Meaning of Title
Like Water for Chocolate's full title is: Like Water for Chocolate: A novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies.
The phrase "like water for chocolate" comes from the Spanish como agua para chocolate. This phrase is a common expression in some Spanish-speaking countries and was the inspiration for Laura Esquivel's novel title and it means that one is very angry. In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico, hot chocolate is made not with milk, but with near-boiling water instead.
An alternate interpretation of the saying "like water for chocolate" is to be like water that is hot enough to receive the chocolate (when preparing hot chocolate to drink). It is a metaphor for describing a state of passion or sexual arousal (i.e. 'hot and ready'). This would describe the bubbling passion Tita and Pedro have for each other throughout the book.
Read more about this topic: Like Water For Chocolate
Famous quotes containing the words meaning and/or title:
“In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)