Custom «The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake » Essay Paper Sample

Introduction

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is a story about Rose Edelstein, a young girl who during her ninth birthday discovers that she has the talent to taste peoples' deepest secrets and emotions by tasting the food they prepare.  This changes her perception on worlds and people living in the world as she does not have the power to make global impact or at least anything impressive. The story is convoluted   with the author representing the complexity of nuclear family, the despair and joy that entails food preparation and the personal journey of a young girl towards discovering her family and herself.

Plot

Conflict-raising action and conflict- falling action

Rose Edelstein's magical talent is the center of the story. During her ninth birthday she discovers that she is able to taste deep emotions of her mother by just tasting lemon cake which her mother baked.  Beneath the spiritedly exterior of her loving mother, is deep sadness. This becomes the stating point of her talents and thereafter she relate whatever she eats with the emotions of the  people who made it  after eating candy bar she tastes the emptiness of the factory and  the feeling of loss the  French chef experiences.  Discovery of this magical talent raises conflict between her inner self and her family and world around her. As she struggles with her annoyance talent through adolescence, shuffling her food around during dinner and eating from vending machine, she tries to comprehend the cause of her mother's desperate state and the cause of her family fall apart.

Her magical talent bestows her secrete knowledge that all families hid including the life of her mother outside the home, detachment of her father and her brother's clash with the world.  Nevertheless, as the young girl grows up she learns more on how to control the magical talent and she becomes conscious that the talent can not adequately detect some secrets. Certainly, it is   significantly difficult to love people fully knowing too much about them. Although it is sad, wise, and funny and heart breaking, Bender clearly authenticates it.  By the end of the story, the magical talent becomes a point of family unity and source of identity.

Characterization

The characters in the story are dynamic. Typically, dynamic characters promise to take the audience of the story on journey throughout the story.  Since characters in any given story act out to fulfillment and resolution issues of human needs them, they certainly hold their audience attention. Therefore, characters have issue that arises from the promise of the story thus need to be introduced only when they are ripe. The main issues in the Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake are food, family issues and family dynamics thus the story's promise.  When introducing Rose, the author uses the magical talent to suggest that she is ripe for the issues the author sets Rose as protagonists and her mother, father and brother as antagonists. The characters are set in an environment   designed to force them to act. For example, Rose can not continue seeing how desperate her mother and brother are neither can she sit and watch her family fall apart. Additionally, she can not live without eating thus she is forced to act. Being jobless and desperate, Rose's mother is forced engage in the project including the new carpentry job which opens up an affair.

Bender presents Rose as an easy character that every reader likes the author develops her voice well. The use of Rose's day to day life shows her experience. Joseph, Rose's brother also has strange abilities. The author introduces him prior to his disappearance which takes the second half of the story creating suspense to the plot. The author presents Joseph appealingly flat yet much of the novel and rose's development is not independent of him. Generally, the characters in the novel shy away from full enragement with the world surrounding them. The story ends very facts without sufficient closure to the way characters acted. The author could have stretched interpretation on the detrimental effects of secretes and familial unhappiness on individuals and how many generations can be haunted by unhappiness. The novel is also not convincing on individual character level. The author seems uncertain of the characters and the ideas intrinsic in the organization to ensure a satisfying engagement of either the ideas or character. 

Theme

The theme of this story is food and family issues and dynamics. The author uses magical talent of detecting people's deep emotions and characters who are strangely discourteous of the magic in the story as though they are in a world alternate from the real world yet they are not. The author uses real people with extraordinary insights and abilities living in the real world to show how a cake  that is known to be sweet and to be  a great excitement  particularly  for  people celebrating birthdays does not  taste sweet but  rather  tastes the emotion of her mother  the baker. In the real world, there are many families that are torn apart and whose members are deeply filled with sadness or are very desperate and lonely. Through the magical talent, the reader learns about the loss the French chef feels following the emptiness of the candy bar factory. While the magical ability is accurse to Rose, it is also a gift through which she learns secretes of her family and family members and through which she unites it.

Learning the deep hidden emotion helps her to response appropriately and at the right time. She hugs her mother just exactly when she needs one, learns about her brother's clash with the world and his father's detachment. The talent creates an entry through which she relates with her father. Moreover, it creates a sense of empathy in Rose for her indigenous and depressed but rather. Generally, the story is made magical by the characters dynamic and not the magic. As the one reads the novel it tend to convince that Rose's family is a fate. However, When Rose starts learning more about her magical a talent, herself and her family; she becomes the adhesive that holds the family together maintaining deep connections among them despite the past emotional differences. Under the unusual, idiosyncratic elements of the dark story and fantasy, the story is encouraging. The novel refreshes and creates anew view of the world.  

Conclusion     

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a story about Rose Edelstein, a young girl who during her ninth birthday discovers her magical talent of taste peoples' deepest secrets and emotions by just tasting the food they prepare. Although at first she considers this talent a curse as it changes her perception to the world band people living the world she later considers it as a gift through which she learns more about her family and through which she unites it. This presents the conflict raising and conflict falling actions as the plot, food and family uses and dynamics as theme. The characters are introduced just when they are ripe acting out to fulfillment and resolution issues of human needs. However, the character in the novel shies away from full enragement with the world surrounding them. The author also seems uncertain of the characters and the ideas intrinsic in the organization to ensure a satisfying engagement of either the ideas or character.