1 SP.400 Predetermined Social Roles and Their Effect on the IndividualIn Paradise, The Official Story, and Like Water For Chocolate, Elena Castedo, Director Luis Puenzo, and Laura Esquirel respectively explore the social roles predefined for their female protagonists. These protagonists seem to be put in situations with no happy ending. Like the sheep in Paradise, they cannot win. Thesheep must be cleaned because otherwise the bugs on them will “eat their brains.” However, in order to be cleaned, they must have their heads pushed under water. To the sheep, this is extremely uncomfortable, but if they don’t go along with it, they could die from infection. Like the sheep, if these female protagonists accept and follow the norms associated with their social class or rank, they receive much oppression or have to deal with deep moral conflicts. However, if they act out against these roles, they will only be met with force. They reach a point where they feel like nothing but “water for chocolate.” That is they are just boiling inside with anger, fear, or sadness. The reader likes the protagonist in all three works because they don’t always go with the norms associated with their social class. They try,despite abuse or ethical conflict, to follow their own moral judgment. In Paradise, Solita struggles with trying to fit into the role defined for her. When Solita’s mother tells her that they are going to Paradise, she says to her “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” (5). This rule governs Solita’s existence at the country estate. She knows that she is supposed to, like her mother, fit into a role predefined for her. This role is basically to act as a suitable playmate for the three young girls, Patricia, Graciela, and Gloria. As both Pilar and Solita serve as 2 companions for Tia Merce and the three girls, they are forced into positions where they really can’t win.At El Topaz, the class hierarchy is pretty well defined. At the top, there is Tia Merce because it is her estate. Below her are all of her distinguished guests and relatives. One could argue that as time progresses, Pilar becomes a part of this group, because she is somewhat of a favorite of Tia Merce. According to the girls, however, Pilar and her children are below this group on the social hierarchy because they are not distinguished or rich, with the “peones” below them. In manyLatin American cultures, lighter skin is idealized because of a Eurocentric ideology commonly found. Pilar and Solita do have lighter skin because they are Spanish, but the girls argue that they are from a higher class because they are descendents of thecounts and royalty of Spain who immigrated to America, whereas Solita is a commoner and a refugee. Of course, this doesn’t really make much sense; the richwould have stayed where they were comfortable in Spain, while those seeking new opportunity would have gone to the New World. Regardless, the girls see Solita as lower class because she is not of the bourgeoisie and because her family has less money than theirs.When describing this hierarchy, Solita says “Everyone in El Topaz was trapped below or above somebody, with Tia Merce way up there at the very top” (192). She uses the word “trapped” because at El Topaz, you are defined by your social rank. Solita is a suitable playmate for the girls because she is of a lower statuson the estate and can thus be used and abused. Solita’s foil ball, for example meant a great deal to her. The girls want to use the foils to pick up dog feces so they can 3 “scatter these poops around the grown‐ups [they] don’t like” (90). When Solitarefuses to give them the foil ball that was so important to her grabbed her and tore it out of her hands, ruining it. The girls have no respect for Solita because she is there for them. The girls then say, “See what you’ve done, Solita. Half our supplies lost, after we waited forever. You’ve ruined a masterful plan” (91). They don’t evencare that they ruined one of her most prized possessions. In order to “survive” on the estate, Solita learned that “you had to stand and act as if you didn’t care” (91) even when you really did, because if she had cared, the situation would have blown up. The girls retaliated for this incident by not letting Solita touch (or even stand on) anything that’s “theirs.” Solita ends up wishing she had just given them her foil ball in the first place to save her the retaliation; it wasn’t worth it. It gets into Solita’s head that the girls were right because she was constantly abused. She starts to believe at this point in the story that it is not worth it to stand up for herself. She is put in a place where it is easier to go along with the girls, even if that means losing things that are important to you. If she had given the girls the foil ball in the first place, she would have saved herself much ridicule. There was noway to win in this situation; the easiest course of action for Solita to take would have been to give into the abuse and disrespect.As time goes by, Solita learns that to survive on the estate, she must really try to be “one of the four.” Psychologically, when one is placed in a position where they are constantly put down, they start to give in. In the Stanford Prison experiment, subjects were given either the role of a guard or a prisoner. The study had to be cutshort because the many of the “prisoners” had shown signs of extreme depression. 4 The researcher, Philip Zimbardo wrote, “We had created a dominating behavioralcontext whose power insidiously frayed at the seeming impervious value of compassion, fair play, and belief in just a word. The situation won, humanity lost” (Zimbardo). In this experiment, the subjects were given ranks, and after only a couple of days, the “guards” who had the authority because of their rank, felt they had the power to ridicule and abuse the “prisoners.” Essentially, Solita enters the estate with a lower status than the girls. Though the divide is not as great as that simulated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, Patricia, Graciela, and Gloria feel that they have power over Solita because she came into the ranch poorer and with less “interesting” parents. In the experiment, the “prisoners” stopped fighting back after a certain point because they had been psychologically conditioned to accept it. Incidents