Compare and Contrast Siddhartha and like Water for Chocolate

Hesse’s Siddhartha and Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate both demonstrate

love’s intensity. Hesse’s novel speaks generally about the hardship

contributed with the loss of live Siddhartha encounters with his son and

dealing with inner conflict to find enlightenment with the absence of love.

In a sense, Esquivel’s novel begins with the hardship of lost love and ends

with the finding of enlightenment with love. These novels display a

reciprocal effect and account for both similarities and differences between

the two works. The use of love to motivate the characters can be compared on

the basis of their attachment of love, physical pain, the healing process

and their thematic use for love.

Like Water for Chocolate attacks the hardship of lost love more directly

than Siddhartha. Esquivel’s many interactions between Tita and Pedro in the

kitchen describe their relationship as being loveless due to their basis of

love as being transformed without the benefit of touch. This demonstration

of the absence of love is depicted through Tita’s sexuality, merely to see

the reaction of Pedro, her lover, as a carnal desire. By contrast in

Siddhartha, the beginning of his love has been revealed to be separated with

his son young Siddhartha, causing his search for enlightenment to be

unfulfilled causing Siddhartha of being incapable of love. But by the end

of the novel, he is fallible because he has not confronted love itself, but

creating his son to be blinded by love towards Siddhartha. By similarity,

Like Water for Chocolate reveals the motivation Tita encounters from the

hardships of her lost love and the grief that is included with motivation

herself to heal. Tita’s assertion of life is established with Mama Elena’s

haunting spirit. This internal fire is exposed with the disappearance of

Tita’s pregnancy which reveals that enlightenment to love is blinded by her

ability to be in fear.

Another major difference between the novels is their wide discrepancy in

depression towards love. Like Water for Chocolate clarifies the position of

weakness Tita has towards Mama Elena keeping Tita under control and being

unable to be with her lover. Tita’s subsequent withdrawal into the physical

detachment towards Pedro suggests that her only way out of this mask of

depression is to be fallen into a broken world of madness which has put her

into a state merely of pain and grief. In the novel the speaker’s general

tone of depression has concluded that through the absence f love has brought

up the tone of loneliness. By contrast, although Hesse’s general upbringing

of enlightenment of Siddhartha has often been in a positive state of mind,

Siddhartha has learned from the teachings of Gotama that even when looking

for someone to show him the path to enlightenment, Gotama reveals that there

is no formula for salvation or enlightenment that can exist in Siddhartha’s

world. This statement has brought confusion and doubt in Siddhartha’s mind.

Neither Gotama nor any other guide can teach enlightenment o Siddhartha,

which has taught him that enlightenment cannot be communicated through

words, but only experiences which may cause suffering. Thus the contrasting

tones of both