TOW #11 - Eat, Pray, Love (First Half)

The Italian have a saying that goes: l'arte d'arrangiarsi - the art of making something out of nothing. In her story, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert was able to discover this art for herself.  After a horrible divorce and several bouts of severe depression and heartbreak, Gilbert set out for a trip to Italy, India, and Indonesia.  In Italy she hoped to rediscover passion and pleasure, in India, devotion and prayer, and finally in Indonesia, the happy medium between the two.  The story follows Gilbert's own journey of healing, and the pilgrimage she took to rediscover herself.  Through her use of fitting dialect and juxtaposition between the two sides of herself, Gilbert reveals the hardships, as well as triumphs, that she experienced during her year of rediscovery.  The first half of the book follows Gilbert through her journey in Italy.  Here, she sets out to learn the beautiful language of Italian as well as eat the most luxurious and delicious food she can imagine.  Throughout her telling of this little part of her travels, Gilbert uses much Italian to convey the emotions she feels.  Many of her anecdotes begin with an Italian word she learned that day, and many of the revelations she makes about herself and her life come from Italian words and phrases.  In her beginning days in Italy, Gilbert starts to discover little gardens and hidden places all over the city of Rome.  One day, she buys a poetry book with English on one side and Italian on the other.  After discovering a wonderfully hidden garden with a small fountain in the middle, Gilbert opens the book she bought and reads a line. "Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana...From the center of my life, there came a great fountain" (39). Not only is this moment chill inducing, it includes the actual language that Gilbert fell in love with during her journey, and brings the reader even closer to the experiences she had.  Gilbert also is able to juxtapose the two sides of herself that are shown throughout the story.  On the one hand, she is a confident, smart, loving, funny 30-something with a great life.  On the other hand though, Gilbert is depressed, clingy, stubborn, insecure and lonely.  Throughout her anecdotes, the author is also able to weave the opposing tales of her two sides into everything she does.  When her depression makes an appearance, she doesn't shy away from it and instead addresses the issue with her audience.  In this way, Gilbert is a very open and relatable author, and the triumphs and revelations she makes throughout the story become all the more important to her readers.