The Meaning Of Love In The Time Of Cholera

The true meaning of love has always been up for debate. What love really means and how it should be portrayed varies from different pieces of literature and different circumstances. Love can be presented as incredibly passionate or small and simple. It can be written as taken a long time to develop or simply love at first sight. Love and relationships are a main theme throughout Love in the Time of Cholera. It becomes what the main plot revolves around. The novel displays a couple that instantly become interested in eachother from the first moment that they see one another. They are instantly attracted and find a way to become in each other 's life. However, both characters, Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza, have never been presented with an example of what love is in their lives before meeting each other. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall into an illusion of being in love, an illusion that quickly turns into an obsession …show more content…
His father is never present as he was born out of wedlock and his mother never has a husband throughout the novel. He is forced to imagine and create an image of what love should be without anything to compare it to. He has to take advice from his mother and his only father figure, Lotario Thugut. His mother, Transito Ariza, idealizes love and makes it completely connected to suffering, making it seem as if the two always go together. She tells Florentino, “ ‘Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can,’ she said to him, ‘because these things don’t last your whole life’” (p.62). She makes it seem as if the pain and suffering that Florentino is going through is completely normal and that is a part of life that he should cherish. His other role model, Lotario Thugut, is a man who refuses to have anything to with love as he spends his nights with prostitutes. Florentino’s ideas of love are very flawed because of these two