Love In The Time Of Cholera

Key Facts

full title * Love in the Time of Cholera

author * Gabriel GarcнEscolasticaa Mбrquez

type of work * Novel

genre * Fiction, Romance

language * Spanish

early 1980\\\\\\\'s, bogota, colombia and mexico city, mexico *

date of first publication * 1985

publisher * Penguin Books

narrator * Omniscient

point of view * The narrator is continuously omniscient throughout the entirety of the novel and provides an objective view of each character through sequence of events, dialogue, and description.

tone * The narration is written much like poetry; the language is dense and somewhat formal, though it is beautified by lyricism and rich description. Despite its very formal use of language, the poetic tone is often injected with humor.

tense * Frequently shifts in tense from present to past; the book begins in the present, and makes references to a yet unknown past, which is explained later on in the book. In explaining the history of the first scenes, the author builds up to the final, current scene.

setting (time) * Turn of the century

setting (place) * Fabricated, tropical Caribbean port (\\\\\\\"District of the Viceroys\\\\\\\"), turn of the century

protagonist * Florentino Ariza and/or Fermina Daza

major conflict * Florentino Ariza suffers for more than fifty years without Fermina Daza, his first love, and tries to win her back after the death of her husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino.

rising action * Dr. Juvenal Urbino falls to his death on Pentecost Sunday, after trying to retrieve his pet parrot from the mango tree in the yard.

climax * After more than half a century, Florentino Ariza reiterates his love for Fermina Daza on the night of her husband\\\\\\\'s funeral.

falling action * Florentino and Fermina, both of whom are now elderly, fall back in love on a riverboat cruise.

themes * Love as an Emotional and Physical Plague; The Fear and Intolerance of Aging and Death; Suffering in the Name of Love

motifs * Birds; Flowers; Water

symbols * The Yellow Flag of Cholera; The \\\\\\\"Tiger;\\\\\\\" A Camellia Flower

foreshadowing * Jeremiah Saint-Amour\\\\\\\'s suicide, and the discovery of his secret lover foreshadows the narrative explanation of the love affair between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. Fermina\\\\\\\'s refusal of Florentino\\\\\\\'s camellias, \\\\\\\"flowers of promise,\\\\\\\" and the bird droppings that fall on her embroidery work when he asks for her permission to court her, foreshadow the anguish their tortured affair will entail.

Context

Born on March 6, 1928, Gabriel Garcнa Mбrquez has been acclaimed as one of the finest Latin-American writers. Shortly after his birth, his parents surrendered him to his maternal grandparents, who raised him until he turned eight years old. He grew up in Aractaca, Colombia, a town nearby to the Caribbean where banana cultivation was the prime source of income. His grandfather, a retired colonel, was a Liberal veteran of the War of a Thousand Days, and often told Mбrquez stories of the battlefield. His grandmother was also a storyteller, and told the young Mбrquez tales of folklore, legends, and ghosts.

The history behind Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s mother and father provided the writer a basis for Love in the Time of Cholera, particularly for the character of Florentino Ariza. Like Florentino Ariza, Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s father, Gabriel Eligio Gracia, was known as somewhat of a philanderer in the community, and was rumored to have fathered four illegitimate children. Gracia courts Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s mother, Luisa Santiaga Mбrquez Iguarбn, as Florentino Ariza courts Fermina Daza in the novel, but the girl\\\\\\\'s father, the Colonel, who is comparable to Lorenzo Daza\\\\\\\'s character, discourages the romance from developing, on account of Garcнa\\\\\\\'s tarnished reputation. Gбrcia woos his beloved Iguarбn with violin serenades, love poems, and innumerable letters, just as Florentino woos Fermina in the novel.

Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s own life also parallels the events and characters of Love in the Time of Cholera. Like Fermina Daza\\\\\\\'s character, Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s love interest and future wife had asked that he wait until she had graduated from primary school to ask for her hand in marriage. The novel also reflects Mбrquez\\\\\\\'s own life when Florentino and Fermina are forced apart; Mбrquez had to wait fourteen years before he could marry his beloved, and during those fourteen years, she promised, as do Florentino and Fermina, to stay true throughout.

Obeying his parent\\\\\\\'s request, Mбrquez studied law and journalism at the National University in Bogota and at the University of Cartagena, but dropped out after three years of schooling, inspired by Kafka\\\\\\\'s The Metamorphosis, for it was not law he wanted to practice, but the craft of writing. Beginning in 1948, he worked as a journalist, traveling abroad to various locations in Latin America and Europe. His journalism career, to which he dedicated over ten years, led him to an interest in film. During the 1960\\\\\\\'s, Mбrquez moved to Mexico City, and in 1979, founded a film school near Havanna, Cuba. In 1982, he returned to his homeland, Colombia; later that same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mбrquez is best known for his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was published in 1967. He is regarded as one of the central figures of the Magic Realism movement in literature during the late 1940\\\\\\\'s. The term \\\\\\\'Magic Realism\\\\\\\' was first used by the German critic Franz Roh in 1925 to classify a group of Post-Expressionist painters, but in the late 1940\\\\\\\'s, the term was adopted and applied to define a narrative tendency in Latin American writing. The literary movement, which lasted until 1970, can be defined as a preoccupation or interest in showing something common or daily into something unreal or strange.

Plot