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World Lit Essay - We do we do to show appreciation


kankeel

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I want to focus my world lit essay on food in Like water for chocolate. I wish to compare this to the book the outsider. At the moment, I have loads of ideas but I just can't come up with a topic that allows me to talk about food. Can I have your opinions please?

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I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but in my conclusions, I often talk about the--what my teacher calls--"so what?" or the social implications that the authors point out. For Like Water for Chocolate for your mother's role thing, it could be something like taking a maternal figure for granted or not realizing the situation of people who've lost their mothers. I can't really think of anything good at the moment. Usually it's on the verge of BS anyways.

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One thing my teacher always raves on about in LWfC is the connection between emotion and food and the power food has in eliciting a sensation on those who eat it - this is seen throughout the novel, the classic example is when Gertrudis eats the rose-petal quail that Tita made (to impress Pedro?) and she undergoes some sort of sexual empowerment, as these are the underlying desires that Tita is experiencing. And so Gertrudis acts as a median to which all the emotions that the food is infused with are dumped upon.

You can go on to talk about the power that food therefore has, and what it means to be able to prepare this food like Tita can - and then examine the relationship between women/kitchen/food/emotion etc etc

Hope I helped.

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Um... I'm doing Like Water for Chocolate as one of my world literature books at the moment, and I've read The Outsider once, last year. The first thing I thought of was relationships, maybe? How Mama Elena doesn't really care for or show emotion towards her daughters, and Mersault's relationship with Marie.

Just an idea, though, and good luck. :D

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I think you'd probably have a struggle getting food into the Outsider, if my recollection of the book is correct.

The best advice is to pick something equally present in both texts - after all, you are writing a comparison, so they really need to be compared closely and therefore mentioned equally. I also think relationships of some sort would be a good topic to pick, and you might even be able to bring the food in as a reference or two, but if you tried to do a comparative WL essay based on a theme from a single text you'll run into difficulties. The best you could manage would be "the use of food to portray X in LWFC vs the use of Y to portray X in The Outsider", where X is the same. Still, you wouldn't be doing a brilliant comparison with that because you can't closely compare two things which are so different, not really.

Do something workable, as opposed to something you'd really enjoy (but which has holes in it!!).

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XD You changed your question completely haha

You're no longer doing the mother's role?

Hmm okay. I haven't read The Outsider, but I can list some roles of food in LWfC. Maybe it'll trigger something.

Conveys emotions physically

Heals [Tita at that doctor's house with the soup]

Holds memories [like the sausage rolls around Christmas time, if I recall correctly.]

Shows the virtues [or lack thereof] of the women who cook the food.

I know there are several more, but I think this is a bit ridiculous. Like Tilia said, food is so broad. I understand you're interested in the food, and usually you can compare almost anything to almost anything. So I mean, I won't tell you not to, but it seemed like you already had a great idea with the mother figures. Sometimes it's just better to go with logic than emotion. Having said that, I like to do things the hard way too, so I understand disregarding the other WL idea for something you're really interested in. Good luck then!

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  • 5 weeks later...

There's quite a bit on food in L'Etranger (I'm writing mine on it too :P except I'm comparing to Ibsen), but it's somewhat indirect. Look for stuff on the rituals of eating and drinking rather than food itself, like the little robot woman in celestes, and how eating with raymond (I think it was) just saves him having to cook. Mine ended up focusing on how it's symbolic of reality and human weakness (I was contrasting/comparing it with Nora's fantasies/weaknesses) but I think there's quite a bit more. Hope this was helpful =)

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