Love in the Time of Cholera

What’s love got to do with it?

Everybody remembers the first person they ever loved, even if they look back on it now and realize that it was not true love. Love appears in many different ways. It can be created or it can just happen. However it appears, it is true that love does exist. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera explores the concepts of love and how they affect people’s lives. Through examining the influence of family, concepts of marriage, ideas of fidelity, and impact of age, it is evident that love exist but it is more realized with the experience of age rather than the passion of youth.

Lorenzo Daza has a strong influence over his daughter, Fermina. When he saw that Fermina was on the verge of falling in love for the first time at a young age, he would stop at nothing to put an end to it. At first he tries to convince Fermina that she is wrong about her feelings, that love at her age is just an illusion. Fermina will not listen though. She is quickly falling for Florentino. When Lorenzo finds out that his sister, Escolastica Daza, was helping Fermina with her affair, he has her sent away forever, even though she did not have a penny to her name. After all this effort, he realized he could not change Fermina’s mind. At that point he decided to go to the source. He threatened Florentino with a gun, telling him to stay away from his daughter.

‘Don’t force me to shoot you,’ he said.

Florentino Ariza felt his intestines filling with cold froth. But his voice did not tremble because he felt himself illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

‘Shoot me,’ he said, with his hand on his chest. ‘There is no greater glory than to die for love’ (82).

Obviously convincing Florentino to stay away from Fermina was a lost cause. The last resort was to take Fermina away on “the journey that would make her forget” (82). For two years Fermina was taken away from Florentino. Although they kept in touch, the trip...