anything for her own. For her survival, she is dependent on the competencies and skills of others. But because of the traditional marriage to Pedro, her life appears to be successful as she marries, has children, and lives comfortably with others to serve her.

Gertrudis

Known as the rebel,

Dr John Brown

Nacha

Roberto

Esperanza

Chencha