The Student Room Group

HELP!!! If you're doing Garcia Lorca or 'Como Agua Para Chocolate'

Being the absolute genius I am, I have managed to, ah, misplace some of the books I need for the Edexel Unit 5 Spanish exam tomorrow.

I've lost my Spanish translation of 'Como Agua Para Chocolate' by Laura Esquivel, and so I can't get any quotes for my essay. I can try translate quotes from the English book but they won't be correct at all.

I've also lost my English translation of 'La Casa de Bernarda Alba' by Garcia Lorca, and I don't understand the Spanish version of the play well enough to pull out the important quotes.

So anyone else doing these texts, please help me? I have no idea where the books are and as the exam is tomorrow afternoon I don't have a lot of time to learn all the quotes. I only need about ten for each text, on the main characters/imagery/themes.

Thanks...
Reply 1
Sabes muy bien que por ser la más chica de las mujeres a ti te corresponde
cuidarme hasta el día de mi muerte (You know very well that being the youngest daughter you have to look after me until the day I die)

No hubo poder humano que le quitara de la mente que Tita había mezclado algún elemento en el pastel...La noche de la fiesta había recibido de manos de Mamá Elena una paliza fenomenal (There wasn't any power in the world that could have persuaded Mama Elena that Tita hadn't mixed anything into the cake, the night of the party she (Tita) got a fenomenal beating from Mama Elena)

esta mujer necesitaba imperiosamente que un hombre le apagara el fuego abrasador que nacía en sus etrañas (this woman needed a man who could put out the fire inside her)

No le habían permitido casarse con él pues tenía en sus venas sangre negra (she hadn't been able to marry him because he had black blood in his veins)

I'm afraid that's all I can give you from Como Agua Para Chocolate quotations wise because I did my coursework on it ages ago in January. The translations aren't exact (cos they are mine and I don't have much time right now!) but they convey the general gist! I hope that helps. Good luck tomorrow. I'm doing mine (OCR) then too!
Reply 2
Thank you so much! I'm such an idiot to have gotten into this mess, heh. I posted a bulletin on Myspace too and my friend gave me more Como Agua quotations, now all I need is La Casa De Bernarda Alba quotations! The most evil text of the lot, heh. But I have to write a comparitive essay on Yerma and La Casa De... so hopefully if I get enough Yerma quotations in then it won't matter *so* much. I got a B in my mock without any quotations, but they were nice questions, I hope I get lucky tomorrow.

Good luck to you too!
Reply 3
God that exam sounds terrible! Do you know the question before you get the paper? How many words do you have to write? I did mine today, it didn't go too badly which is starting to freak me out as it seems that I could be setting myself up for a disappointment! I hope yours went ok!
Reply 4
what questions did you do? i did the "conflicto entre la honra y la pasión" one and "la posición que ocupa Tita"
hope yours went ok. i cannot gauge how well i did or didn't do but hoping for the best!
Reply 5
I did those questions too! I wrote a lot which I guess is a good thing? I don't think I repeat myself at all so hopefully something in there will get me the grade I need...

What kind of stuff did you write for the position of Tita? I wasn't sure if it was talking about her role as a cook for the ranch, and nurturer - like the baby dove, and Roberto - or specifically focused on the tradition of the de la Garza family. I wrote about both, just usually they would use the word 'papel' instead of 'posición' so it threw me a bit, but I guess I'm just overanalysing it.

Bah. I don't like Lorca. He seems pretty cool as a person, just I don't like his plays much. I don't think my points about honour in La Casa de were very strong, likewise my points about pasion in Yerma. Oh well. Nothing I can do now anyway.
Reply 6
Luvbug
God that exam sounds terrible! Do you know the question before you get the paper? How many words do you have to write? I did mine today, it didn't go too badly which is starting to freak me out as it seems that I could be setting myself up for a disappointment! I hope yours went ok!

I love doing literature but I hate the essays! They're hard even in English, and I do English literature! I'm glad I do though, people in my class that don't do English lit struggle a lot more with Spanish lit. The minimum is 250 words but in the examiners' reports they often say that the students who do best write about 400+...I wrote just over three and a half sides for each essay, which I worked out as about 600 words, but I'm not sure, my handwriting is sort of average sized lol.

I'm sure you did fine! The way I see it, EVERYONE is convinced they messed up in their exam somehow...but most people tend to come out with a decent grade anyway! So hopefully that will be like me. Though now I've said it, I'll probably the one that DID do as badly as she feared :frown:
Reply 7
You've probably done fine, I reckon everyone panics like you said! I do English Lit too, which was a blessing when it came to writing the coursework as some of my friends had no idea how to write what essentially was a 2000 word English essay in Spanish!
Reply 8
I wish we did coursework! My school, as a grammar school, likes to make things as tricky as possible for people, I think. I actually like writing essays but I prefer coursework essays because I'm really bad at planning essays, so in exams they tend to be a bit all over the place as (like today in my Othello exam) I will totally forget to include a crucial part of the question in my answer after I've already come to a conclusion! Though honestly I don't know how people managed Spanish lit if they didn't do English lit, people who used to get straight As in Spanish were getting Ds and Cs because they were being assessed on content as opposed to language.