Passion Vs. Security in Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Summary:
An essay discussing the choice between passionate love or secure love. Idea from reading the book 'Like Water for Chocolate'.
In the book Like Water for Chocolate, Tita has to choose between passion or stability. There is no man in between with whom she can spend her life. Though Pedro is not very caring and supportive, he and Tita have an enormous passion for one another. John does all he can to make Tita happy and cares about her a lot, but this is not enough to overcome their lack of passion.
The movie The Notebook is a story about a girl named Allie who falls in love with Noah when she is a teenager. Noah is not as economically well off as Allie, but they are in love. They are separated by Allie's parents, who disapprove of Noah's poor family and move away with Allie. For an entire year, Noah writes to her daily, but her mother doesn't show Allie the letters. After not hearing from each other for a year, they decide to give up. Allie falls in love with Lon, a rich soldier who her parents approve of. Soon after, Allie sees a picture in the newspaper of Noah standing in front of the house that he promised to build her years before. Allie realizes that Noah must still love her and goes to visit him. Their passion still exists and Allie has to choose between being with Noah, her first love, or living her life with Lon, a stable man who her family approves of.
In the end, Allie chooses to be with Noah. She realizes that she needs passion. Passion is more important to her than the stability Lon provides and than her parents' approval. For both Tita and Allie, their strong passion overcomes everything, including parental approval and any security. They prefer to be with the man they truly love.
Passion doesn't last forever, but it's a necessity. You can't have a romantic relationship without the passion. Without passion, you merely have a friendship. On the other hand, if you don't have comfort and security in your relationship, and the passion dies out, you are left with nothing. When you have neither passion nor comfort you can't really be happy. During those years without Allie, Noah works hard to get the house built so he can have stability to give Allie if she returns.
An example of someone choosing security over passion is in Wuthering Heights. Catherine says that Heathcliff and she share the same soul. And in contrast, that she and Edgar are so different that they resemble frost and fire. Yet she still decides to marry Edgar because she knows that with him she'll have security. She would be secure and comfortable, financially and socially. Unlike Tita and Allie, Catherine puts security before passion. This probably wasn't the best choice, but it's difficult to tell. Heathcliff becomes evil, and both he and Catherine went crazy in the end, most likely from being apart. If Catherine had married Heathcliff it's possible that they could have both been happy, nice, and sane people. Even if the case was that going crazy was something biological, they still should have been together and gone crazy together, because they were soul mates. Even after they died, their spirits lived on together. With a connection like that it was not the best decision in Catherine's part to marry Edgar. No matter what security or comfort Edgar gave her, she would never be truly happy.
For Tita and Allie, passion is most important, and for Catherine it is security, though neither worked out just for one of those reasons. Without a balance, at some point in your life you will run into trouble. Noah provides Allie with security by building her a house before she comes back to him. With Tita and Pedro the security doesn't matter because they died in the end. If they had survived they would have run into problems and arguments. Obviously, Edgar and Catherine's relationship didn't work out because Catherine went crazy without Heathcliff. In most cases there are not two people who symbolize 100% passion or 100% stability, as in these examples. There will usually be someone in between as an option, someone who has both the needed passion, and the security.
This is the complete article, containing 696 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
