Love in the Time of Cholera

 In Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the plot seems to be deeply entwined with cholera, the actual sickness, but I think that cholera is really just a symbol for lovesickness; love as a negative thing, that inspires negative actions. He's saying that love is an emotional and physical illness.

When Florentino Ariza's ex's husband dies of cholera, he sees his chance. Though it is tens of years after he and Fermina Daza were together, and now she is an old widow, he wants her back. The characters (really just Florentino Ariza) have symptoms of lovesickness that are similiar to the symptoms of cholera in that he's being plagued by it. In chapter two, he vomits out flowers just so he can remember his old girlfriend. That is physically injuring and unsafe. He also drinks cologne in the same chapter so that he can remind himself of her. His love(sickness) is physically hurting him.

He is also becoming slightly crazy, psychologically, about her (Fermina Daza.) His love is obsessive and he can't let go. I think that not being able to let go of a relationship decades after it's over, when your ex is married, and you're both really old labels you as psychologically off the edge. Florentino is mentally disturbed because he is so in love. Later on in the book, Florentino demands that the captain guy on a shipmake an announcement that there is cholera on the boat, even though there is not. There kind of is sickness on the ship though, because Florentino is aboard.

 Fermina Daza was the one Florentino was going to all this trouble for.Her husband, Dr. Urbino, had died, leaving her their grown kids. I think its kind of ironic that a doctor dies of a disease. Perhaps it wasn't the actual diease though. Perhaps, if you dig very deep down into Marquez's very deep brain, he was metaphorically saying that it was Florentino Ariza's lovesickness that killed him. He was meant to die.

I think that Marquez may not be a huge believer in love all the time. He writes as if he believes that love is dangerous, and not really a good thing. He thinks that love is like cholera-- destructive, inside and out; a plague.