Like Water for Chocolate

Like Water for Chocolate

~Laura Esquivel~

Alcatraces, Diego Rivera

English III AP/IB

Mrs. Snipes

Name______

Magical Realism

At about the middle of the 19th century (when scientific objectivity became “vogue”), the influence of many social forces caused aesthetic taste to change from romantic idealism to realism. Many writers felt that romantics—with their focus on the spiritual, the abstract, and the ideal—were being dishonest about life as it really was. The realists felt they had an ethical responsibility to be honest. To show life as it should be in order to show life “as it is,” the body of realist literature tends to eschew the elevated subject matter of tragedy in favor of the average, the commonplace, the middle classes and their daily struggles with daily existence. This literature undertook to use language as a kind of undistorting mirror of, or perfectly transparent window to, the “real”, to disguise its own status as artifice, to present language as constructed of one-to-one relationships between the word (signifier) and the thing that the word represents (signified); in short, realism appeals to our ideologically constructed sense of the real and addresses the reader in such a manner as to incite a “Yes. That’s it, that’s how it really is” response. Realists are often impelled by social reform, often focus on people in social situations that require compromise, develop characters that are unheroic—flawed and unable to be “true to themselves”--, and often emphasize external, material reality, yet recognize the complexity of human psychology.

In the mid 20th century magical realism reared its head as an influential, if not genre, style of literature, usually Latin in origin. Distinct from realism, magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. The realistic laws of cause and effect are suspended: whereas events in realistic novels occur for reasons that are eventually made clear and lead logically to the conclusion of the plot, in magical realism events don’t follow these “normal” expectations so we often see things happening without an explanation and or reasons we can’t or don’t expect—we are left to accept even the strange without surprise. In realistic novels, characters are given individualized names, personalities, and family histories individual to themselves. We identify with these characters because their specific humanity engages us and their individuality resembles our own. Magical realism defies our experience of fictional selves. We see archetypes (and so often stereotypes) rather than individuals—characters (in all their totality) are symbolic and representative of human characteristics more so than are they depictions of singular beings we are to “know” as mirrors of our whole selves. The fate of these magical realism characters often seems decided in advance and doesn’t deal in fairness, justice, or even probability.

Magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. For example, it challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present. Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality. Magical realism differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society. According to Angel Flores, magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he claims, “an amalgamation of realism and fantasy.” The presence of the supernatural in magical realism is often connected to the primeval or “magicali Indian mentality”, which exists in conjunction with European rationality. According to Ray Verzasconi, as well as other critics, magical realism is “an expression of the New World reality which at once combines the rational elements of the European super-civilization, and the irrational elements of a primitive America.”Gonzalez Echchevarria believes that magical realism offers a world view that is not based on natural or physical laws nor objective reality. However, the fictional world is not separated from reality either. The term "magical realism" was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, who considered magical realism an art category. To him, it was a way of representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of reality. In Latin America in the 1940s, magical realism was a way to express the realistic American mentality and create an autonomous style of literature. Jorge Luis Borges gave the definition of magical realism when he said, “I imagine a labyrinth of labyrinths, one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”

Characteristics of Magical Realism

Hybridity—Magical realists incorporate many techniques that have been linked to post-colonialism, with hybridity being aprimary feature. Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous. The plots of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change. Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical realism: a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would illustrate.

Irony Regarding Author’s Perspective—The writer must have ironic distance from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised. Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the real instead of synchronized with it. The term "magic" relates to the fact that the point of view that the text depicts explicitly is not adopted according to the implied world view of the author. As Gonzales Echevarria expresses, the act of distancing oneself from the beliefs held by a certain social group makes it impossible to be thought of as a representative of that society.

Authorial Reticence—Authorial reticence refers to the lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text. This technique promotes acceptance in magical realism. In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person’s conventional view of reality. Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.

The Supernatural and Natural—In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world.

Common Themes

The idea of terror overwhelms the possibility of rejuvenation in magical realism. Several prominent authoritarian figures, such as soldiers, police, and sadists all have the power to torture and kill. Time is another conspicuous theme, which is frequently displayed as cyclical instead of linear. What happens once is destined to happen again. Characters rarely, if ever, realize the promise of a better life. As a result, irony and paradox stay rooted in recurring social and political aspirations. Another particularly complex theme in magical realism is the carnivalesque. The carnivalesque is carnival’s reflection in literature. The concept of carnival celebrates the body, the senses, and the relations between humans. "Carnival" refers to cultural manifestations that take place in different related forms in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean, often including particular language and dress, as well as the presence of a madman, fool, or clown. In addition, people organize and participate in dance, music, or theater. Latin American magical realists, for instance, explore the bright life-affirming side of the carnivalesque. The reality of revolution, and continual political upheaval in certain parts of the world, also relates to magical realism. Specifically, South America is characterized by the endless struggle for a political ideal.

Common Aspects of Magical Realist Novels

The following elements are found in many magical realist novels, but not all are found in each novel and many are found in novels that fall under other genres.

• Contains a magical element
• The magical element may be intuitive but is never explained
• Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element
• Exhibits a richness of sensory details
• Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent; another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past
• Inverts cause and effect; for instance, a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs
• Incorporates legend or folklore
• Presents events from multiple perspectives, such as that of belief and disbelief or the colonizers and the colonized
• May be an overt rebellion against a totalitarian government or colonialism
• May be set in or arise from an area of cultural mixing
• Uses a mirroring of either past or present, astral and physical planes, or of characters

**In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person’s conventional view of reality. Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.

Critical Theories

The following schools of criticism may serve as lenses through which to analyze the work. The most obvious and common applications of critical theory in relation to Like Water for Chocolate are feminist and postcolonial criticism. Therefore, more detailed definitions of these applications appear after the following general outline.

FORMALIST CRITICISM (aka “New Criticism”)

Definition: “The text, the text, and nothing but the text.” The basic commitment of Formalism is to a close reading of literary texts. Formalist critics argue that in analyzing a work, the only evidence worth considering is that which is intrinsic to the text (within the work itself) and nothing extrinsic (outside the work), need be considered. Formalist critics explore questions of technique as an entrée into meaning. They seek to understand how an author or poet employs figures of speech, symbolism, narrative frames and the other literary tools at his or her disposal to achieve an artistic “unity of effect.” In sum, the Formalist says that a work of literature must stand or fall on its own merits.

Recurring Question: How do the literary elements found in a particular text work together to achieve a unified artistic effect?

FYI: There is good general agreement concerning the meaning of Formalism/New Criticism. Students will recognize that what they have been coached to do in school often amounts to seeing the work of art through the Formalist critical lens.

BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

Definition: The biographical critic studies events in the life of the author in order to determine how they may have influenced the author’s work.

Recurring Question: What real life event or personality inspired the author to create a given plot twist or character? Where does real life leave off and the imagination take over?

FYI: Sometimes (as in the above-referenced “Critical Encounters in High School English,”) this approach has been referred to as “psychological” criticism.

HISTORICAL CRITICISM

Definition: Historical critics examine the social and intellectual milieu in which the author wrote. They consider the politics and social movements prevalent during the time period of the text’s creation. They do so in order to determine how the literature under examination is both the product and shaper of society.

Recurring Question: How did the text in question influence contemporary events and how did contemporary events influence the author’s creative choices?

FYI: “New Historicists” like Michael Foucault take this avenue of inquiry one step further by arguing that each historical period is rife with competing versions of the truth. They maintain that a single, oracular truth is ultimately unknowable and that readers should open themselves up to a more democratic approach to literature, embracing a broader variety of texts as worthy of study.

FEMINIST CRITICISM

Definition: The primary agenda of Feminist critics is to investigate how a literary work either tends to serve or to challenge a patriarchal (male dominated) view of society. They maintain that literature should be analyzed with the goal of explaining how the text exemplifies or reveals important insights about sex roles and society’s structure. They point out that the traditional “canon” – those works long deemed to be the best that has been thought and said in human culture – tend to define females as “other,” or as an object, compared to the male’s privileged subject status. Feminist criticism focuses on social relationships, including the patterns of thought, behavior, values, enfranchisement and power between the sexes. It is “a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read…” (Judith Fetterly)

Recurring Question: How does the text mirror or question a male-dominated (phallocentric) view of reality?

FYI: This lens is also sometimes called “Gender Criticism.” An important implication of Feminist criticism is the pressing need to open up the “canon” to include previously ignored texts by women.

MARXIST CRITICISM

Definition: This is criticism inspired by the historical, economic and sociological theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Its focus is on the connections between the content or form of a literary work and the economic, class, social or ideological factors that have shaped and determined it. Marxist criticism is perpetually oriented to investigating the social realities that condition works of art. Its preoccupations are with matters of class status, economic conditions, what is published and what is repressed in the literary marketplace, the preferences of the reading public, and so forth.

Recurring Question: Who has the power/money in society? Who does not? What happens as a result?

FYI: Marxist criticism resembles Feminist criticism insofar as it is “engaged” in the world; its purpose is to ferment change, especially in the cause of addressing economic injustice, by stimulating discussion and raising “consciousness.”

PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM

Definition: Criticism that analyzes literature from the position that texts express the inner workings of the human mind; this approach often focuses on the choices of humans as moral agents. Leo Tolstoy, the accomplished Russian novelist, believed that the purpose of literature was “to make humans good by choice.” Literature through the power of story has the ability to engage the individual imaginatively in other worlds and other times. It invites the reader to put him or herself in the position of other human beings; to empathize. The Psychological critic is interested in every phase of human interaction and choice as developed in the text. Literature constantly informs us about and leads us to question what it means to be a human being. The Psychological critic closely follows these revelations and takes them as a central subject for analysis.

Recurring Question: What is the text telling us about what it means to be a human being? Would you act like the main character in the same circumstances?

FYI: This literary lens has also been known as “Humanist criticism” in an earlier era. Be careful with this one, however. It is sometimes fused with Psychoanalytic Criticism (see the Thomson text), which is criticism that analyzes literature largely based on the theories of the unconscious control of the psyche of Sigmund Freud. Students often find Psychological Criticism a natural fit since it draws on their own understandings and experiences of how people treat each other.

ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM (aka Mythological Criticism)

Definition: This approach to literature stems from the notion that texts ultimately point out the universality of human experience. Built largely on the psychology of Carl Jung, Archetypal criticism contends that there are certain shared memories that exist in the collective unconscious of the human species, a storehouse of images and patterns, vestigial traces of which inhere in all human beings and which find symbolic expression in all human art, including its literature. (Think, for example, of the spontaneous associations you have while watching a sunset. They are not unique.) Practitioners such as Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell have discerned a complex and comprehensive correspondence between the basic story patterns of humans – comedy, romance, tragedy and irony – and the myths and archetypal patterns associated with the seasonal cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter. The death/rebirth theme is said to be the archetype of archetypes.

Recurring Question: What universal patterns of human experience are evidenced and are being explored in the text?

FYI: Students enjoy this form of criticism when they are helped to recognize its power in interpreting mega-hit entries from the popular culture such as “Star Wars” or “Groundhog Day.” However, it does take a fair amount of bolstering to acquaint students with some of the archetypal patterns as a point of entry.