Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a novel that recounts the glorious and tragic side effects one goes through due to love. Marquez wrote the book in such a way it left the reader wandering off into an alternate world. Magical realism plays a huge role in the novel, though Marquez always claimed that, “surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America,” and his intention was never for it to be categorized as magical realism. In this particular novel he has used the profound motif of love. Throughout the novel, the indices show that the symptoms of both, love and cholera, are similar in many ways. The novel’s main story recounts the, “eternal fidelity and everlasting love,” that Florentino has for Fermina. Love in the Time of Cholera, emphasizes how love can be portrayed as a sickness. The side effects of love can be so strong it can lead to abnormal thinking as well as behavior, the motif of love is characterized as a sickness adds to the novel a whole new layer of meaning.
The story alludes historically to the cholera epidemic that was around that time frame, the idea of the town being riddled with a deadly, permanent, and horrific disease of love draws back to Florentino and his unavoidable love for Fermina. The moment he first saw her he, “began his life as a solitary hunter.” (56) He was plagued from that moment onwards, “but he did not dare move approach her for fear of destroying the spell.” He had no control over what was happening, “he could