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¶ … real world connection.

Love is a force just as destructive-if not more so-as it is creative.

In Like Water for Chocolate, the main female protagonists of Tita and her mother are locked in a struggle for Tita's freedom. Tita's mother wants her daughter to remain with her and care for her forever, because Tita is the youngest girl of the family. Although the mother-daughter bond should be based upon love, this mother's demand is destructive and impedes the creation of a healthy bond between the two women. This can be seen in any smothering relationship between child and parent. The mother who micromanages her child's life and lives through her offspring, pushing her daughter to succeed in school, marry a rich man, and to be pretty, thin, athletic, popular and succeed in gymnastics thinks she is loving her daughter, but is really destroying her daughter's autonomy.

Personality will always find a way to express itself externally, and efforts to restrain it only lead to suffering.

The heroine of Like Water for Chocolate, Tita, is forced to spend her life as a caretaker to her mother. However, despite the constrained nature of her existence, she still expresses herself through her cooking. Even if she cannot articulate her rebellion in words, her food speaks her passion for Pedro in a way that cannot be controlled.

This theme recalls the commonly quoted line from the poem by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred?" Tita's dream is deferred, but it merely goes underground, rather than dries up like a raisin in the sun. This need for self-expression can be seen every time someone walks besides a building with beautiful, artistic graffiti or even tastes the food of an elderly grandmother who had few opportunities for education and like Tita, poured her love into her cooking.

Desire consumes itself in its own fulfillment.

Like Water for Chocolate suggests in Tita's love for Pedro that the more you have of your desire, the more you want that desire -- absence and barriers to marriage do not dim her feeling. Like eating chocolate or drinking wine, the more you eat, the more you want, rather than feel your appetite quenched.

Appetite and passion are often larger than the people that bear them.

Even when they are not passionate people, people become passionate upon eating Tita's food. Similarly, when people go to a music concert, they often leave with their toes tapping, filled with the passion of the musicians and the genius of artistic feeling and creation, even if they must go back to humble, unmusical lives.

Julius Caesar:" Thematic analysis

An idealistic person can be manipulated by a clever, perhaps dishonest person"

Evidence: Brutus, who is even called by Mark Anthony "the noblest Roman of them all," is manipulated by Cassius into killing Julius Caesar.

Context: The Roman republic is fragile, and Cassius uses Brutus' legitimate fears of Julius Caesar's tyranny to instigate the assassination.

Analysis: Cassius does not act in the name of the republic; Cassius serves his own ends and hatred of more well-liked and powerful men like Julius Caesar.

Synthesis: While absolute monarchies are dangerous, Brutus enters into the assassination without thinking of the consequences of his actions because Cassius makes him so fearful of Caesar.

2."People need social order"

Evidence: The mob cries out for Caesar to be king.

Context: Although Brutus kills Caesar to protect the republic, the mob seems to desire a king.

Analysis: Aristocratic republicans like Brutus do not understand what the common people need.

Synthesis: Without social order, people will either demand authoritarian rule, or they will rule by mob violence.

3. "If the rightful ruler is deposed or killed, chaos will result"

Evidence: After the death of Caesar, mass killings take place at the hands of the Roman populace.

Context: People run amuck in the streets of Rome, the natural world makes dire portents even before the killing occurs.

Analysis: People kill out of the thrill of killing in a mob scene. The Romans are even shown killing a poet who had nothing to do with the conspiracy because of his "bad verses."

Synthesis: Once there is anarchy, people take the opportunity to glory in their baser instincts.

Ordinary people are easily swayed by effective speechmaking/charismatic people; thus they can be changed into a dangerous mob"

Evidence: The mob is easily swayed by Mark Anthony to revolt against the assassins of Caesar.

Context: Although Brutus kills Caesar to protect the republic, the mob shows itself unworthy of democracy.

Analysis: Shakespeare wrote from a nation that was ruled by a monarch, not a strong Parliament.

Synthesis: Although Shakespeare's view of Caesar and Mark Anthony are ambiguous, he could not validate republican rule.

5. "Ambitions can change a man's character so that he no longer seeks good for all mankind, but rather seeks power only for himself"

Evidence: Caesar seems like a good man, but buckles a bit once the mob urges him to take absolute power.

Context: Rome is drunk on the delight of Julius' great victories in its name.

Analysis: Although Julius would never have overturned the republic for his own ends, he finds it difficult to resist the spectacle of popular affection urging him to do so.