Discussing the Novels, I Served the King of England and Like Water for Chocolate

There are many ways in which to interpret a novel in the context of the idea of crossing borders, not just national borders, but borders in terms of age in terms of epoch and age, race and class. The novel Like Water for Chocolate has a strong sense of tradition and this is typified in the epilogue “To the table or to the bed/You must come when you are bid”. This shows that the novel is about tradition and the struggle against the domineering forces of history, for agency both for the protagonists and the nation of Mexico. This sense of struggle for agency is seen too in the novel I Served the King of England as the protagonist Ditie is also, like his native Czechoslovakia, struggling for agency and so this is an appropriate novel to compare. Both novels are set in times of great political upheaval, Like Water for Chocolate being set in the time of the Mexican revolution against the USA and I Served the King of England being set in a time that spans from the early nineteen-twenties to the rule of the Soviet Union. There are many ways in which the idea of individual freedom and national freedom are expressed as the same concept, although there is not enough space in which to adequately discuss them. Therefore, I shall concentrate on the main way in which agency and freedom are expressed in these novels, and this is through the idea of sex being a liberator for the people as a proof of adulthood as well as a spiritual side to life that not everything can be understood in a single, physical moment.

Food in Like Water for Chocolate is arguably the most important of life. Each chapter starts of with a recipe that not only gives the novel a magical element in the sense of transformation from ingredients to meals; it also gives a sense of tradition, binding the characters together when they meet over a meal or even in the making of food because “All the women in the family had to participate: Mama Elena; her daughters…Nacha the cook; Chencha, the maid” (p.13). This is the traditional role for women, something that they fall into happier than others as “They felt that playing in the kitchen was foolish and dangerous” (p11), but “for Tita the joy of living was wrapped up in the delights of food” (p.11). However, there is also a deeper sense of tradition within the food. As “sausage making was a real ritual” (p.13) and the idea of sausages is later mentioned, showing that there is no freedom and the idea of the sausage making being a ritual looking back to the time of the Aztecs. As can be seen food is the idea of tradition, so the idea that sexual congress can be seen as the rebellion in this traditional Mexican situation. Gertrudis and Tita both attempt to subvert the Mexican tradition of subservience as “Mama Elena threw her look that seemed to Tita to contain all the years of repression that flowed over the family” (p.13). This repression comes to a head towards the end of the novel, for example, when Mama Elena and Tita are arguing, Tita claims that, “I know who I am! A person has a perfect right to live her life as she pleases…” (p.180). This is when the two protagonists are debating whether she would be able to marry Pedro or not and is something that is hinted at earlier in the novel as there were several questions asked as “For one thing, she wanted to know who had started this tradition” (p.15). This shows that Tita wants to find her own direction, in the same way that Mexico wants to find its own direction away from being subservient to the United States of America. Gertrudis’ break for freedom, during a meal, comes earlier in Like Water for Chocolate; this is when she runs from the family home to become a prostitute in a “bordertown brothel” (p. 65). Gertrudis, important to the novel as an ostracized child, is “the medium, the conducting body through which the singular sexual message was passed” (p. 49), but this sexuality was to be hidden from Mama Elena.

The novel I Served the King of England is set against the background of a desire for agency, not only for Ditie, but also the Czechoslovakian people “When I started to work at the Golden Prague Hotel, the boss took a hold of my left ear” (p. 1) this shows that Ditie the busboy does not feel that he is not in control, that it is the elites that are in control of society and not the people. This part of the novel takes place in the relatively prosperous epoch after the First World War when Czechoslovakia is not only prosperous for the elites and not for “the gypsies…leaving an unpaid bill and blood all over the tables” (p.6). This novel is less about the preparation of food, but the consumption shown best in the feast served for the Emperor of Ethiopia, in hotel restaurants and various other locations, such as the railway station with Ditie selling frankfurters. It was with the sale of frankfurters that enabled him enough money as “Each week I managed to save up for another girl, a different one each time” (p. 15). However the idea of sex has less to do with rebellion against a traditional society like in Like Water for Chocolate, but more to do with the fact that “money could buy you not just a beautiful girl, money buy you poetry too” (p.16). This shows that there is a perception that both beautiful women and poetry is for the successful and elite in the society of Czechoslovakia, this is something that left him “feeling six feet tall” (p.16), an image of a strong human and not being the “little man” (p.8) that Mrs. Paradise called him when he was listening to the mechanical music box. The idea of sex being a “beautiful and noble aim” (p.9) and although this shows that perhaps sex is the end in itself, it could be argued that it is not the aim as Ditie says “My father used to say that if I had an aim in life I’d be alright because then I’d have a reason for living”. This shows that the protagonist Ditie is like Czechoslovakia as there is a desire to have something from Ditie’s forefathers, he wants to have an aim in life instead of the simple acquisition of money for its own sake. Also there is a sense this idea of sex being an aim in life shows that Ditie wants to be recognized for what he is able to do, the emotions he is able to produce not only in him, but for others too.

However, in I Served the King of England takes a dark turn when the Fascist army invades. Although, Ditie seems to welcome them and marrying Lise, becomes a part of them he is made to feel like an outsider again. This is because the idea of sex is not about personal agency, but more about control of not only the protagonist Ditie, but also of Czechoslovakia. Ditie wants to “father a German child” (p.139) with his German wife Lise. The fact that he has a German wife is not enough as under Nuremburg laws, as Ditie says, “I had to stand naked in front of a doctor who lifted my penis with a cane to look into my anus”. This goes against the idea that sex is something that can be used as a display of choice and his destiny is no longer in his hands; also it shows that sex can no longer be used to show that Ditie is an adult as the inspection infantilizes him when Ditie “couldn’t get an erection and offer the doctor any of my sperm” (p.140). This shows that he no longer wanted the physical feeling of sex and saw it as something deeper inside as he says “I found myself looking at pornographic snapshots of naked people…before I’d turn stiff straight away”. This is because, before, he was having sex for him and not for the duty for the “National Socialist Party and to conceive children in the spirit of that party” (p. 141) showing that the people of Czechoslovakia wanted to raise or be raised in the spirit of themselves. This idea is confounded when he abandons the German child Siegfried and buries Lise in a “common grave with a scarf around the stump of her neck” (p. 173), which can be taken to show that the invading Germans who undercut Ditie’s sense of adulthood and agency as much as they were welcomed by him, were not complete people.

Like in I Served the King of England, there are the negative affects in sexual relationships with those from out with in Like Water for Chocolate. However, in this novel, the negativity does not come from a foreigner, like Lise or John Brown was, but from a Mexican in the form of Pedro. This is shown in the final episode in the love scene between Tita and Pedro. This seems to run against the idea that sex is the great liberator as “Tita would love to show what was growing inside her, to show her fertile body to the world without laying herself open to society’s disapproval” (p. 178). This shows that Tita still wants to be the love of Pedro and not have to hide from people and to be still treated like a child. However, Pedro is conscious about what others might think and so wishes to keep his mistress and his relationship with her under wraps and under his control, something he was not able to do with his wife, Rosuara, whom was married off to him by Mama Elena, thus taking away the agency of all the protagonists involved. Arguably, the most striking realization that sex is not agency as in the final love scene Tita is left by the death of Pedro as “She didn’t want to die. She wanted to explore these emotions many more times” (p. 220). However, it can be said that this was inevitable from the time that “Tita, holding Pedro’s unburnt hand, refused to leave his side” (p.181).

Both novels, I Served the King of England and Like Water for Chocolate show that the struggles of the main protagonists, Ditie and Tita, are too struggles for their countries, Czechoslovakia. As has been discussed there are many themes with both novels, many of which could not be discussed due to the lack of space to explore. When there is a weighing the evidence means shows that despite food being just as important in representing the two cultures, this does not show the problems the two countries face, other than to show that both are seen as servants for others, shown most clearly in the final scene of Like Water for Chocolate between Tita and Pedro. With the deeper exploration of just the idea of sex being a metaphor for agency, it has become clear that both protagonists and the countries in which they are metaphors for, hold the same frailties and problems, Tita in Like Water for Chocolate only is prepared to stand up to Mama Elena when she can no longer cause her harm, in the same way that Mexico could not stand up to the United States of America. As well, like Ditie in I Served the King of England realizes that the solution is to be found within him in the same way that Czechoslovakia should not look outside for help and solutions, but within.