Love In The Time of Cholera Analysis Paper

Love in the Time of Cholera In the novel, Love in the Time of Cholera written by Gabriel García Márquez, there are many symbols to represent, literally, love in the time of cholera. These symbols are flowers, birds, and rain. Márquez uses these similar terms to describe the effects of love and cholera throughout the novel by using all of those symbols ultimately represent or foreshadow anguish and unfortunate disasters that Cholera can bring. Cholera was a contagious disease affecting most of the population in where the story takes place. Though, this book is heavily centered on the disease and love, the author is primarily focusing on literal “lovesickness”. One generally does not associate sweet and pure love with diarrhea, infections, or a painful death, which is why cholera is used to depict the lovesickness in this novel. Cholera is a disease, like falling in love (lovesickness), drives you crazy, you suffer, and you could die without ever being content with the life you’ve had so far. An example of lovesickness in the novel, is when Florentino is driven crazy by falling in love with Fermina. Instead of being a physical illness like cholera, lovesickness is a mental disease. Florentino was so crazy in love with Fermina,the only way he could deal with this love was to eat flowers. Flowers represent the anguish of love and further suffering.Though flowers represented hope and love for Florentino, it ultimately lead to disaster of suffering, just like how cholera suddenly ends a life. It was as if Fermina was the flower petals, and Florentino consumed the flower petals to consume all the affection and rejection he was receiving from Fermina. Until Fermina can be with him, the only thing that Florentino has of Fermina are those flower petals he is consuming. Florentino also suffers from physical pains of lovesickness. The flower petals he consumes make him so violently ill, that his mother thought he had cholera, which is ironic considering the parallel of