Love in the Time of Cholera Summary

Gabriel García Márquez.

Love in the Time of Cholera opens on the day of Dr. Juvenal Urbino's death. He is a highly
successful doctor who has done much for the Caribbean city in which he lives, so his death has a great
effect on the city. The two who are most affected are Fermina Daza, his widow, and Florentino Ariza, the
man who has been waiting for him to die for fifty-one years. Florentino was Fermina's first love; as
teenagers, over a period of four years, they corresponded almost daily by mail, and they were engaged
for most of that time. But after returning from a trip that her father made her take in order to forget
Florentino, Fermina found that she had no feelings for him, and her love for him was just an illusion.
Florentino became desperate, and when he found out that Fermina was going to marry Dr. Juvenal
Urbino, he vowed to become as successful as he could while waiting for Dr. Urbino to die, so that he
could win back Fermina when the time came.

Following his plan, Florentino gets a job in his dead father's riverboat company. Thanks to his
undying dedication to Fermina and the help of his friend Leona, he is able to rise to the top. He uses
sexual love to soften his pain over Fermina, and over his lifetime he has 622 long-term love affairs. But
through all of this he never forgets Fermina, becoming more and more disturbed as he sees himself and
Fermina aging, afraid that he will run out of time. Meanwhile, Dr. Urbino and Fermina build a
comfortable marriage. They understand each other perfectly and depend on each other totally, but their
love is not perfect. Fermina does not like the perfection necessary in the housekeeping and is too proud
ever to admit culpability. In addition, Dr. Urbino falls in love with a patient for a dizzy four months, and
he cannot live with his guilt. They are happy for the most part--and certainly look happy to the public.
Fermina thus is very distraught when he dies. When Florentino approaches her at the vigil for Dr. Urbino
and declares his undying love, she is disgusted and throws him out.

Florentino, however, has waited too long to give up that easily. He despairs for weeks until he
receives a letter from Fermina filled with hate and anger. He takes this as an opportunity to write back
to her, so he begins to write letters which are impersonal musings on life, love, aging, and death, unlike
anything he has written before. Fermina is moved by them, so she does not send them back. When she
sees him at the memorial Mass on the anniversary of her husband's death, she thanks him for being
there.

Over the next year, Florentino and Fermina slowly build a friendship via weekly visits and
frequent letters. After a few personal disasters leave Fermina desperate for escape, Florentino proposes
that they go on a riverboat trip. She agrees, and they embark on the trip together. While on the boat,
their relationship builds slowly, but during a week when the boat has run out of fuel and is stuck
unmoving in the extreme heat, they find love.

When the boat reaches its last stop, Fermina is dismayed to recognize old friends boarding the
boat. She is desperate not to be seen, so Florentino speaks to the captain, and they decide to fly a
yellow flag that warns of cholera on board--this will make them free to travel home in peace. The trip
back is wonderful, but they both dread arrival as if it is a kind of death. They talk to the captain again,
and together they decide that they will never return--they will continue sailing on their riverboat with
their yellow flag waving forever.
A. BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (American Spanish: 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014)
was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo
[ˈɡaβo] or Gabito [ɡaˈβito] throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of
the 20th century and one of the best in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt
International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.[2] He pursued a self-directed
education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no
inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics.

A. SETTING

The story occurs mainly in an unnamed port city somewhere near the Caribbean Sea and the
Magdalena River. Given that Rafael Núñez is mentioned as the "author of the national anthem", the
country is likely Colombia. While the city remains unnamed throughout the novel, descriptions and
names of places suggest it is based on Cartagena with the addition of the Magdalena River, which meets
the sea at the nearby city of Barranquilla. The fictional city is divided into such sections as "The District
of the Viceroys" and "The Arcade of the Scribes." The novel takes place approximately during the half
century between 1880 and 1930. The city's "steamy and sleepy streets, rat-infested sewers, old slave
quarter, decaying colonial architecture, and multifarious inhabitants" are mentioned variously in the
text and mingle amid the lives of the characters. Locations within the story include:

The house Fermina shares with her husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino.
The "transient hotel" where Florentino Ariza stays for a brief time.
Ariza's office at the river company.
The Arcade of the Scribes.
The Magdalena River.

C. CHARACTERIZATION

Lorenzo Daza – Fermina Daza's father, a mule driver; he despised Florentino and forced him to stop
meeting Fermina. He is revealed to have been involved in some illicit businesses to build his fortune.

Jeremiah de Saint-Amour – The man whose suicide is introduced as the opening to the novel; a
photographer and chess-player.

Aunt Escolástica – The woman who attempts to aid Fermina in her early romance with Florentino by
delivering their letters for them. She is ultimately sent away by Lorenzo Daza for this.

Tránsito Ariza – Florentino's mother.

Hildebranda Sánchez – Fermina's cousin.

Miss Barbara Lynch – The woman with whom Urbino confesses having had an affair, the only one during
his long marriage.
Leona Cassiani – She starts out as the "personal assistant" to Uncle Leo XII at the R.C.C., the company
which Florentino eventually controls. At one point, it is revealed that the two share a deep respect,
possibly even love, for each other, but will never actually be together. She has a maternal love for him as
a result of his "charity" in rescuing her from the streets and giving her a job.

Diego Samaritano – The captain of the riverboat on which Fermina and Florentino ride at the end of the
novel.

América Vicuña – The fourteen-year-old girl who towards the end of the novel is sent to live with
Florentino; he is her guardian while she is in school. They have a sexual relationship, and after being
rejected by Florentino and failing her exams, she kills herself. Her suicide illustrates the selfish nature of
Florentino's love for Fermina.

D. PLOT

The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina
fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's
Aunt Escolástica. They exchange several love letters. However, once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza,
finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Florentino immediately. When she
refuses, he and his daughter move in with his deceased wife's family in another city. Regardless of the
distance, Fermina and Florentino continue to communicate via telegraph. However, upon her return,
Fermina realizes that her relationship with Florentino was nothing but a dream since they are practically
strangers; she breaks off her engagement to Florentino and returns all his letters.

A young and accomplished national hero, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina and begins to court
her. Despite her initial dislike of Urbino, Fermina gives in to her father's persuasion and the security and
wealth Urbino offers, and they wed. Urbino is a medical doctor devoted to science, modernity, and
"order and progress". He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public
works. He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who greatly values his importance and
reputation in society. He is a herald of progress and modernization.[1]

Even after Fermina's engagement and marriage, Florentino swore to stay faithful and wait for
her. However, his promiscuity gets the better of him. Even with all the women he is with, he makes sure
that Fermina will never find out. Meanwhile, Fermina and Urbino grow old together, going through
happy years and unhappy ones and experiencing all the reality of marriage. At an elderly age, Urbino
attempts to get his pet parrot out of his mango tree, only to fall off the ladder he was standing on and
die. After the funeral, Florentino proclaims his love for Fermina once again and tells her he has stayed
faithful to her all these years. Hesitant at first because she is only recently widowed, and finds his
advances untoward, Fermina eventually gives him a second chance. They attempt a life together, having
lived two lives separately for over five decades.

Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to
Fermina many years into their marriage. Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino's love for
Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino's was, it also complicates Florentino's devotion by
cataloging his many trysts as well as a few potentially genuine loves. By the end of the book, Fermina
comes to recognize Florentino's wisdom and maturity, and their love is allowed to blossom during their
old age.

E. POINT OF VIEW

Third Person (omniscient) – the narrator is continuously omniscient throughout the novel. The
narrator changes from past to present rather changing from one character’s point of view to an other’s.
The language used is somewhat similar to poetry. It is dense and very formal. The book begins in the
present, making reference to an unknown past that is later explained and finally the tense shifts back to
present.

F. CONFLICT

The major conflict in Love of the Time of Cholera is often thought to be the conflict between the
protagonist Florentino Ariza and his undying love for Fermina Daza and the suffering this causes him
throughout his entire life and novel.

G. CLIMAX

Romantic: After waiting for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights,
Florentino finally achieves once more the reciprocated love of Fermina; Fermina is now happy with the
love that she lost when she was young.

Fifty decades in marriage, Dr. Urbino passes away and Florentino seizes the opportunity to admit his
everlasting love towards Fermina, and aims to rekindle their love that they had when they were young.

H. THEME

The Fear and Intolerance of Aging and Death - Aging and death are prominent concepts which
first emerge upon the death of Jeremiah Saint-Amour and are expanded throughout the novel. Dr.
Juvenal Urbino realizes, upon seeing Saint-Amour's body, that death is not a "permanent probability," as
he has always imagined, but, for the first time in his long life, truly and fully understands that death is an
actual, irreversible, and immediate destiny.

Suffering in the Name of Love - Throughout the fifty-one years, nine months, and four days that
Florentino is apart from his beloved Fermina, he seems to revel in the pain his unrequited love inflicts.
I. STYLE

Circular, Repetitive, Complex, Imaginative, Humorous, Rich, Foreboding

You may have noticed that the plot of this story doesn't progress in a linear fashion. In fact,
García Márquez starts us off pretty near the end of our protagonists' lives, and then spends most of the
book filling us in on the backstory. We're left with the feeling that this is all being narrated from some
distant point in the future, by someone who keeps getting sidetracked, getting ahead of himself, or
remembering an important bit that he left out a few chapters back. The result is a style that's circular,
often repetitive, and complex – yet told with such humor and richness of detail that we don't mind
hearing any of it out of order or more than once.

The narrator's tendency to get ahead of himself also often leaves us with a sense of foreboding,
especially because most of the things that he hints will happen in the future involve death and
destruction. He's always sneaking little phrases in, like "until the day of his death" (3.56), that remind us
not only that the characters are mortal, but that he knows the exact circumstances of how they'll meet
their end.