Love in the Time of Cholera

Study Guide

Cole Davis

Character List
America Vicuna The only lover Florentino still sleeps with regularly at the time of Juvenal Urbino's death, America is a fourteen-year-old blood relative of Florentino, who is under his care while attending boarding school in his city. She falls deeply in love with him and eventually commits suicide after realizing that he has stopped sleeping with her because he is in love with Fermina. Aminta Deschamps Dr. Lacides Olivella's wife, Aminta plans and leads the silver anniversary party for her husband that is almost ruined with rain, but which she salvages. Ausencia Santander Ausencia Santander is a grandmother whom Florentino sleeps with and who ruins his overly simple theories on sexual capacity as based on appearance. Barbara Lynch The only daughter of a black Protestant minister, Barbara is a onetime patient of Dr. Urbino's for whom he falls head over heels and whom he sees almost every day for four months. He is completely obsessed with her during that time and promises her many things, and he only ends the affair when he finds out that Fermina has discovered it. Captain Diego Samaritano Diego Samaritano is the riverboat captain on the New Fidelity, the boat on which Florentino and Fermina spend the end of their lives. He is especially fond of manatees. Digna Pardo An old servant of the Urbino's, Digna Pardo witnesses Juvenal Urbino's ignominious death. Dona Blanca de Urbino Juvenal Urbino's mother, Dona Blanca never recovers from her husband's death. She becomes permanently depressed and cruel, and she makes the early years of Fermina's marriage very unhappy. Escolastica Daza Lorenzo's unmarried sister, she raises Fermina after the death of her mother, until Lorenzo sends her away and cuts off his support as a punishment for her complicity in Fermina's relationship with Florentino. According to the narrator, her greatest virtues are an instinct for life and a

vocation for complicity. She eventually dies in a leprosarium; Fermina never completely forgives her father for sending her away. Euclides One of the skilled diver boys who live by the water, Euclides agrees to treasure hunt with Florentino, but instead cons him into believing there really is treasure where there is none. He disappears permanently after Transito informs Florentino that he is being scammed. Fermina Daza Dr. Urbino's wife--and the first and last love of Florentino Ariza. Fermina Daza is headstrong, prideful, passionate and often angry. She is also extremely well-respected in the city for her beauty, grace, and decency, even in the closed ranks of the upper-class into which she marries. After Urbino's death she realizes that the majority of her life has been defined by being his wife, and she finds an independence that allows her to fall in love with Florentino Ariza. Florentino Ariza Florentino is a man obsessed by love his whole life, obsessed specifically by his love for Fermina Daza for over fifty-one years. He is Fermina's first love, but she rejects him after a secret engagement and correspondence over her teenage years, and he spends his life waiting for her husband to die--while carrying on many love affairs. He is a poet, the president of the River Company of the Caribbean, and lover of all sentimental literature about love. Sister Franca de la Luz The Superior of the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, Sister Franca de la Luz is responsible for expelling Fermina. She later approaches Fermina to persuade her to listen to Dr. Urbino's suit for her hand. Gala Placidia Gala Placidia is Lorenzo Daza's servant, who comes back to them after their long absence and helps Fermina reopen the house. She also is sent by Fermina to retrieve all of the letters and tokens she sent Florentino after Fermina rejected him. Hildebranda Sanchez Fermina's cousin and lifelong friend, Hildebranda also suffers from forbidden love-for a married man who is twenty years her senior. She never fully recovers, even after she has married another man. She aids Fermina with her continued communications with Florentino on their trip, and she teaches her a lot about freedom and fun. Jeremiah de Saint-Amour

A good friend of Juvenal Urbino and a great chess player, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour is known to all as an Antillean refugee, disabled war veteran, and photographer of children. Only after his death, from his suicide note, does Urbino learn that he was actually a fugitive from Cayenne, escaping a life sentence for an unspeakably horrible crime. He kills himself with cyanide at the opening of the novel because he had decided long ago that he would not live into the indecency of old age. He is survived by his long-term mistress, whom Urbino also did not know about until Saint-Amour's death. Dr. Juvenal Urbino A great patron of his Caribbean city, Juvenal Urbino is a renowned doctor and famous member of a noble family. He is the husband of Fermina Daza, whom he marries for practical and not emotional reasons, although he comes to love her deeply. He is an extremely meticulous man who loves music and hates animals, who expects a perfectly run household, and who does not retire before his death at 81, which occurs when he falls from a ladder while trying to retrieve his parrot from a tree. Dr. Lacides Olivella Juvenal Urbino's beloved disciple, Dr. Olivella is a well-preserved man of fifty with a rather effeminate air. He is celebrating his silver anniversary as a doctor on the day of Juvenal Urbino's death. Don Leo XII Loayza Florentino's paternal uncle, Don Leo gets him started in the shipping business, and he provides for Transito after Don Pius fails to--and then dies. His favorite pastime is singing at funerals, and his life goal is to break glass with his voice. He is a self-described "poor man with money." Leona Cassiana The true woman of Florentino's life, although neither of them ever knows it, Leona is responsible for pushing Florentino to the top of his company, and she follows him up but never surpasses him. Florentino makes multiple attempts to sleep with her, but while she would have accepted at one point, she is too late and sees him as a son. She remains a lifelong friend of Florentino. Lisimaco Sanchez Fermina's maternal uncle, Lisimaco hosts Fermina and her father when he takes her away to forget Florentino. Lorenzo Daza Fermina's father, Lorenzo came from San Juan de la Cienaga soon after the cholera epidemic with his only daughter and his sister. He is a mule trader with a reputation for horse theft, and he

eventually is exposed for his many immoral and illegal business dealings. His only goal in life is to make his daughter a lady. Lotario Thugut A friend and coworker of Florentino at the telegraph office, Lotario Thugut is a German migr. He teaches Florentino how to play the violin. He also spends most of his time at a transient hotel, which he eventually purchases. Lucrecia del Real An old friend of Fermina's who visits her every Thursday after Urbino's death, Lucrecia is accused in the local gossip papers of having had an affair with Urbino, and although she did not, she stops visiting Fermina, who takes this as an admission of guilt and thus the end of their friendship. Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino Juvenal's father, Marco Aurelio Urbino was a doctor who died during the great cholera epidemic, during which he was a civic hero. After seeing the symptoms of cholera in himself, he locks himself away in quarantine to die and writes a long goodbye letter to his family, refusing to see any of them in person. Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino Daza Juvenal Urbino's and Fermina Daza's only son, Marco Aurelio is a doctor in the tradition of his father and grandfather, but an undistinguished one with no worthy accomplishments. He has produced no sons to carry on the family name. He encourages the relationship between Florentino Ariza and his mother as a way to remain happy in her old age. Widow Nazaret The Widow Nazaret is the second woman whom Florentino sleeps with, and she is the first after Fermina with whom he has a continuing relationship-although it is without fidelity or real love. They lead each other into a profligate way of life. Ofelia Urbino Urbino's and Fermina's daughter, Ofelia has her paternal grandmother's prudish sensibilities, and she is disgusted by the relationship that blossoms between her mother and Florentino Ariza. Olimpia Zuleta A pigeon seller's wife whom Florentino drives home in a storm, Olimpia participates in a slow courtship by pigeon courrier with Florentino and eventually sleeps with him. He leaves painted markings on her, and her husband finds them and murders her brutally for her infidelity.

Don Pius V Loayza Florentino's father, who does not acknowledge his bastard son except to provide for him until his death. Don Pius was also a bastard, but with his brothers he became very successful in the riverboat industry. His handwriting is exactly the same as Florentino's, and he too was a man primarily interested in love who wrote love poems. He is elaborately unfaithful to his wife throughout his life, but she only finds him out after his death. Rosalba The woman whom Florentino, somewhat arbitrarily, deduces is the one who took his virginity, Rosalba is a young mother traveling on a riverboat with Florentino. She is his temporary cure for his unrequited love for Fermina. Sara Noriega A woman whom Florentino meets at the Poetic Festival, Sara Noriega was a poet when younger. She is moved to tears at Florentino's disappointment at not winning the poetry contest. They sleep together for several years until Sara insults Fermina, after which Florentino no longer can look at her in the same way. Transito Ariza Florentino's mother, Transito is a freed quadroon with an instinct for happiness frustrated by poverty. She is hardworking and serious, and she makes a good living providing discreet loans to distinguished families who have fallen in fortune. She is the only person Florentino tells about his love for Fermina, and she does all she can to help him, until she becomes senile and loses her memory with age.

Part One
The novel opens with Dr. Juvenal Urbino entering the house of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, who has killed himself and his dog with gold cyanide, on Pentecost Sunday. De Saint-Amour was Dr. Urbino's good friend and chess partner, so although the death is clearly suicide, Dr. Urbino instructs the police inspector to tell the press it was accidental. While Dr. Urbino is studying the last game of chess de Saint-Amour ever played, the police inspector finds a sealed letter addressed to Urbino, which turns out to be de Saint-Amour's final instructions, as well as a confession that completely changes Urbino's perspective of de Saint-Amour. Dr. Urbino met de Saint-Amour through chess, which they would continue to play together, and chess would remain the most significant thing in their relationship. Once the first outdoor cinema was opened, they would see movies together as well. Dr. Urbino took on the role of de SaintAmour's unconditional protector without knowing his history, and it is thanks to him that de Saint-Amour was able to open his photography studio.

Dr. Urbino goes to the old slave quarter of the city to see de Saint-Amour's long-term lover, whom Dr. Urbino has only just learned about from the letter. She had met de Saint-Amour in the convalescent home in which she had been born, following him to his new city a year later--and staying forever. She tells Dr. Urbino the story of the night before: she had gone to see All Quiet on the Western Front with de Saint-Amour, and he had seemed depressed when they returned to his house, eventually asking her to leave so he could write his letter to Dr. Urbino. She explains that long ago he had made the decision not to live to old age but to commit suicide at age sixty. Dr. Urbino returns home with the hope of taking a short siesta before going to Dr. Lacides Olivella's silver anniversary party, but he finds his house in an uproar because his prized parrot has escaped his cage. Dr. Urbino has had the parrot for over twenty years, and it is the only animal that he will allow in the house. Fermina Daza had bought the parrot after Dr. Urbino had told her that nothing would be allowed in the house that did not speak. The doctor became very attached to him. No one has been able to catch the parrot for over three hours, so Dr. Urbino tells them to call the fire department--which he essentially created. He finds Fermina in their bedroom dressed for the anniversary party. They are completely and utterly dependent on each other--for example, Fermina has to dress Dr. Urbino--although neither knows, or wants to know, whether that is because of love or because of convenience. Fermina notices the signs of Dr. Urbino's decline-his failing memory, his mood changes--but she does not foresee that this means he is near his end. While they are preparing for the party, Dr. Urbino tries to tell Fermina why he is so upset by the revelations of de Saint-Amour's past. The man was a fugitive rather than a war veteran refugee. But Fermina is unimpressed and barely listens. Instead they leave for the party, which has been meticulously planned to be the social event of the year. Yet, for the first time anyone can remember, it rains on Pentecost Sunday, and the downpour is so extreme that they must move everything inside and everything is thrown off. Dr. Olivella's wife, Aminta Deschamps, somehow saves the party from disaster. Dr. Urbino greatly enjoys the music at the party--it puts him in a good enough mood that he feels sad instead of angry at de Saint-Amour's death. He wife makes him promise to attend the funeral, which, after reading the letter, he had decided not to attend, and he now is glad to acquiesce. His son, Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino Daza, arrives with the belated dessert and then explains that he had heard his father's house was on fire, which is why he was delayed. Dr. Urbino and Fermina leave before the dessert is eaten because he must have his siesta before he goes to de SaintAmour's funeral. Dr. Urbino's siesta is disturbed by the destruction the firemen wreaked on his house--while allowing the parrot to escape further. While sitting in his rocking chair, Dr. Urbino hears his parrot speaking to him, finding that the parrot is right outside the window. Urbino goes outside to try to catch him, climbing the tree with a ladder left by the firemen. He has just grabbed the parrot when his foot slips, and he falls backwards off the ladder to his death. He tells Fermina with his last breath, "Only God knows how much I loved you."

Dr. Juvenal Urbino had done much to improve the city, so his death is not just a private tragedy; it causes an uproar among the common people. Fermina does not let this uproar have any effect on the funeral since she believes the dead belong only to the family and that the vigil should be private. Her grief turns into anger against the world, from which she derives the courage and control to face life alone after fifty years of marriage. Florentino is at the vigil and, moreover, makes sure everything runs smoothly, although Fermina does not notice. The funeral itself is essentially ruined by a downpour, which discourages almost everyone from coming. After the attendees have left the vigil, Fermina sees him, and as she is about to thank him for coming, he makes a declaration of love to her. She kicks him out of her house in a fury and weeps for the first time since Urbino's death. When she wakes she realizes that as she sobbed in her sleep, she was thinking more of Florentino Ariza than of Juvenal Urbino. Analysis Part One of Love in the Time of Cholera gives a very unusual introduction to the main characters of the novel. The main protagonist of the first section is Dr. Juvenal Urbino--an important character throughout the novel, but never again as central as he is in this first section. By making the day of his death both the opening of the story and the time his character is most important, Marquez underscores the fact that in this story, the true love story begins only when Dr. Urbino dies. Apart from Dr. Urbino, the people for whom his death are most important are Fermina and Florentino, so we can expect that the story will focus on them and be told to some degree from their perspectives. Unlike most novels, two of the characters who are introduced most fully in the opening are dead early on. (The author here is perhaps showing his skill through this unconventional choice as well.) The first section focuses a good deal on Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, who turns out to be not at all centrally important to the novel. He does, however, call attention to the theme of aging, which is quite important in the novel. De Saint-Amour chooses death although he is happy in life, rather than living into his old age. He also has an imperfect view of what to do about love: although he stays with one woman his whole life, he decides not to marry her and chooses to keep their love secret. Dr. Urbino can see nothing true or honorable in such a love, but Fermina believes it is as true as any love. The treatment of love is only just beginning in part one, but this section introduces many of the complications that will grow throughout the novel. The narrator's descriptions of Dr. Urbino's and Fermina's relationship do not clearly suggest whether they really were in love or not. At times the narrator strongly implies that they were not really in love, but at other times his descriptions lead the reader to believe that they were. This ambiguity introduces the great complexity of love that the novel will develop in more detail. The themes of aging and class are also introduced among the three main protagonists. Aging is most clear in Dr. Urbino, regarding whom we get a detailed account of the steady decline of his mind and body as he nears death. We also see Fermina Daza's aging as well as Florentino's

careful attempts to slow his aging. The most prominent characteristic described with regard to these characters is their age, together with the effects of time on their lives and bodies. The theme of class is introduced more subtly, but it pervades the first section. The novel opens with the death of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, a good friend of Juvenal Urbino who is a polar opposite in class status. Juvenal Urbino is described as a doctor only to the wealthy, and when he has to go into the poor area of the city to see de Saint-Amour's paramour, he gets lost because it is so foreign to him. This view into the old slave quarter is then contrasted with Dr. Urbino's own elaborate home, as well as the extremely lavish party for Dr. Olivella, where all the guests are of the upper class. At such parties, the guests are divided in seating by their prominence within their social group. As for the "time of cholera," it is not yet time.

Part Two
The second part of Love in the Time of Cholera describes how Florentino Ariza and Fermina met and loved each other for four years. Florentino is the bastard son of a successful shipowner, Don Pius V Loayza, who died when Florentino was only ten, leaving him without support. Florentino thus had to leave school, and he worked in the Postal Agency, where he met Lotario Thugut. Lotario taught him how to play the violin, how to work a telegraph machine, and about prostitutes. Florentino is the most desired by the girls of his circle, but he does not care deeply for any of them until he delivers a telegram to Lorenzo Daza's house, where he sees Fermina Daza for the first time. Florentino immediately falls in love with her, age thirteen and cared for by her aunt, Escolastica Daza, because her mother died long ago. Florentino learns that they are rich although Lorenzo Daza's profession is unknown. Florentino soon learns that Lorenzo Daza has a strict regime for his daughter, which makes it impossible for Florentino to see her alone. He satisfies himself with following her and watching her as much as he can. Florentino finally cannot bear to keep his secret any longer, so he tells his mother. Escolastica already realized that Florentino was in love with her niece--and has told Fermina. Although Fermina at first felt no curiosity about love, she gradually finds herself fascinated by the sick-looking boy always following her, and her aunt encourages her interest, teaching her the sign language to use in forbidden love. She waits impatiently for a letter from him, but it takes him almost a year to build the courage to give her one. Meanwhile he follows her at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and after coming close enough to touch her, he falls sick anew with delirious love. One day her sees that during her lessons, her aunt has gone inside intentionally to give him an opportunity to approach Fermina. He asks for the opportunity to give her a letter, and she allows it. As Florentino waits for Fermina's response to his letter, he falls physically ill with love--to the point that his mother fears he has cholera. His mother encourages him to enjoy his suffering, which is just what he wants, but his work becomes so atrocious that he almost loses his job.

Lotario takes him to the transient hotel for sailors that he frequents, but Florentino has no interest in losing his virginity to anyone but Fermina. Instead, he eats gardenias and drinks perfume to try and taste Fermina. After a month his mother berates him for his passivity, so he returns to Fermina to ask for her response. She had become almost panicked with the idea of responding and fear of her father's suspicions, so she tells Florentino the truth--that she did not know how to respond. He cajoles her to promise to write him back by the end of her vacation. Escolastica finally brings him Fermina's response, and Florentino is delirious with joy. In the three months that follow, not a day passes that they do not write to each other, and they fall into devastating love although they will not have another chance to see each other alone until Juvenal Urbino dies over fifty years later. Florentino's letters become more and more passionate and almost delirious. Fermina, who has much less opportunity to write and is more reticent, writes terser and more matter-of-fact letters in response. Florentino composes a waltz for Fermina called "The Crowned Goddess" and serenades her with it repeatedly from just within earshot so that her father will not suspect anything. After almost two years of correspondence, Florentino formally proposes marriage in a letter. She puts off responding for four months but finally accepts his proposal. Transito Ariza and Florentino work on preparing the practical side of the marriage. Transito starts renovating their home with her savings, and Florentino secures a promotion in the Postal Agency. The engagement is set to last two years and to remain secret. Florentino starts to spend more and more time at the transient hotel, where he is given a room, not for prostitution but to satisfy his insatiable appetite for reading sentimental love poetry. His love for Fermina is such that he is never tempted to stray, even when one of the hotel workers comes on to him strongly. Four months before the date set to formalize their engagement, Lorenzo Daza comes looking for Florentino. One of Fermina's teachers had caught her writing a love letter to Florentino in class, notified Lorenzo, and expelled Fermina. Lorenzo immediately sends Escolastica away, knowing that she must have been complicit, and then goes to find Florentino. He tells Florentino that his one goal in life is to make his lady a daughter--and Florentino must not stand in his way. Florentino refuses to back down without Fermina's order, so Lorenzo takes Fermina away on a long journey intended to make her forget. The journey is hard and dangerous, but once they make it to the home of Fermina's Uncle Lisimaco Sanchez, her cousin Hildebranda gives her a letter that came for Fermina from Florentino. They are able to keep in touch throughout the year and a half that Lorenzo keeps Fermina away. While she is away, Florentino decides to salvage a shipwrecked treasure so that he can shower her with gold. He finds a young, talented swimmer, Euclides, to accompany him and dive for the treasure, and after a few weeks they begin to find treasure. Florentino eventually shows the treasure to Transito, but she tells him that Euclides has been scamming him. Lorenzo finally brings Fermina back home, but on the day of her arrival there is such a heavy downpour and she is so soaked that Florentino does not recognize her, thinking she has not returned. Lorenzo gives Fermina the role of housekeeper, and she revels in her new

responsibility. Florentino realizes that she has returned, and while trying to figure out how to approach her, he sees her shopping with Gala Placidia. He follows her while she shops, finally speaking to her from right behind her. As soon as she sees him she feels utterly disenchanted. That afternoon she sends Gala with a note ending their engagement, returning all his letters and keepsakes, and asking for hers in return. Analysis The main thrust of Part Two of Love in the Time of Cholera is to develop the relationship between Florentino and Fermina. More generally, this part deepens the novel's complex treatment of love. In developing the early relationship between Florentino and Fermina, as he did with Fermina and Urbino in the first part, Marquez creates an ambiguous picture of the love between the two young people. This part leaves the reader deeply unsure of what exactly Fermina feels for Florentino. Florentino's feelings are not as unambiguous as they seem. He eats roses and gardenias, drinks perfume, and exhibits symptoms of cholera, all out of love. Yet, his overly effusive style, his obsession with his own obsession, makes it hard to take his love completely seriously. Compared with Fermina's much more reticent style, Florentino's style suggests that he is loving thoughtlessly. To some degree he is swept up in the idea of being in love. Fermina's lack of signs of passion, especially when compared with Florentino's, make her love for him less sure. She seems to fall into it by chance and convenience, more interested in the love he feels for her than in Florentino himself. But we might trust the narrator's account that for a few years at least, she is desperately in love with him as well. Although reluctant to agree to his proposal, once she does so, she considers herself fully committed to him, and in her letters she plans for their domestic future together. But her agency is limited. Escolastica decides when it is time to let Florentino make his first move. Florentino is doing all he can to persuade her of his love. And most of all, her father successfully influences her feelings when he ships her out of reach for more than a year; despite Florentino's letters, her father's plan succeeds, at least for now. This section also introduces the very important theme of letters and of writing more generally. There are only three times in this section when Fermina and Florentino speak in person; the rest of the time--over almost four years--they communicate only by letter. Their love is built almost entirely on what can be expressed in writing. Mysteriously, the reader has not seen the text of any of these letters, receiving only descriptions of their general tone via the narrator. The fact that the reader feels the lack of the letters strongly underscores their importance. The narrator's choice to withhold the letters suggests that the text of the letters is not significant, as though the love could have been expressed in different words. True enough, the love built through their letters fails to stand up to the physical separation and then the failed personal encounter. But one also should remember that the persuasive power of the young Florentino is probably not up to the level of romantic poetry, despite his insatiable reading; they are writing for each other, each perceiving the other as the sole intended audience, and readers might be disappointed to see the quality of Florentino's or Fermina's prose.

Whether their love is real or not is thus left ambiguous. The situation is most dire at the end of the section when Fermina calls off their engagement the moment she sees him. She apparently believes that she has made a huge mistake, now that she feels no love for him. Marquez has used this encounter to build suspense and launch the next part of the plot, but in terms of love, he intentionally leaves readers unsure of the reality of their love for one another. For evidence of this intention, consider the end of the novel when Florentino and Fermina discuss the event. Florentino still loves to look back on it and make reference to it, but Fermina believes that it was meaningless and too far back to matter. To understand their different perspectives late in life, readers need to develop an understanding of their perspectives at the time, and these facts are unclear. Is the failed encounter a matter of bad timing, relative immaturity, or melodrama on Florentino's part, or a new spirit of independence on Fermina's? The intentional ambiguity in their early relationship adds to the complexity of the characters and to the novel's complex presentation of love. Despite romantic idealism about love--represented by the young Florentino-love is complicated by family, professions, and the other rational and irrational complexities of life.

Part Three
Part three opens with a turn back to Juvenal Urbino as a young man. He is returning from a long stay in Paris studying medicine, and he is returning as a very eligible bachelor. While in Paris, he remembered his home with deep nostalgia and longing, believing that it was the best city in the world. Upon his return, however, he finds that he was blinded by his nostalgia. He is so disillusioned by the reality that everything seems almost worse than it actually is. His own home-and his mother--have fallen into gloomy decay. He slowly accustoms himself to the state of his city, but he begins a lifelong effort to improve it. He begins by taking over his deceased father's office and introducing the modern medical ideas he learned in Paris to the Misericordia Hospital. This intervention earns resentment from his colleagues. He also becomes obsessed with the serious and dangerous sanitation problems in the city, and he tries to force the government to improve the conditions. These conditions probably were tied closely to a horrible cholera epidemic that occurred while Urbino was in Paris. The epidemic caused the highest death toll in the city's history, and Juvenal's father, Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino, became known as a civic hero for all the attention he gave to the epidemic. The elder Dr. Urbino contracted cholera himself and died in quarantine in order to protect those he loved. Considering his father's death, Dr. Urbino becomes obsessed with cholera and learns everything he can. Less than a year after his return, cholera cases start popping up, but an epidemic never recurs. Everyone is convinced that this is because of Dr. Urbino's strict sanitary rules, which makes Juvenal able to convince the City Council to implement new sanitary guidelines. It is a victory, but he is too distracted to relish it for he has met and fallen for Fermina Daza. He met her when a colleague called him to consult due to Fermina's possible symptoms of cholera. Dr. Urbino examined her under Lorenzo Daza's watchful eye, and he showed no signs of emotion at the time. Fermina thought he was too self-important to notice her. But he returns a few days later unnecessarily and without an appointment. He examines her through the window

during her painting lesson, but she rudely turns him away. Lorenzo calls out to Dr. Urbino, but he is not angry so much as apologetic for his daughter since Dr. Urbino is exactly the kind of man Lorenzo wants her to marry. Dr. Urbino continues trying to woo Fermina while Lorenzo tries to soften her to his attempts. At the same time, Lorenzo and Dr. Urbino each try to woo the other. Dr. Urbino sends a letter to Fermina, and it is so simple and serious that her rage against Urbino immediately disappears although she does not respond to it except to burn it. Dr. Urbino continues to send her letters, two weeks apart, but she still does not respond. She starts to receive threatening objects and letters containing accusations of her having bewitched Dr. Urbino. Dr. Urbino goes so far as to send Sister Franca de la Luz, who expelled Fermina, to convince her to marry him. She does not accept. Hildebranda comes to visit Fermina to convince her to accept Dr. Urbino. Hildebranda goes to see Florentino, who does not know who she is but who helps her send messages to her own love. Fermina gives Hildebranda tours of all the sites of her relationship with Florentino. Hildebranda tries to increase the excitement in Fermina's life, and they go together to a Belgian photographer. When they leave his studio they are dressed inappropriately, and Dr. Urbino in his landau saves them from being publicly humiliated in the street. After this fateful ride Dr. Urbino reminds Fermina that he is still waiting for her answer, and she finally writes him a letter allowing him to speak to her father. When Florentino discovers that Fermina is to marry Dr. Urbino, he becomes inconsolable. Transito persuades his uncle, Don Leo XII Loayza, to give him a job that will remove him from Fermina, over twenty days' travel away. Florentino serenades Fermina one last time, then embarks on one of his uncle's riverboats to leave home for the first time. Florentino is forced to yield his cabin to the new plenipotentiary from England, who joins the boat at the last minute. The journey is difficult, but Florentino endures it as he endures everything, and he speaks to no one. One night on the boat as he is walking to the toilets, a woman pulls him into her cabin suddenly and makes love to him, taking his virginity. He never sees who she is, so he becomes obsessed with determining her identity. He narrows it down to three companions and decides arbitrarily that it was Rosalba, a young mother. He becomes obsessed with her. She and her companions leave the boat eventually, and he again becomes very depressed about Fermina. He imagines their wedding and honeymoon with such vividness that he becomes ill, and the captain, worried that he has cholera, quarantines him for the night. He wakes up happy for he has decided to stay on the boat on its return trip to his city, and the captain allows it since he gave up his cabin on the first half of the journey. Upon coming home he learns that Fermina has gone to Europe on a honeymoon. He considers how to replace her in his life. One night his mother offers refuge to the Widow Nazaret as a ploy to cure her son of his love for Fermina. They make love, and this is the start of a long but uncommitted relationship, including profligacy for both. Nazaret's name is the first to be entered in Florentino's notebook titled "Women," which by the end of his life has six hundred twentytwo entries listing his long-term liaisons.

For almost two years Florentino believes that he has survived the torment of losing Fermina Daza--until he sees her again for the first time, leaving High Mass on her husband's arm, more beautiful than ever, and six months pregnant. Fermina had entered marriage a virgin, terrified about her future. She was so terrified that she barely noticed the continued threats and accusations she received anonymously from the upperclass society she was about to enter. Her lack of reaction fortunately caused the authors of these notes to accept her. The loss of her virginity was slow and painless. Their first kiss in Europe had led Dr. Urbino to believe that he would grow to love her, and now that they are home, it is not clear whether it is their love or Europe that has changed them. Analysis Part three is the section of the book that is most preoccupied with class. It remains secondary to the theme of love, but it is closely tied to the marriage that takes place between Dr. Urbino and Fermina. The threatening letters that Fermina gets from anonymous upper-class authors get equal if not more attention than the letters that Dr. Urbino sends to Fermina in the quest for her hand. Indeed, the fact that the descriptions of their wedding are focused almost solely on the issues of Fermina's integration into Dr. Urbino's class highlights the lack of love that is present at the time of their marriage. It should not be on the honeymoon that the groom realizes he might grow to love the bride. Again the issues of love are never simple. Fermina, though cold and reserved as usual, shows signs of being obsessed with Dr. Urbino. And although the narrator tells us that Dr. Urbino only marries Fermina for her haughtiness, he is obsessed by her enough that his feelings distract him from the accomplishment of his professional goals. The marriage has a great deal to do with the influence of Fermina's father, once again suggesting her limited agency in the relationship. If Dr. Urbino and Fermina have found love in Europe, we have only the narrator's account to trust, seeing only glimpses of this time period and hearing none of the dialogue between Fermina and Dr. Urbino. This part also complicates the theme of love with its incorporation of sexuality. The narrator conflates Fermina's and Urbino's sexual intimacy almost completely with love, paralleling their growing sexual comfort with each other with a growing love--and never making a clear distinction between the two. Fermina thinks so much about her obsessive fear of the wedding night that she can barely function at the wedding. The ritual of love is dominated by apprehension of sex. Florentino also has quite an introduction to sexuality in this part. He has become an inconsolable and unrequited lover. Somehow his first sexual encounter is shrouded in mystery. He soon finds pleasure, distraction, and even some form of love in his sexual encounters with the Widow Nazaret, soon to be followed by hundreds of others. This is the start of Florentino's use of sex as a proxy for love, a pattern that lasts until Dr. Urbino's death. But with Rosalba (if she is the one) and Nazaret, he does feel something more than simply physical pleasure, so in these relationships of Florentino at least, sex is not totally separable from the love he lives for.

Florentino's sexual escapades have a double, contradictory set of functions. On the one hand, he has 622 long-term liaisons, suggesting the weakness of his commitment and his new view of respect for women. Whereas Fermina's trip helped her mature, Florentino's aborted trip gave him new sexual knowledge and led him into a life of profligacy. Yet, these escapades are not characterized by the love he continues to hold for Fermina, which shows the strong power of his love. These escapades will never add up to a replacement for his love for her, because this love is of a different order. While Florentino seems to love, on some level, many of the women he sleeps with, his pattern of love continues to lack the depth that one would expect in a more mature and responsible man--compare his love letters to the letters sent by Dr. Urbino--and it remains unclear what extra feeling he really has for Fermina.

Part Four
Florentino decides that he will win fame and fortune while he waits for Dr. Juvenal Urbino to die, so that he can have Fermina Daza in the end. To accomplish this goal, he goes back to Don Leo XII Loayza for a job and gets appointed clerk to the Board of Directors because of his reputation for reading and writing. He turns out to be incapable of writing business letters because his sentimentality and lyricism make his letters worthless for business. He does his best to learn to write without romance, but he finds it so exhausting and emotionally stifling that he goes daily to the Arcade of the Scribes to write love letters for others. Two of his customers are writing letters to each other. Once they are happily married and realize that Florentino Ariza was essentially writing love letters to himself for them both, they ask him to be their first child's godfather. Florentino's friends notice that he is changed. Winning back Fermina becomes the sole focus of his changed life. He is so sure of his ultimate success that Transito Ariza buys their house and renovates it to be fit for Florentino to bring Fermina when the time comes. While redoing the house, Transito shows early symptoms of the memory loss that will mature into the disease that will eventually kill her. Meanwhile, Florentino's new sense of responsibility has its limits: he begins his hunting for women, taking them at first to the transient hotel, but then just loving them wherever he can. Still, he never takes them to his house, keeping it sacred on behalf of Fermina; to have sex there with other women would be the real unfaithfulness. Florentino uses the trolley as a place to find women. During Carnival he meets a woman who brings him back to the innocence he had before Fermina broke his heart, and he falls in love with her. At the end of the night, just as he is about to take her off somewhere, she is captured by two guards and a nurse from the Divine Shepherdess Asylum, where the woman was a patient--she had just decapitated a man while escaping. Florentino is heartbroken and for months walks by the asylum with a box of chocolates in the hope that she will look out the window. Florentino also meets Leona Cassiani on a trolley. He is certain that she is a whore, so even though he is very attracted to her, he decides not to pursue her because he will never pay for sex. But she follows him, and it turns out that she wants him to get her a job at the River Company of the Caribbean. Florentino, feeling guilty for assuming she was a whore, gets her a low-level job. She eventually rises toward the top, pushing Florentino up ahead of her.

After ten years, when he finds himself alone with her in the office, Florentino finally tries to seduce her, but she tells him he is too late for she has committed too many dirty tricks for his benefit to now sleep with him. They continue, however, to be close friends who love each other deeply. Florentino finds himself tempted to tell Leona about his enduring love for Fermina, feeling crushed by the secret that only his mother knows. One day, Dr. Juvenal Urbino comes to see Don Leo and waits for him in Florentino's office. Dr. Urbino discusses his civic endeavors with Florentino, and while doing so he mentions Fermina in such a way that it becomes clear to Florentino that Dr. Urbino loves his wife almost as much as Florentino does. Florentino also feels sad, for the first time, that Dr. Urbino will need to die before Florentino can be happy. After this meeting Florentino almost tells Leona about his love for Fermina, but when she fails to pick up his hints he lets the issue drop. He realizes that he will be able to tell Fermina that he never revealed their secret to anyone if he does not tell Leona. At the first Poetic Festival, Florentino meets Sara Noriega, who shows sincere grief for Florentino when he does not win. This begins another of Florentino's extended affairs. He keeps this one clandestine, too, although neither he nor Sara Noriega is committed to anyone else. Florentino still imagines himself being completely loyal to Fermina, so he cannot risk having his numerous relationships known. This has resulted in many people believing that there is something wrong about him, or that he is homosexual. For the fifth Poetic Festival, Florentino and Sara Noriega write a poem together, which she is convinced will win. When it does not, she becomes convinced that it is because Fermina Daza is against her, so she speaks insults against her to Florentino, saying that Fermina is a whore for marrying a man she does not love for money. From that moment, Florentino can never see Sara in the same way. When he leaves that night, he never returns. During the five years that they were together, though, Florentino was quite happy with her, as close to cured as he ever would be. Sara was right: Fermina's choice of Dr. Urbino over Florentino really had little to do with love. She first suspected him of being a paternal plot, since her father wanted her to marry him so badly, but even as she grew to like him more, in the end she only accepted his proposal because she thought she was about to lose the opportunity forever. She did not regret their marriage immediately, but she did when they returned home from Europe to live in Dr. Urbino's mother's home. Dona Blanca is so impossible to live with that Fermina becomes desperately unhappy, and she can find solace only in her son. Fermina faces the unhappiness of having her father's suspicious dealings uncovered, and in order to protect the family honor, Dr. Urbino has him sent out of the country. Fermina finally convinces Dr. Urbino that they need to leave to find their love again, so they return to Europe with their son. Meanwhile, Florentino is working more and more, and his mother is deteriorating to the point that she can no longer recognize him. He spends almost all of his time taking care of his mother and working, and for a period of time he gives up hunting for women--especially after his experience with Olimpia Zuleta.

Florentino meets Olimpia while she is caught outside in a storm, and he drives her home. She is married to a pigeon seller, so Florentino tries to buy one from him, but she gives it to him in thanks. He uses the pigeon to send love notes to Olimpia, who is very slow to be seduced but who allows him to keep trying. Eventually he succeeds, and they make love. He paints markings on her stomach, and when she goes home her husband sees them and immediately murders her. Florentino is horrified and heartbroken. His mother dies around the same time that Olimpia is killed, and Florentino brings roses to both of their graves. Fermina and Dr. Urbino return from Paris after two years, having heard of Dona Blanca's death. Fermina is pregnant again. She and Dr. Urbino find a peaceful love together, though Fermina is disturbed by the perfection Dr. Urbino continually expects in the household. Yet at this time, after thirty years of marriage, they are happiest together, and they love each other most. Analysis Part four brings back the themes of time and age that were introduced in part one. At the start of the section, Dr. Urbino and Fermina have been married for two years, and by the end of the section they have been married for thirty. Note, however, that there is no consistent chronology in the section, which jumps back and forth throughout this span of twenty-eight years. Both the jumping chronology, which often leaves the reader unsure of the age of the characters in each scene, and the lack of descriptions of the characters having aged until the end of the section, makes the fact that so much time has passed rather shocking to the reader. To readers, as to Florentino, it seems that the characters have gone from their twenties to their fifties in a moment. All this time, despite his other escapades, Florentino has been waiting. The repetitive nature of Florentino's life in this period makes it seem as though events keep happening but time is not passing. Each of the distinct stories of his love affairs seems to be the same as the others with only slight alterations. This pattern makes it seem that the same events keep happening over and over again as though time is not moving forward but is stalling or going in a circle. This narrative structure similarly highlights how easy it is for time to pass without anyone realizing it. People age gradually until the physical decay of aging makes clear the passage of a great deal of time. Florentino's sudden realization that thirty years have passed is a shocking reminder of how much he really does sacrifice, at least in his mind, for Fermina. Olimpia ends up giving her life for her one night with Florentino, but Florentino waits his whole life to spend the last small fraction of it with Fermina. This seems to be the first time that he realizes the dire nature of his commitment. As he realizes that thirty years have passed, he questions for the first time his previously firm belief that Dr. Urbino would die before he would. Florentino sees that he is running out of time. And while he has watched his mother decline with age, in general Dr. Urbino and Fermina have increased in the love characteristic of a married couple. Florentino's fear of death thus has nothing to do with a fear of what comes after death; it is his fear of not having enough time to fulfill the one for which he has lived nearly his whole life. In comparison, note Dr. Urbino's great fear of death in the first part, which is a matter of fearing the unknown. For Urbino, his faith in the religion to which he has spent his whole life closely tied is

not enough. Dr. Urbino does not care about time like Florentino does, but he does fear aging and death for their own sakes. Florentino cares about age and death only as symbols of lost time and as evidence of the decline of a person's powers. This is because his life is ruled by love and he needs time to realize that love.

Part Five
As part of the celebration of the new century, Dr. Urbino and Fermina ride the first hot air balloon in their country and deliver the first piece of airmail. The flight goes well except that as they fly over banana plantations, they see many dead men lying below. Dr. Urbino and Fermina are told the men have died of cholera, but they all show deep injuries in their necks. Florentino witnesses their ascent and their return three days later, and it is in moments like this that he realizes how time is passing, for he sees the changes in Fermina. As Florentino becomes more successful he sees Fermina in social settings more often, and he starts to believe that her indifference to him could actually be a shield for her timidity--or more, her deep love for him. This belief reinvigorates his feelings for her, and he starts to haunt her villa as secretly as he can. He waits to see them outside of their church, but for four Sundays in a row he sees Dr. Urbino and the children but not Fermina. Her absence from all civic or social ceremonies continues for the rest of the year. Try as much as he can, Florentino cannot find out what happened to her. He becomes convinced that she has gone to a private hospital to die, and for the first time he considers what would happen if she died before either Dr. Urbino or himself. Florentino becomes so desperate that he goes so far as to try to find out from Lorenzo Daza what happened, but he learns that Lorenzo has died. Fermina actually was at her Cousin Hildebranda Sanchez's ranch in a small village near San Juan de la Cienaga. She had sailed near midnight with her face covered to protect her privacy so that no one but her family and Hildebranda knew where she went. She left as a result of a crisis in her marriage, expecting never to return. Dr. Urbino did not stop her because he was too burdened by his guilt. Fermina felt a nostalgic longing to return to San Juan de la Cienaga, so she went to stay with Hildebranda. Fermina is gone for almost two years before Dr. Urbino finally goes to take her home. Towards the end of that time the children come to visit her, and Marco Aurelio's letters home lead Dr. Urbino to believe that she is somehow content with her new life. The Bishop of Riohaca comes to see her and asks for her confession, but she says she has nothing to confess--an answer she knows will reach her husband's ears. The problem: Fermina discovered that Dr. Urbino was having an affair. She found out by employing her habit of smelling his clothes to decide whether they needed to be laundered. Her sense of smell was impeccable, and one day when she smelled Dr. Urbino's clothes, she found a completely new scent on them. She began to smell his clothes carefully every day. She even went to Dr. Urbino's office to look through his notebooks to try to determine the source of the smell. She grew even more suspicious as she noticed changes in Dr. Urbino's behavior.

Fermina could not bear her suspicions any longer, so after four months she confronted Dr. Urbino. He met Barbara Lynch when she was a patient at Misericordia Hospital, and from the moment he saw her he became obsessed. As the story goes, he stops by her house on the way home, and the next day he returns for a supposed follow-up checkup that quickly becomes sexual. He starts to visit her as close to daily as he can--it is very risky because his carriage is so conspicuous, but he cannot help himself. His obsession and the pain of keeping it secret start to have physical effects on Dr. Urbino. Once Fermina has confronted him on some level, he assumes she knows it all, and he makes the decision not to return to Barbara. Thus, Dr. Urbino decides to unburden himself to Fermina in an attempt to cure his physical and spiritual ailments, telling Fermina the whole story. As he does so, she visibly ages and becomes completely enraged, convinced that she is the gossip of the town. A few days later she leaves for Hildebranda's ranch with the idea that she will stay there as long as she needs before coming to a decision about how to continue. Fermina feels very disappointed as she travels to Hildebranda's, for the time of her youth spent in San Juan de la Cienaga included some of her happiest times, and she finds it changed to a depressing degree. She also finds it horrifying to see Hildebranda, who is much fatter and much older, because it makes her realize that she too has aged very much. Thus begins her two years away. When Dr. Urbino finally comes to get her after the two years, Fermina is happy to return home with him. Two years later-two years after her return with Dr. Urbino-Florentino goes to the movies with Leona. He realizes that Fermina and Dr. Urbino are sitting right behind them. After the movie Florentino and Leona walk around the city until very late, and he invites himself into her house for brandy. He tries to seduce her for the second time, but once again she turns him down. Florentino realizes how old they are all getting, and he considers the terrifying possibility that he might die before Dr. Urbino. Don Leo is ordered by his doctor to retire, and he slowly becomes more and more senile. At ninety-two he finally recognizes Florentino as his sole heir to the company and then retires. By this point Florentino has stopped acquiring new lovers, but he continues to see established ones. By the time of Dr. Urbino's death, he has only one lover left, America Vicuna, a relative of his from Puerto Padre who is in his city for boarding school. He is entrusted as her guardian. She is only fourteen, but they develop a close relationship and love each other. He has just made love to her when he hears the bells tolling on Pentecost Sunday for, unknown to him, Dr. Urbino's death. Florentino takes America back to school so that he can go to Jeremiah de Saint-Amour's funeral, but on their way he hears from the coachman that it is Dr. Urbino who has died. He goes immediately to Dr. Urbino's house and sees Dr. Urbino's body lying in his bed. Florentino is so happy that life has interceded for his sake that he cannot prevent himself from making his declaration of love to Fermina, who kicks him out. He grows more and more desperate over the next two weeks, and he finally believes he is going to die unrequited. Then he finds a letter on his doorstep from Fermina Daza. Analysis

Sickness comes up repeatedly in the fifth section of Love in the Time of Cholera. Dr. Urbino meets Barbara Lynch because she comes to the hospital for treatment; Florentino goes to the doctor, believing he is ill, to hear that he is only suffering from old age; Fermina sees bodies covering the streets from what is called a cholera epidemic; Don Leo retires in senility; and Urbino convinces himself he is physically ill because his passion for Barbara is so great. It is not surprising that sickness appears more prominently as the characters get older. Earlier in the novel, class is a strong predictor of illness, but this section shows that age is even more susceptible to disease than poverty is. Still, the experience of illness remains highly different between the rich and the poor, as this part emphasizes. When Fermina disappears for two years, Florentino assumes she has left the city to go to a private hospital where no one will know of her illness, as all the rich who fall seriously ill do. In contrast, the cholera victims in San Juan de la Cienaga are left lying on the streets without even the benefit of burial after their death. Surprisingly, it is Dr. Urbino and not Florentino whose physical illness is a symptom of his love in this section. This fact seems to solidify the book's connection between love and illness; Dr. Urbino is significantly less romantic and obsessed with love than Florentino, yet his love is strongest (if we are to believe him after the end of his affair and the return of Fermina) as he ages. Florentino's illness is simply the illness of age. Even so, this condition is related to love in Florentino's case, because any sign that he is aging is a sign that he is running out of time to share love with Fermina. Age is significant for Fermina in this section too, because it is the first time she really seems to change. After hearing about her husband's affair, she ages ten years in a night, and for the rest of the section almost all of the descriptions of her are focused on her aging. The possibility that Florentino's love for Fermina might wane with her aging is never raised; he is disturbed by the changes in her because it shows that time is running out, not because she is losing attractiveness. His fourteen year-old paramour cannot tempt him away from his true love, wrinkled though she may be. In this vein, more shocking than any of the characters' physical symptoms of aging is Florentino's gradual loss of all his other lovers. That many of them have died highlights how long he really has been waiting for Fermina. Even more, the fact that Florentino stops pursuing new loves (except for America) shows the most profound change in his behavior since he first decided to wait for Fermina for as long as it took. This fact shows that Florentino, for the first time, realizes that whether he finally ends up with Fermina or not, the chase will end soon with his own death, for he no longer bothers trying to fill her spot in his life with the love of others. When he finally has his chance, Florentino acts rashly. Dr. Urbino's death is too fresh for Fermina to turn immediately to Florentino. She kicks him out for good reason--with her dead husband in front of them. A little reflection would reveal that Florentino might still have a chance at another time. The portentous letter provides suspense, and readers who have been rooting for Florentino all this time have reason for new hope.

Part Six

The letter that Florentino finds on his doorstep is a fairly long and passionate letter filled with rage and hatred. She writes it as the final step in her attempt to win back her life, which she seemed to lose with Dr. Urbino's death. She has cleansed the house of everything that belonged to him or reminds her of him, turning his study into a sewing room for herself. She finally makes her house the clutter-free and open space she always wanted. At first it did no good, but she slowly started to feel better except for the bitter memory of Florentino hanging over her head. This is why she writes the letter. During this time Florentino has been sleepless and depressed. He tells America Vicuna that he is going to marry, but she assumes he is joking. The next day he gets Fermina's hate letter. He is not upset by the content of the letter because he had rather expected it, and the fact that she has written him at all gives him the opportunity to respond. He learns to type on a typewriter for the purpose of his response. It takes him twelve days to complete a letter successfully, and the letter he writes is unlike any he has ever written--closer in logic and tone to a business letter than any of the business letters he had tried to write. The letter does not refer to the past at all. Instead it is an extensive meditation on life, aging, and love. He does not expect a reply. He becomes very excited as days pass and the letter is not returned to him. He continues to write letters, slowly at first because his typing is poor, but eventually one letter every day. He anticipates a favorable reply eventually. Thus he begins another renovation of his house so that it will be fit for Fermina. He still sleeps with two of his former lovers every once in a while, but he has trouble with America, who feels devastated by his rejection of her. On the first anniversary of Dr. Urbino's death, Fermina and her family hold a memorial Mass. Florentino is not invited, but he attends anyway. After the Mass, Fermina thanks all of her friends individually for coming, including Florentino, whom she thanks graciously. She read all of his letters with great interest, and in fact she found that they helped her desire to keep living. Afterward Florentino writes her a letter of thanks for her kind greeting, then nothing else for two weeks. He shows up at her door. Florentino expects to be turned away, but he is not. As he waits for Fermina to come down, his body gets the better of him, and when she finally arrives he must leave after only a few words so that he does not soil himself in front of her. He returns two days later to have coffee with Fermina. They both feel uncomfortable. As Florentino leaves, however, Fermina invites him to return whenever he likes. He returns a few days letter. They discuss his letters and how they have helped Fermina. Their visits gradually become weekly and part of the patterns of their lives. Whenever Florentino tries to push Fermina to talk about their past, she rebuffs him. Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife join them for cards at times, and they all enjoy the games together. Urbino Daza invites Florentino to meet him for lunch, where he thanks Florentino for his friendship with his mother, stressing the importance of the elderly taking care of each other so that no one else needs to bother. Florentino is not offended, because he sees it as a good omen of the time when he will ask Dr. Urbino Daza for his mother's hand.

Florentino in fact is so happy after this meeting that he trips on a staircase and sprains his ankle. The doctor confines him to bed for sixty days. Leona and America both take care of him, and they both feel shocked that he never tries to seduce either of them. America starts to do badly at school and becomes very unhappy. Since his visits with Fermina are interrupted, they start a new mail correspondence. Their letters become very personal, but Fermina still rebuffs any attempt at romance or nostalgia that Florentino puts forward. She is surprised at how lonely and bored she feels without their Tuesday meetings. During this time a newspaper called Justice publishes an article accusing Lucrecia del Real and Dr. Juvenal Urbino of having had an affair. It is not true, but Fermina believes it. The paper also publishes a true article on the illegal dealings that Lorenzo Daza used to make his fortune, which upsets Fermina greatly. When Florentino is well enough to go to see her again, he finds her completely different, seeming much older and much more unhappy as a result of the two articles. With Florentino's return, Fermina starts to do better, but her daughter Ofelia hears about their relationship and comes to put an end to it. Fermina will not listen. She instead kicks Ofelia out of her house permanently for her cruelty. Upset by her daughter in addition to the two articles in Justice, Fermina decides to take Florentino up on his offer to go on a riverboat trip. At first she is depressed. She invites Florentino to sit with her on her private deck, where he reminisces while she sits quietly, smokes cigarettes, and cries. They hold hands. Although they do not kiss goodnight, the next morning when Fermina reads the letter he has left, her heart races like a teenager's. When she meets him on the deck, she sees that he has changed his usual outfit for perhaps the first time in his life. That night Fermina allows Florentino to kiss her. Slowly they get closer and closer. One day on the boat, Florentino receives a telegram that America Vicuna has committed suicide. He is greatly disturbed and upset, but he does his best to avoid thinking about it. The boat runs out of fuel for a week, and they are stuck in terrible heat. This calamity increases their love, for the heat makes it easier to love without questions or embarrassment. They finally make love. The first two times do not go well, but they slow down and take their time, and they finally find each other in the right way. When they reach the last stop of the boat, Fermina sees people she knows boarding. She feels horrified, for she does not want anyone to see the Widow Urbino on a pleasure cruise. Florentino talks to the Captain, and they decide to fly the yellow flag that warns of cholera so that they can ride back without any other passengers. The Captain brings his own lover on board, and they are all completely happy. As they get closer to home, Fermina and Florentino both dread leaving the ship. The Captain cannot figure out how to deal with the officials who insist on inspecting the boat's passengers, so together they all decide to keep sailing with the yellow flag flying "forever." Analysis

In this final section of Love in the Time of Cholera, writing letters again becomes very important. It is through his letters that Florentino finally reaches Fermina's heart. These letters are, interestingly, unlike any he has ever written. The two become close through their Tuesday meetings as well, but for a year before, and then the two months of Florentino's convalescence, letters are their only communication. As in the second section of the book, the reader does not see any of these letters. This withholding seems especially significant because the letters Florentino writes deal with life, love, aging, and death, four of the most important themes throughout the novel. By not allowing the reader to see Florentino's meditations on these issues, Marquez may be suggesting that an answer in words is not possible or complete, whether the words are in Florentino's letters or in his own novel. Understanding these issues, perhaps, requires experience in a lived life, and no secondary account of it can do it the proper justice. Fermina does, however, find deep solace from these letters, for these meditations directly involve her own life, so Florentino's writing, although it is invisible to the reader, is not worthless for the writer or the recipient. Fermina's character develops more in this section than it has in any other part of the book. Through five sections and fifty years of marriage she was stubborn, proud, and haughty. Now, Marquez finally portrays the softer, more complex, and slightly less sure characteristics of Fermina. That the evolution of Fermina's character comes with Dr. Urbino's death is not surprising. The first days of her widowhood seem most alarming to her because she has no identity without her husband; her entire life has been based around him. It is only with his death that she is given room to blossom fully into herself. This is why it would seem inappropriate to marry Florentino at the end of the book; some other solution is necessary. Spending the ends of their lives together on a riverboat with no destination offers her much more freedom to develop a free identity--even while in the throes of love. This freedom and much additional freedom is allowed because of a false signal of cholera, the archetypal illness of the novel. The yellow flag allows Fermina and Florentino to avoid the world of social mores that waits on any shore, for people are happy to leave sickness, unlike love, isolated. Like Dr. Urbino, who used medicine as a cloak under which to visit Barbara, Fermina and Florentino can wave their flag and keep everyone from suspicion. Sickness and aging tend to excuse people from the normal social rules, allowing people who are old or sick to live with a freedom that the healthy and young rarely have. In Marquez's novel, love and sickness are conflated repeatedly, and a love like Fermina's and Florentino's, like a sickness, does not follow societal rules, so it is appropriate that the social guidelines allowing the sick a certain freedom (quarantined on the ship, but free to move across the waters) also give freedom to Fermina and Florentino.

Major Themes

Time Time is one of the most important themes in Love in the Time of Cholera, and it is closely entwined with almost all of the major themes. The story spans half a century, and in that period we see the effects of time on people and their relationships--especially love--and its effects on places and cultures. Marquez shows us Juvenal Urbino's mental decline, Florentino Ariza's loss of hair and teeth, and Fermina Daza's acquisition of the smell of decay. The three main protagonists' obsessions with aging and with death also fit with this theme, in that we see both the different ways time affects people physically, and the different ways they deal with it mentally. We see the river that Florentino travels twice change from lush jungle, overrun by animals and plants, to bare sand, with no wildlife, eroding quickly. Fermina and Juvenal ride with the first airmail in a hot air balloon, and later a plane crashes into a town nearby. The narrator and characters frequently describe their city as behind, "unchanging on the edge of time." We see, however, that this is not true--the city is always changing, but its seeming stillness reflects the relativity of time in the story. The very chronology--or lack of it--in the story fits into this theme, for the interconnectedness of stories always seems more important than a mere chronology, which leads the reader to be as surprised as the characters in the sudden realization of how much time has passed. A linear chronology does more to identify causes and effects, while a non-linear chronology can stress the resonances of recurring themes in multiple times. Love Love, as evidenced by the novel's title, is another of the most important themes in Love in the Time of Cholera. The novel is filled with many different loves--between Florentino and Fermina, Fermina and Urbino, Florentino and all of his lovers, Urbino and Barbara Lynch, Hildebranda and her married man, and so on. Marquez breaks with convention in presenting the love between Florentino and Fermina, two almost-octogenarians, as the final and most powerful love, the love that seems to have a chance at eternity. Florentino's flowery sentiments often are too overly sentimental to seem serious, Fermina's hardness and pride seem to impede her from feeling real love; yet, after more than fifty years, they finally find each other as they should, and they find complete peace in their love. Physical love is an important part of this theme too. Florentino uses it for fifty years to replace the true love he feels for Fermina, and this alternative almost works for him. The story offers physical love, that is, as much more than a capitulation to lust. Sex offers characters freedom, equality, understanding, and love, in addition to physical pleasure. Illness Illness, especially cholera, remains significant throughout the novel. Cholera kills Dr. Juvenal Urbino's father, which leads him to his eminence as a doctor. It also marks points of time; Lorenzo Daza's emigration is described by its proximity to the great cholera epidemic.

Sickness also is important in its relation to the other themes of aging, class, and in Florentino's case, love. Both Urbino and Florentino fall prey to the physical feeling of illness, which is simply age. The problems of cholera are frequently tied to class, with the outbreaks occurring primarily in poor neighborhoods, and with the prevention of another epidemic being the cause behind the improvement of the quality of life of the poor. Finally, multiple people, including chauffeur and mother, mistake Florentino's lovesickness for symptoms of cholera, thus implying a close connection between the two. Age allows Fermina and Florentino to love eternally, without the problems of society. Aging Aging is a vital theme in the novel, and it is especially closely tied to time. All three protagonists show great horror at the aging of their bodies, and Marquez shows us countless other characters who become senile, lose their teeth, pass away, and feel deep shame at the changes in their bodies. The theme of love offers hope for the indignity of aging--Florentino and Fermina are able to find profound spiritual and comfortable physical love in their late seventies, and in many of their encounters their age is only a factor in the first moment and then seems to melt away. Age, through time, provides experience and wisdom that can make love all the stronger. The problem of aging is also exhibited in the characters who do not reach old age. Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino Daza shows a special distaste for the elderly, tactlessly describing to Florentino the problems of not separating elderly people out of society, and finding it hard to accept without disgust the love between Florentino and his mother. Ofelia similarly is disgusted by such love, saying love not only is ridiculous at her age, but also revolting at her mother's. These characters, however, are shown to be shallow in having such opinions, since they are disproved by the peace that Florentino and Fermina find together. Perspective Perspective is complicated and subtle in the novel. Its importance is most clear in the narrative style, which allows multiple characters' perspectives to dominate alternatively and never more than one at a time. In this way, the same event can be described from a new perspective after the reader has already experienced it, and in this new description the reader can see an utterly different take on the event. In this way, Marquez makes the importance of individual perspective clear, reminding us that it is impossible to understand most events from the perspective of just one participant. Class Class comes up frequently in Love in the Time of Cholera. Lorenzo Daza refuses to let Florentino near his daughter, because he wants her to become a lady and the man does not have the last name of his father. Florentino is barred repeatedly from even eating with a member of an exclusive social club, regardless of his prominent position and economic status, because he was born out of wedlock.

Fermina is threatened before her marriage to Juvenal Urbino with cruel letters from those in the upper class who do not want her, a girl without an important name and with a rich but suspicious father, to marry one of their own. But the overall importance of class is called into question, for both Fermina and Florentino achieve great happiness and success, regardless of their unfortunate class backgrounds. Class never seems to be an unsurmountable obstacle outside of intentional exclusion. Writing Writing is essential throughout Love in the Time of Cholera, especially in the relationship between Florentino and Fermina, and thus in the most happy love in the novel. Florentino's and Fermina's first relationship is based entirely around letters; they speak only a handful of times, and otherwise they communicate entirely by mail. They each have a highly distinctive style that closely reflects each's personality: Florentino is overly romantic and flowery, and Fermina is cool and to the point. In their first relationship, writing seems to mask reality, for it is only when Fermina finally sees Florentino in person that she finds she does not love him, and the letters thus created a reality that did not exist. In their later and truer love, again their letters lead them to fall in love. For this to occur, Florentino must move beyond his overly effusive style to a more rational one, while Fermina must adopt a more true and meaningful style. Thus after fifty years, the transformation of his writing style reflects a change in his character that allows her to finally love him. Marquez simultaneously undermines the importance of writing, it seems, by almost never giving the reader any glimpses into the text of the letters that pass between Florentino and Fermina. The letters essentially create their love, and readers are expected to trust that the letters are as powerful as their effects demonstrate. Nevertheless, Marquez is a writer himself, so we have good reason to trust that he has revealed exactly what is necessary.

Cholera and the Caribbean

Gabriel Garcia Marquez sets Love in the Time of Cholera in a historical time of cholera. The novel spans the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th, and medical history shows that in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, over 200,000 people probably died of cholera in the Caribbean. Many of Marquez's details are reinforced by the history of these epidemics that ravaged the Caribbean. The first epidemic hit Cuba in 1833, killing more than 22,000 in seven months. The next epidemic killed between forty and fifty thousand people in Jamaica, plus twenty thousand in Barbados, all in the first half of the 1850s. For both islands, that was a loss of about fifteen percent of their populations. On these islands, whites made up only a very small number of those killed, both actually and proportionately. This was mainly because of the disproportionate poverty of the non-white populations. As in the novel, cholera hit the poor much harder than the wealthy. This is mainly because of the lack of sanitary conditions. As Kenneth Kiple points out, in the 19th-century

Caribbean, human excrement was disposed of casually if at all, and the poor were most likely to drink from the contaminated water. As in the story, the rich had their own private, much safer, cisterns and wells. At the time that Love in the Time of Cholera is set, cholera had a fifty percent mortality rate. The symptoms included acute vomiting, very acute diarrhea, muscle cramps, ruptured capillaries that made skin appear blue, and lethargy. Death usually came quickly and brutally. Sadly, those who underwent medical treatment were far more likely to die. The treatment at the time was bloodletting and purging by inducing diarrhea and vomiting, which is diametrically opposed to the rehydration that is now used to cure the disease. That the treatment only sped up the deterioration of the victim is especially interesting considering the importance of doctors and medicine in the novel.

Glossary of Terms
abscess a localized collection of pus surrounding some inflamed tissue aguardiente literally, firewater. The national drink of Colombia, an anise-flavored liqueur derived from sugar cane. assignation a secret lovers' meeting atavism the return of a trait or the recurrence of a behavior after some time of absence austerity lack of excess, adornment, or ornamentation; sternness brazier a metal container for hot coals, used for warmth or for cooking cadaver a dead body, especially one that is meant for dissection in medical studies cataclysm

an event (usually negative) that brings about great transformations centenarian a person at least 100 years old climacteric critical, crucial conjugal relating to marriage convalescent relating to the return to health after an illness courtesan a high-class prostitute or mistress, usually associated with a single powerful man crinoline a stiff fabric demijohn a large bottle, often for wine, with a short, narrow neck despondency depression of spirits; lack of confidence, hope, or courage diaphanous delicate to the point of transparency discordant sounding unpleasant dissolute indulging in physical pleasure to an extent considered immoral or harmful

Divine Providence the sovereign guidance and control of God, generally to man's advantage fancier breeder of a particular animal or plant (in this case, pigeons) fastidious very difficult to please due to concern for details fornicator someone who commits adultery or, more accurately, engages in nonmarital sex guileless naive and trusting hapless luckless, unfortunate hermeticism living isolated and protected from outside influence imperturbable not easily worried or agitated; consistently calm impetigo a contagious skin infection impetuous impulsive and passionate indigenous natural or inborn innocuous

harmless, insipid intransigence the refusal to compromise, give up an extreme position, or refrain from a criticized action irremediable impossible to remedy or make right landau a four-wheeled carriage with front-seat and back-seat passengers facing each other latrine a toilet liveried wearing a uniform of a male servant mausoleum a large tomb or a large gloomy room or building miasmic of a stench caused by atmospheric pollution milieu surroundings that someone lives in and is influenced by mulatta a female born to one white parent and one black parent multitudinous existing in a great multitude opulent characterized by a lavish display of wealth

palliative a medicine that treats symptoms only pauper a very poor person penitent repentant; feeling or expressing regretful sorrow for sins Pentecost Mass Sunday Mass held fifty days after Easter, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles as described in the New Testament peon laborer or low-paid worker peregrination a journey, often on foot pestilence an epidemic disease, usually with a high death rate petate a Central American woven carpet used as a bedroll plenipotentiary an ambassador or delegate invested with full power to act on behalf of a government pontifical relating to or characteristic of a pope or a bishop posthumous occurring or continuing after one's death presentiment

a premonition; a hunch that something is about to happen propitious presenting favorable circumstances putrefaction decomposition of organic matter, resulting in a very foul smell recumbent lying; reclined renunciation a rejection of something, usually for moral or religious reasons rotogravure a process of printing involving intaglio plates sentinel one who keeps guard sinuous full of bends and curves; serpentine syncopate to modify a rhythm by accenting the weak beat tantamount equivalent to a particular thing in effect; the same as tertian fever fever caused by Malarian parasites troupial a kind of bird indigenous to South America