Love is a Disease

Some thoughts:

- Love is a sickness. Or so Gabriel García Marquez convyes in Love in the Time of Cholera. The protagonist, in his sickness, becomes his own antagonist. Florentino Ariza is sick with love, and the symptoms are dangerous. His mind is crazy with his longing for Fermina. He is no longer rational, he acts solely on his feelings. He is literally plauged by his passion for Fermina. He stalks her, watches her house, even when she’s not there. No rational person with intelligence like Florentino would exhibit such obsessive behavior unless they were under a serious illness. He can think of nothing else besides her. Though he is smart and successful, at work he cannot even do the simplest of tasks, such as writing a business letter. He is spending so much energy and drama on the person who might not even be the right one for him (though he is convinced differently). Florentino becomes so physically ill from lovesickness that his godfather at first thinks Florentino has cholera. His madness caused by his undying passion for Fermina transcends from psychological to physical when he eats flows and drinks cologne, then vomits it, all to know the scent of Fermina. He is sick in his heart (figuratively) which becomes sickness in his stomach. His emotions have made him lose rationality, and make him mentally disturbed.

- Other symptoms include his susceptibility to love poetry and romances.

- However, he thrives on this sickness. He loves that he’s suffering for her, even when he’s thrown in jail for serenading her. He takes satisfaction when Lorenzo Daza threatens to shoot him.

- Florentino’s drug to help his sickness is sex. While he is plagued with love, he sleeps with many women to forget his heartache and desire for Fermina.

- While cholera often affects the poorer classes of society, lovesickness affects anybody.

- Florentino’s passion has persisted like the plague of cholera. Florentino is literally plagued by love.