Love in a Time of Cholera - Essay Example

ts epidemics of cholera, and to the final riverboat scene where a flag warns that there are cholera victims on board when in fact two pensioners are enjoying their delayed honeymoon. The novel opens with a suicide. Jeremiah de Saint Amour could not bear the idea of ageing; he suffered from “gerontophobia” and had sworn “I will never grow old”. This hypnotic novel explores the dilemmas of ageing through a plot of unrequited love; a man, Florentino Ariza, waiting fifty-one years, nine months and four days for his rival to die in order to reaffirm his love for his sweetheart, Fermina Daza.

The novelty of this theme is striking, almost implausible. Florentino Arizas head is filled with the illusions read of in sentimental poems. His patience is rewarded at the end when he finally beds his aged beloved in a riverboat. Due to the suggestive prose, the reader tends to read the novel as a romance, a tale of timeless love that transcends age and time, a love that emerges victorious in the end. “However, disguised beneath the surface of the melodramatic plot lies a critical, sometimes satiric examination of many of the elements that appear to contribute to the novels charm, but actually undercut much of its romanticism and sentimentality.

” (Jeffrey M. Lilburn. Love in the Time of Cholera: Deep Themes of the Popular Conceptions of Love.) Despite counterpointing of characters and themes, Garcia Marquez, a friend of Fidel Castro, refuses to judge his characters or condemn them. He is far more subtle, and generous. The way he situates his protagonist is exemplified when the patient Florentino Ariza finally climbs into a riverboat bed with his beloved and receives a telegram saying that his god-daughter has killed herself. He seduced America Vicufia as a child, and they became lovers.

He then broke off the relationship without ever realizing how much in love with him, despite his age, the school-girl was. She had found his secret love letters to Fermina Daza, and