Love is a powerful emotion that can cause people to act in abnormal ways. In the novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, the main character Florentino Ariza falls passionately in love with Fermina Daza. He immediately spends hours composing poetic love letters to Fermina as his entire life becomes dedicated to loving her. Fermina’s father, who greatly disapproves of the relationship between the two, decides to take his daughter to travel throughout the Caribbean. After many years of separation, when Fermina finally sees Florentino for the first time since she had been back in Hispaniola, all of her love immediately disappears after realizing she does not actually love Florentio. From that day on, Florentino would live for over a century in …show more content…

The following quotation demonstrates his inability to remain sane and in control of his emotions or health: “When Florentino Ariza learned that Fermina Daza was going to marry a physician he had lost his speech and his appetite and was spending nights on end in constant weeping.” (Marquez 157). Florentino continued mourning the loss of Fermina in his life for months. His misery caused him to grow apart from his mother which strained and almost destroyed the only relationship that he had left. He found himself wishing death upon Fermina’s husband as he knew that his misery grew as he thought of Fermina loving any man but himself. In comparison, David too suffers as he constantly lives in misery. David’s misery is not only the result of the loss of Anita, but also the loss of his beloved parents and his best friend Bird. The news of the death of Anita impacts David tremendously as he says: “Anita ill? ...The news gutted me.” (Wright 40). David finds himself in complete solitude as he had destroyed his relationships with his friends and remembers cursing his father prior to his death. The memory of his actions and their consequences continuously haunts David and causes him to live miserable and alone. Overall both Florentino and David find themselves living in misery due to the loss of their loved ones.
Thirdly, the authors use archetypes to further communicate the theme to the reader. Both Florentino