Research Paper

Food and Knowledge

Have you ever noticed you can’t concentrate when you are hungry? Throughout literature, writers have given food a symbolic meaning associated with knowledge. In the Book of J, the story of Adam and Hava is presented, who ate the forbidding fruit gaining knowledge of their first sin. In the Odyssey we find the journey of Odysseus, an ancient Greek warrior whose experience through the world made him a knowledgeable man. In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, the story of Tita, who through her culinary knowledge, communicated her feelings.

In the Book of J, Adam and Hava fall into knowledge by eating the forbidden fruit. They lived in a place called Eden, where Yahweh provided everything “from all the trees of the garden you are free to eat, but the tree of knowing good and bad” (62). Yahweh also made a clear warning to Adam about that tree, “Eat from it and on that day, death touches you” (62). Hava was told by the snake that eating from the forbidden tree would not harm her, but it would open her eyes like Gods knowing good and bad. She took the risk and ate from it, noticing that nothing had happened to her, she gave Adam to eat from it too. They immediately discovered their nakedness and went to get leaves to cover their bodies. Yahweh knew what Adam and Hava have done because they were hiding from him ashamed of their naked bodies “Who told you naked is what you are?”(64). Adam blamed Hava for giving him the fruit and Hava blamed the snake, for which Yahweh punished bounding it to the ground and making it enemy to the women. Then Yahweh punished the women “Pain increasing, groans that spread into groans, having children will be labor” (64). And finally Yahweh punished Adam “bitter be the soil to your taste, in labor you will bend to eat from it” (64).

Yahweh removed Adam and Hava from the garden because he feared that with the knowledge they had just gained, they could now go to the tree of life and eat from it, making them both Gods like him. Yahweh motives to remove Adam and Hava from the garden can be interpreted in my opinion to what a parent will do to protect his or her children. Maybe Yahweh wanted them to remain innocent to pain and struggles in life outside his circle of influence (the garden), or he just wanted them to remain under his authority and direction. With knowledge Adam and Hava could separate themselves from Yahweh ignoring his holiness, one example of this is when Hava and Adam conceived Cain, “I have created a man as Yahweh has.” (65) Hava said.

Although in the Book of J to eat food clearly means to gain knowledge, in the Odyssey, it often meant to loose or recover knowledge. One of the examples we see in the Odyssey is when Odysseus and his crew came to the land of the Lotus-Eaters. After eating and gathering supplies, two of the men went into town to explore and mix with the locals. The Lotus-Eaters, who meant no harm, gave lotus to the men. They immediately lost their will to go back and report to the ship instead preferring to stay there and eat more lotus, “Whoever ate that sweet fruit lost their will, munching lotus, oblivious of home” (Ody.X.95-100). The lotus was a powerful fruit that would make anyone lose their perception of time and place, only giving them the desired to eat more and more. Just like Morrison explains in his book, the very thought of home vanishes for men who have fought abroad for ten years, they no longer thought about Ithaca (Morrison 91), certainty a consequence of extreme forgetting

Another example in where food has a different connection with knowledge is when Odysseus went to the underworld, Hade’s home, to talk to Tiresias. Odysseus had a pit filled with blood. Any dead people he would like to talk to would have to come to him and drink from the blood to recover their human memory. “Move off from the pit and take away your sword, so I may drink from it and speak truth to you” said Tiresias to him (Ody.XI.90-93). After talking to Tiresias, Odysseus spoke with Agamemnon, an old friend whose wife had taken his life. Agamemnon told Odysseus to be careful and not to trust his wife, the same thing might happen to him, “Beach your ship secretly when you come home, women just can’t be trusted anymore” (Ody.XI.472-475). Odysseus gained knowledge through the conversations he had with different dead people in the underworld. The example of his dead friend gave him a hint of what could happen to warriors that spent a great amount of time away from home. He was now conscious of what to expect upon returning home.

Although to gain knowledge is an advantage, extreme knowledge can have terrible consequences. In the example of Odysseus and his encounter with the Sirens, he was curious to hear the Siren’s song which holds the promise of knowledge, for they knew everything that happened in Troy. According to Morrison, Odysseus curiosity out weighted the risk of dying in the hands of the Sirens, despite Circe’s warning, Odysseus had his crew tied him down to the ship so he could hear the song. (Morrison 133). This curiosity could have ended Odysseus life if it weren’t for his crew, who unable to hear anything because they had wax in their ears, never followed Odysseus command to release him to stay with the Sirens.

In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, Tita was a girl whose mother had denied her the happiness she was longing for, to be with Pedro. Tita was a great cook from the moment she was born and, because she was the youngest of the three girls, she was introduced to the kitchen as her main duty. She learned the culinary arts through Nacha, the house maid. Tita was torn apart when her sister Rosaura married Pedro, but quickly learned ways to let Pedro know how much she still loved him through her cooking. Tita’s feelings for Pedro were so strong that the meal she prepared, the quail in rose petal sauce, had a different meaning to every single family member in the house. To Mama Elena, the food meant trouble as she knew Pedro was fascinated with every single meal day after day, “He let Tita penetrate to the farthest corners of his being” (Esequiel 52). To Rosaura, it meant competition; she knew her sister was gaining ground with her husband. To Gertrudis, it gave her an experience she never had before, an uncontrollable urge for sex, “That was the way Tita entered Pedro’s body, hot, voluptuous, perfumed, totally sensuous” (Esequiel 52). She felt the uncontrollable feelings her sister Tita had for Pedro through this meal. This knowledge was so strong that she ran away naked with a revolutionary soldier, leaving everything behind. All she could think of was satisfying her sexual arousal, it was like the effect that lotus had on Odysseus’s men. Tita’s feelings were reflected on her cooking and throughout the story everyone in her life knew her state of mind through it.

In these three stories we see how food and knowledge are interconnected. In the Book of J, the whole meaning of existence was revealed by just eating one fruit. Adam and Hava’s life style changed in a matter of seconds. They no longer had the protection and guidance of Yahweh, but they learned ways to survive. In the Odyssey, food led to the lost of perception, willingness, and it also led to the recovery of human memory after being dead. Odysseus’s crew paid with their life the experience their captain gained, because Odysseus was the only one who made it back to Ithaca alive. Finally, in Like Water for Chocolate, the continuation of love and acknowledge through cooking. Even in her dark hours of pain and sorrow, Tita let everyone know her feelings, especially when she made her sister wedding cake. Everyone at the wedding felt the pain Tita was feeling. Food and knowledge have being tied to each other since the beginning of our days. From the cave man hunting to the civilized man’s agriculture, we see how writers have used food as a symbol for knowledge.


Works Cited
The Book of J. Trans. David Rosenberg. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Grove, 1990.
Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. Trans. Ellen Claire. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000.
Morrison, James. A companion to Homer’s Odyssey. Wesport: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Words: 1465.