Natcho Cheese

In literature, food is used as a metaphor, a balance between life and death. In the novels “The Odyssey”, “The Book of J” and “Like Water for Chocolate” we see food take on the sinister role of death. In “The Odyssey”, the excessive consumption of forbidden food leads to death of Odysseus’s men. In “The Book of J”, the forbidden consumption of food leads to the death of innocence and dooms all of mankind. In the novel “Like Water for Chocolate”, the intolerance of food leads to the death of Rosaura. Although food is a necessity for survival, when caution is not headed and restraint is not exercised food is a vessel of death.

In “The Odyssey” food is the ultimate judge of life and death. The gluttonous consumption of forbidden food leads to the death of all of Odysseus’s men. Calypso specifically warns Odysseus not to harm the cattle of Helios, the Sun God, for disaster will fall upon them if they do (Odyssey, XII, 146). While Odysseus sleeps, his crew collectively decides that the worst way to die is of hunger, so they herd up some cattle, slaughter them and feast. Odysseus’s men not only satisfy their basic hunger, but take it a step further and slaughter oxen for six days and “gorge on the meat” (Odyssey, XII, 410). Furious, Helios demands justice from Zeus. For having eaten specifically what was forbidden to them, Odysseus’s men are killed by Zeus’s thunderbolts.

Food once again plays the evil culprit in “The Book of J”, as it leads to the demise of humanity. In the book of J, we are introduced to man (Adam) and woman (Hava). Blissfully innocent, they live in and tend to the Garden of Eden under the condition that they do not touch (eat from) the tree of knowing good and bad, for on that day death would touch them (The Book of J, 62). Tempted, they eat the fruit and although they did not literally die, they inadvertently kill their innocence and condemn humanity to pain, hard labor and suffering. By eating what they should not have they tilt the scale in favor of death for all humans to come. It is not long before this curse comes to light as we are introduced to the children of man and woman; Abel, a watcher of sheep, and Cain, a tiller of soil (The Book of J, 65). The brothers, in their eagerness to please Yahweh, bring him offerings of food. Cain offers Yahweh fruit of the earth, while Abel brings him the “choicest of his flock”, fat and succulent (The Book of J, 66). Yahweh is pleased with the meat offerings but is unmoved by the fruit Cain has given him. Spurned by the rejection of his food by Yahweh, Cain strikes down his brother and kills him.

In the novel “Like Water for Chocolate”, we see food give life to its characters, and by the same hand we see food take life from them. Death comes to Rosaura early in life. Plagued through most of the novel, we watch Rosaura battle her inability to tolerate food, which eventually leads to her death by “acute congestion of the stomach” (Esquivel, 233). Rosaura’s awkwardness and inability to understand food was her downfall in more ways than one. Rosaura never learned to cook, she never learned how to create food, which in essence, is life. Her inadequacy is especially apparent during the birth of her first child, Rosaura is not able to breast feed, by not providing food, she tilts the scales in favor of death. Rosaura, who cannot give food to Roberto, eventually refuses the help of Tita; who is a direct representation of food. Rosaura, by denying Tita, denies food, combined with her inability to make food, Rosaura becomes the reason her son, Roberto dies.

Food, a means of survival, but also a way to express oneself, albeit wonderful and satisfying, in the novels “The Odyssey”, “The Book of J” and “Like Water for Chocolate”, food plays an equally darker, sinister role. Untamed, unlawful, and unrequited consumption of food is what brings about the death Odysseus’s men, Adam, Hava, Abel, Roberto and Rosaura. For it is food that causes man to lose all restraint over himself, tilting the beam of life in favor of death.