Further study
Published in 1988, Love in the Time of Cholera is a love story. It is based in the "City of the Viceroys" which, from descriptions is probably around Cartagena. The story takes place from around 1880 to 1930.
Florentino Ariza is a young man who is popular with the ladies and works as a delivery boy for the post office, then one day he sees the beautiful Fermina Daza, and he is instantly in love. He spends his time pining over her.
They pour their hearts out in letters to each other until her father finds out and takes her away. Believing she has lost her romantic feelings for Florentino, her father brings her back home. However, when Fermina sees Florentino again, she decides to end their relationship.
While Fermina marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Florentino continues his love for her through his many relationships with other women. Finally, fifty-one years, nine months and four days after Fermina ended their relationship, he tells her he still loves her - at her husband's funeral.
"Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights."
Although Fermina is still mourning her husband, she and Florentino begin corresponding again. He visits her regularly, and they rekindle their lost passions, albeit in their older bodies. Florentino eventually convinces Fermina to join him on a cruise. When they stop at a port, Fermina becomes concerned about gossip if she is seen with a man, so Florentino instructs the captain to fly a yellow flag, signaling that the boat is infected with cholera.
Cholera is an extra character in this book. From the beginning, it is mentioned quite often. It flows through the lives of the characters and then allows them to be alone in the end.
Summary and Citations
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez begins with an ending. Dr. Juvenal Urbino del Calle is the first to arrive at the scene of a suicide. His chess friend, Jeremiah de Saint-Armor has killed himself and his dog with poison. Although the police inspector suspects the death may have been accidental, Dr. Urbino knows otherwise. His friend knew about chemicals, he was a photographer, so he wouldn't have made a mistake.
While making his usual rounds, Dr. Urbino was a creature of habit, he came across a note tacked to the door of Saint-Armor. The note read, "Come in without knocking and inform the police." Now, Dr. Urbino stood with the police inspector and the young doctor training in forensics. They see a chess board, and Dr. Urbino notices his friend would have lost in four moves.
While he is wondering why his friend would take his own life, the inspector finds a letter addressed to Dr. Urbino. As he reads it, his countenance changes. After tucking the eleven-page letter away into his pocket he tells the inspector the letter is Saint - Armor's last instructions. They believed him because he directed them to a loose floor tile where a strongbox was hidden. There was just enough money to handle the funeral and expenses.
Although Dr. Urbino never misses Mass, he decides that he will take the time to let some of the Caribbean refugees that Saint-Armor helped, know of his death. But, what he really wants to do is tell his wife about the letter.
The letter instructs Dr. Urbino to travel to a strange location. It is in the old slave quarters in town. An older woman answers the door. She is wearing a black dress and has a rose tucked behind her ear. There Dr. Urbino discovers the woman was Saint-Armor's lover for years. Urbino was surprised when he read it in the letter because he thought Saint-Armor's deformity would have made that impossible, (his legs were useless and he always used crutches to walk around). In fact, none of the nosy neighbors knew his cleaning lady was also his lover.
Saint-Armor asked her to remember him by wearing a rose. She also told Urbino that he had always planned to kill himself when he reached 60. He didn't want to grow old. The woman told Urbino that she had been with Saint-Armor last night when he wrote the letter. She was the other chess player. She promised her lover not to wallow in the morning. She will sell his things and spend the rest of her days there.
When Dr. Urbino arrives home, he sees his parrot has gotten loose, and the servants are trying to capture it. Urbino teaches the parrot to speak in French. He tried to lure the parrot down from the mango tree with soothing words in French, then Spanish and even Latin, to no avail. The bird is quite famous around the town because he has taught it to speak in fluent French and to recite biblical verses. In fact, Urbino had even taught it to do basic math.
For the last twenty years, he has given scads more attention to the parrot than to his wife and children. Everyone comes to watch the bird perform, even the president of the republic. But, unfortunately, the bird refuses to perform on demand for the two hours the president and his ministers are there. His wife, Fermina, tried to warn him.
When they were first married, she loved animals and they had quite a menagerie. But, one day one of their dogs contracted rabies, and all the animals had to be put down, except for a tortoise, which they managed to forget a lot. Urbino had forbidden more pets, stating that nothing could come in that couldn't speak. So, his wife brought home the parrot.
The parrot proved to be quite handy when thieves broke into the house, barking like a dog and shouting, "Stop thief!". From then on, Dr. Urbino took it upon himself to teach the parrot more words. But now, it's perched in the mango tree, with the servants trying to coax it down. They had opened the cage to clip its wings, and it had escaped. Dr. Urbino calls the fire department, of which he is president, to have them remove the bird.
Then he goes in to seek his wife. Fermina is still beautiful at seventy-two. They have just celebrated their golden (fifty years) anniversary. She's been noticing her husband's aging mind and body, but instead of thinking he's getting older, she thinks he's more childlike.
For the first thirty years of their marriage, they were still working through some of the kinks. They had a running argument every morning when he got up.
"The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast."
Urbino rose at dawn and woke his wife. She would fake being asleep, but fume that he woke her. One day the whole thing blew up. He complained there was no soap in the bathroom, she was supposed to have replaced it. She swore there had been soap.
Urbino stormed out and refused to return home until Fermina admitted there had been no soap. He stayed at the hospital, only coming home to change clothes. Finally, he suggests they both confess, even if it has to be before the Archbishop. She refuses and threatens to move back with her father.
Finally, Urbino offered a partial concession - he wouldn't admit there was soap, but he would come back home, though he would sleep in another room. After four months, he missed his feather bed and agreed that there had been soap.
This was their only major fight in fifty years.
When Urbino gives Fermina the letter Saint-Armor wrote, she tucks it into a drawer without reading it. She says that if her husband died she would act the same way his lover did. But, all Urbino can think about is how angry he is at his friend for keeping the fact that he was a fugitive, sentenced to life in prison for some terrible, but unnamed crime.
Later that evening, Dr. Urbino and his wife attend a twenty-fifth-anniversary party for a colleague of his. There he sees the young doctor that was there that day for the forensics of Saint-Armor. When the Archbishop asks Dr. Urbino what the cause of death was for Saint-Armor, he responds, "Gerontophobia" - the fear of growing old.
Soon, their son, Dr. Marcus Urbino arrives at the party with his wife and dessert, apologizing for being late. Someone told him his father's house was on fire because the fire department was there.
When Fermina and Urbino arrive home, the house is a shambles. The fire department trashed the place and still didn't catch the bird. While taking a wee rest, and contemplating growing old, he hears the parrot still perched in the mango tree.
"It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."
Every time he reaches it, the bird jumps to a higher branch. Urbino gets a ladder. When a servant comes in and sees the old man on the ladder, she shrieks.
He has just reached the bird when the ladder slips and he falls to his death. His dying words are to his wife, who rushed in when she heard the servant's cry. He says, "Only God knows how much I love you."
The whole city is devastated at his death, and three days of mourning are declared. Although he had worried about Fermina after his death, she is stoic. She maintains a private vigil for the three days with only close friends and family. During this time, she quietly removes her wedding ring and places it in his hand, telling him they will be together again someday.
Florentino Ariza, president of the River Company of the Caribbean, is hurt that Fermina doesn't recognize him at the wake. He has already organized the gathering and even caught the parrot. At seventy-six, he spends a lot of time trying to hide his age with formal, black suits.
After everyone leaves, she finally notices Florentino and is pleased to see him. Surprisingly, she had forgotten him. He tells her that he stayed behind to renew a vow he made to her fifty years ago to always love her.
""He had waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, and he was not going to waste it now that he had it within reach."
She is furious and kicks him out of her house, telling him to never return. Then she cries herself to sleep but is surprised the next morning to realize most of her tears were for Florentino.
Fermina may claim to have forgotten their love affair when they were teenagers, but Florentino hasn't. Florentino went to work at the age of ten when the support of his father stopped with his death. Florentino was the illegitimate son of his mother's casual boyfriend.
Florentino goes to work at the post office, where an old German man teaches him Morse code and how to play the violin. These skills coupled with his morose attitude makes him quite popular among the girls. Florentino enjoyed playing on the field, until the day he saw Fermina. Delivering a telegram to her father at her house, he spies her teaching her aunt to read and is enamored.
Every day he sits on a bench she and her aunt walk past, pretending to read. In his teenage passion, he writes a seventy-six page letter to Fermina, but can't get past her aunt to give it to her. When he asks advice from his mother, she suggests he first make friends with the aunt and destroy the letter. Unknown to them both, Fermina secretly wished that Florentino would give her a letter.
For years, he watches her from the park bench but is afraid to come up to her. Finally, he sees her alone and asks her if he can give her a letter. She says she must ask her father first, but when he sees her in a different seat, that will be the signal that the coast is clear to give her his letter. He does a few days later, but it's not the epic letter he wrote, just a note pledging his undying love and devotion.
Florentino makes himself ill waiting for her reply to his letter. Finally, he can't wait any longer and goes to her house. She has also been thinking of him but hasn't been able to answer his love letter. She promises to have an answer for him by the end of summer vacation. After her reply, the two teenagers exchange letters, but never meet face to face, for a year. His letters are of love, hers are the days happenings. Although her aunt knows her father would not approve, she doesn't stop the letters.
One night, Fermina hears a violin playing outside her window. It plays the same waltz over and over. When she looked, she saw that Florentino had written a song for her, "Crowned Goddess", which he played beneath her window. They arrange for him to play in other locations so she can hear the song without anyone knowing it is for her.
Once, Florentino was arrested as a spy because the authorities believed the waltz contained hidden messages. He spent three nights in jail, considering himself a martyr for love.
After two years of letters, Florentino proposes. But, Fermina is unsure. She asks for time to think about it. Her aunt advises her to accept, she tells her that she will regret it someday if she doesn't. Finally, she accepts, if he won't make her eat eggplant. Florentino's mother agrees to the marriage on two conditions; they must keep their engagement a secret and it must be long. Also, they must find out more about her father. They agree.
While Fermina goes back to the convent and school, Florentino continues working at the post office. His boss leaves the post office and takes over a transient hotel, giving Florentino a free room. There Florentino spurns the advances of the prostitutes and other women who come to the hotel. He is saving his virginity for Fermina.
The two continue to exchange letters, and one day the Mother Superior finds one. When Fermina refuses to tell her who her secret lover is, she is expelled. Her father is furious. He searches her room, finds the letters and ships her aunt back home. In rebellion, Fermina locks herself in her room and refuses to eat. When her father confronts her, she holds a knife to her throat until he relents.
Fermina's father visited Florentino and threatened to shoot him unless he stops seeing his daughter. Florentino told him he would die for love, so her father took her away on a long trip, hoping she would forget Florentino. Fermina was miserable until she discovered that Florentino has been sending telegraphs to her. Now they continue their communication. Thinking she is finally over Florentino, her father takes her back home.
However, when Florentino saw her again in the marketplace, Fermina seemed much more mature. She was now seventeen, managing the household, and, though she had intended to buy ink to write to him, upon seeing Florentino, she became disenchanted.
"She had never imagined that her first sight of him after so many years would be so overwhelming, but when the time came, she could not deny the overwhelming truth: he was not the man she had loved."
She decided to end their relationship and forget him. She sent Florintino a letter, explaining that after seeing him in the market, she realized their love wasn't real, and she returned his letters and gifts.
Florentino was devastated. Even though his mother tried to plead his case, Fermina still refused to see him - until fifty years later at her husband's wake.
"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."
Now, we go to the story of Dr. Juvenal Urbino del Calle, Fermina's husband. They meet when he was twenty-eight and the most eligible bachelor in the town. He has just returned home from Paris and is saddened to see what the cholera epidemic has done. His own family has been hit by the disease with the death of his father.
As a doctor and a civic leader like his father before him, Urbino lobbied for better sanitation practices to combat the spread of cholera. He first met Fermina when he was called to examine her for cholera. Her father, keen on a match between them, encouraged the visit.
The next day, he goes back to check on her progress and she is rude to him. Her father insists she apologizes and invites Urbino in for coffee and a drink. Although he never touches either, he accepts, getting slightly tipsy. When he gets home, his mother tells him that because of his neglect a patient died.
Urbino continues to pursue Fermina, but, since her father is for the match, she is against it, she continues to be cold to Urbino. Undeterred, he keeps coming around and her father teaches him to play chess, starting a lifetime obsession. Although Fermina plays with his affections a lot, she finally agrees to let Urbino speak to her father about marriage.
After learning about her upcoming marriage, Florentino tries one last time. He serenades her with his violin and her song he wrote. She doesn't acknowledge him. Devastated, Florentino's mother arranged for him to take a job at a distant telegraph office. On the ship that he takes to his new life, he is seduced by an older woman.
Completely heartbroken, because of Fermina, Florentino decides not to take the job and goes back home, only to learn Fermina and her new husband have left on their honeymoon.
Florentino's mother thinks he should have a romance with a young widow, so she asks her to stay in his room when her house is destroyed. He planed to sleep on the floor, but she seduced him. Their romance carried on for a few months, but then she decided to sleep with other men and thanked him for making her a whore. Florentino thinks the best way to survive his broken heart is to have lots of affairs. So, he fills up notebooks and in fifty years has had six hundred and twenty-two serious relationships.
Even though he has no shortage of women, he still pines for Fermina, and when she returns six months pregnant he thinks she is more beautiful than ever. He vows to make himself worthy of her and to wait for her husband's death.
"He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past."
Marriage is not what Fermina hoped it would be. She is terrified of losing her virginity, but afterward wonders why it is taking her so long to get pregnant. When she does, she thinks she has everything she could want. Urbino did not marry Fermina because he loved her. He was drawn to her because of her haughty manner. But, he hopes he will grow to love her.
Florentino gets a job in his uncle's company and works his way up the ranks. Meanwhile, he sells his services as a poet. He is a romantic, and picks up women, having affairs with a few of them. The book goes on to describe some of his liaisons with his "free flying birds".
Meanwhile, Fermina is unhappy. She knows her husband doesn't love her, and she must live with her mother in law, who makes nothing but eggplant. She also insists Fermina learn to play the harp. Some of the shady business dealings of Fermina's father come out, but Urbino uses his influence to end the rumors and send her father away. Then he takes his wife and baby on a vacation to Europe to try and save their marriage.
Florentino starts an affair with a young married woman, and when her husband finds out, he kills her. Soon, his mother dies and is buried in the same cemetery the married woman was. Florentino plants roses on both their graves and the roses spread. The cemetery is renamed the Cemetery of Roses.
While Florentino is picking up his stalking of Fermina, she has left to stay with her cousin in the country after discovering her husband's affair. Urbino ends his affair and then brings his wife home. They continue their marriage, though still not really happy.
When Florentino heard of Urbino's death, he is involved in an affair with a fourteen-year-old girl. Immediately, he rushed to Fermina's side to declare his love, and we are back to the beginning of the book.
After anxiously waiting for an answer from Fermina for two weeks, he finally finds a note from her in a puddle at his front door. The letter is angry, and when Florentino answers it he writes with a stoic flair. They begin to communicate again through letters, and this is just about the day's happenings. He breaks it off with his fourteen-year-old lover, telling her he is going to get married. She is angry and tells him old people don't marry.
Fermina asks one of her friends what she thinks about him and she relays the common gossip that he is never seen with a woman, so everyone assumes he picks up boys at the docks. For a year they correspond, then after not writing for two weeks, he shows up at her house and continues to visit once a week.
Florentino has lunch with Fermina's son who thanks him for keeping his mother company, but her daughter thinks it's ridiculous. So she tells her daughter to leave. Florentine falls and hurts his ankle. When Florentino is well he persuades Fermina to go on a cruise with him. While they are there, she cries a lot and finally says goodbye to her memories of her husband.
Florentino, meanwhile, receives word that the fourteen-year-old girl he had ended things with has committed suicide. Despite this, he continues the journey with Fermina.
Finally, after fifty years, Florentino and Fermina were together. When the boat docks, Fermina sees people she recognizes preparing to board and becomes concerned about the potential scandal. Florentino, being the president of the riverboat company, orders the captain to turn away all the passengers waiting to board. He instructs the captain to raise the yellow quarantine flag, signaling that the boat is infected with cholera.
The novel ends with Florentino, Fermina, the captain, and his lover aboard the boat, sailing down the river with the cholera flag flying, choosing to live in their own world, free from societal judgment.
"Together they had overcome the abyss, and nothing was more difficult than that: to live without knowing whether it was better to be alive or dead."
Further study
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