On Marquez's View of Love in the Love in the Time of Cholera

XIONG Xin

School of Foreign Languages,Guangxi University of Science and Technology,Liuzhou,China

Email:1301643470@qq.com

Zhang Kaijing

School of Foreign Languages,Guangxi University of Science and Technology,Liuzhou,China

Email:474774619@qq.com

[Abstract] Garcia Marquez is reckoned to be one of the most prominent authors of the 20th century in Latin America and even in the world.His novel Love in the Time of Cholera is one of his best works.In the novel,Garcia Marquez told readers the love between the protagonists.Therefore,the paper studies Marquez's view on love by means of analyzing his novel Love in the Time of Cholera.

[Keywords] Love in the Time of Cholera;Gabriel Garcia Marquez;love

Introduction

In the 20th century,Garcia Marquez is considered one of the most significant authors in Latin America and the world (Rong,2015,p.7).He is famous forOne Hundred Years of Solitudeand won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.Three years later,his novelLove in the Time of Cholerawas published and also became popular in the world.

In the story ofLove in the Time of Cholera,Ariza met Fermina occasionally,because of Fermina's beautiful appearance and quality,Aliza fell in love with her quickly.But Fermina's father confused Ariza firmly and took her to travel.They contacted with the telegraph(Anil Kumar,2014,p.13).After the trip,Fermina did not recognize her authentic emotion to Ariza,and at the end,she chose the the wealthy and renowned man,Dr.Urbino to marry.After Fermina got married,Ariza tried to date with other women to heal his broken heart,but he couldn't forget Fermina.When Urbino died,Ariza showed up again to help Fermina to deal with funeral.At that time,Ariza was 76 and Fermina was 72.And for their rest time,they accompanied with each other.

Love in the Time of Cholerahas achieved significant critical acclaim.Mr.Yu Hua heaped praise on that the novel is an excellent work of life.AndNew York Timesbelieved that "this brilliant,heartbreaking" work is the greatest love story ever written.Scholars at home and abroad have gained profound insights into the study of this novel from various aspects.In his workWriting of Love in the Letters of Separation in Love in the Time of Cholera (1985[1988]),Anil Kumar Prasad explores the different aspects in Florentino Ariza's choices of relationships for survival and for a prospective union with Fermina,and the scholar Chenfeng has a research on the love theme of the novel.He analyzes many aspects about the human beings,such as the relationship between love and aging,loneliness and the death(Chen,2014,p.5).There is few papers on Marquez's view of love,so this paper tries to have a brief research on Marquez's view on love through analyzing his novelLove in the Time of Cholera.

Brief introduction of the writing background of the novel

Marquez wrote the novelLove in the Time of Cholerabased on the history of Colombia and his own experience.In this part,this paper will discuss the writing background of the novel from two aspects:historical background and personal background.

Historical background

The story inLove in the Time of Choleratook place in Colombia between the 1880s and 1930s.At that time,as a republic,Colombia happened a lot of things and changed a lot.The"thousand-day war"broke out,which caused serious damage to the national economy.At the beginning of the twentieth century,Colombia changed a lot and its economy developed.But meanwhile,the United States and Britain plundered Colombia's wealth.In 1929,when the economic crisis broke out,Colombia's exports decreased.Therefore,the economy of Colombia was destroyed again,and people were suffering a lot.And more unfortunately,almost at the same time,the horrible cholera broke out.

War and cholera threatened people's lives,and the man-made destruction intensified the antagonism between human and nature.The social loneliness of human caused the lack of perception and true feeling between human and increased the psychological distance.Not so many people care about their inner feelings(Ma,2014,p.16).But Marquez explores the people's inner feeling when they experienced fear,aging and death.And Marquez finds that it is love that gives people the courage to live again and it is love that relieves death and keeps life going.

Personal background

In the novel,Marquez not only reveals the reality of Latin American,but also shows his own understanding of love based on his own experience.

Marquez said that the immediate origin ofLove in the Time of Choleracomes from a story in a newspaper.The story says:An old man and his secret lover came to their old place forty years ago to enjoy themselves,and were beaten to death by the boatman with his oar,in order to rob their money.Actually they had been on date together for 40 years,and each had a happy and stable marriage and many children.

After reading the news,Marquez planned to write a novel about love.Because he has already heard that the love story between his parents,which is full of legend.That is when his father Gabriel Elicio Garcia Martinez was young,he was very popular as a newspaper clerk,poet and violinist,just like the protagonist Ariza in the novel.Once Gabriel Elicio visited the Colonel and fell in love with the Colonel's daughter,Louisa who becomes Marquez's mother later.Then Gabriel Elicio expressed his love to Louisa and he wanted to marry her immediately.However,Louisa didn't answer.But Louisa finally secretly agreed to Gabriel Erichio's proposal.When the Colonel knew it,he was so angry that he didn't allow Gabriel Elicio to come again.But the young couple tried everything they could to keep in touch.Gabriel Elicio was so brave and began to play serenade for his lover under the window,just like Florentino Ariza did for Fermina Daza.Louisa's parents thought that only a long distance could cut the hot love of young people.So they moved like that in the novel.However,Gabriel Elicio didn't compromise with reality.He tried to use telegram to contact Louisa.It is Gabriel Ellicio's love story that inspired Marquez to create his novel 60 years later.

Besides his parents' love story,Marquez also adds his own love story in the novel.Marquez and his wife Mercedes met firstly at a dance in the winter of 1945.Mercedes,was only 13 years old and had just graduated from primary school.In Marquez's heart,the girl of Egyptian origin was as quiet as a snake in the Nile,and he asked the girl to marry him that night.However,the beautiful young girl did not care about it at all.So Marquez had to wait her to grow up patiently.Marquez,a journalist,always worked in different places of the world,and the drugstore owner's daughter could always heard love letters from many countries.During this period,Marquez were dating with many women.In 1958,Marquez and Mercedes ended 13 years of long-distance love and married.Before their marriage,Marquez talked his"love history"to Mercedes,and Mercedes was generous enough to say,"just don't do it again."

The love between Marquez and his wife Mercedes,as well as the love between Marquez's parents,provides him indispensable inspiration for the creation of this book.

Garcia Marquez's view on love

Garcia Marquez tries to know love in the novelLove in the Time of Cholera.This part will have a discussion on Marquez's views of love through analyzing the magic love that embodied in his novelLove in the Time of Cholera.It will discuss the relationship between love and cholera,love and death,love and sex and love and marriage.

Love and cholera

Marquez chose"cholera"as an image in his novel.In some degree,there exits some common characteristics between"love"and"cholera"."Cholera"is a kind of disease,which spreads quickly,and impacts many people.Once a person got cholera,he will feel painful,and even died.Marquez believes that this is what cholera is like love.A man never knows when he will be infected by cholera,just as he never knows when he may fall in love with the other person.In the novel,he describes Florentino Ariza's love like the flowing:

After Florentino Ariza saw her for the first time,his mother knew before he told her because he lost his voice and his appetite and spent the entire night tossing and turning in his bed.But when he began to wait for the answer to his first letter,his anguish was complicated by diarrhoea and green vomit,he became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells,and his mother was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devastation of cholera.(Yang,2012,p.69).

This is a classical plot in the novel.It vividly describes the Ariza's painful feeling when he fell in love with a girl for first time.And it is also the similarity between love and cholera,both of them will make people feel painful.Maybe cholera can't be cured,but Fermina's reply cured Ariza.Life is tough,but love can cure everything.When Fermina's husband died,Ariza came to help her and accompanied her.In the end of the novel,Ariza and Fermina were dating in a ship.Ariza advised the captain to declare the ship was infected with cholera,so that no one could disturb them,and Ariza told the captain firmly that they would keep going until arrive at the "golden harbour",which means forever.Actually,the love between Ariza and Fermina has never stopped.The cholera witnessed the beginning of their love,companied with their separation,and ended with their love again.Cholera runs through the ages,and love also runs through the ages.

Garcia Marquez believes that only love can lead a meaningful life.He linked love directly with the cholera because only love can win everything.

Love and death

Marquez believes that love can transcend everything,including death.Death is a common theme mentioned in the novel,and in this novel,Marquez also chose death to compare with love.No one can escape death,but love can make everything meaningful.

The story emphasizes that the death is inevitable.In the beginning of the novel,the story begins with the death of Jeremiah Saint-Amour,who has planned to suicide at the age of sixty because he could no longer enjoy the passion of his life (Sun,2014,p.82).The woman who loved Jeremiah Saint-Amour knew about his death early and didn't tell anyone about it."'I could not do that,' she said,shocked.'I loved him too much.'" (Yang,2012,p.15).From that we can see the woman love him so much that she would keep her love with her without telling the truth in her lasting time.And the other is the death of Dr.Juvenal Urbino.He presented his true feeling to Fermina at the moment of his death,that is love.And after that,the narration moves back in time to the stories of Ariza and Fermina,and only toward the end of the novel,the story turns back to the deaths of Saint-Amour and Urbino,both of which in turn reminded the elderly Ariza of his own inescapable death.So Garcia Marquez suggests that there is no escape from death,but love would last forever.

In addition,the love between Ariza and Fermina also reminds the readers that passionate love is eternal and beyond death.When Fermina rejected Florentino,the passionate love for Fermina sustains him to spend his tough days.After the funeral of her husband,Fermina spends the whole night in bed and thinks about no one but Florentino.Clearly,though she may have denied it to herself,she has loved Florentino since the moment of their separation.Ariza,he waited Fermina for over 50 years,during the long process,he not only endured the loneliness in heart,but also fought with the unexpected death of his own.He was so cautious about his body to make sure that he was still alive when he got the love of Fermina.And finally,his love won the death,and the two lovers would live together forever.

Love and sex

Marquez also thinks that sex is not necessary in love,especially in this novel,where the protagonist,Ariza,only loves Fermina,but he can have sex with 622 different women.

Frued says,"A healthy and normal love depends on the union of two emotions —tender and loving,we may say,on the one hand,and sensual desire on the other." (Yu,1996,p.166).Only when one can deal with the relationship between love and desire well,he can grow healthily,and can have a long-term love with his lover(Zhang,2012,p.1).In Marquez's works,love and sex are divided by a usual phenomenon.Amaranta,for example,is a person who yearned for love but resolutely rejected sex;while Ariza,on the other hand,indulged in sensual pleasures with different women but remained spiritually loyal to Fermina,his only lover.

From the point of view of Ariza,he had been faithful to Fermina for fifty years.According to Marquez,Ariza's infatuation and fidelity were on only spiritual level.In more than fifty years of waiting,Florentino was always missing Fermina,but he enjoyed the worldly love.He had six hundred and twenty-two recorded mistresses,which is a way he found to forget the pain of missing Fermina.He had never thought the indulgence of the women's bodies was a betrayal of love.He always considered himself as Fermina's lifelong companion,a loyal but perseverance husband.Thus he could tell her without hesitation that he had kept his virginity for her,no matter how ironic it might sound to the readers.He thought love and sex were two different things,and had sex with others doesn't mean he loved the person.His love was always kept for his dreamlover,Fermina.

Love and marriage

Marquez believes that some happy marriages are based on love,and some couples do not begin marriage with love but the couple cultivate love in the process of getting along with each other.The love between Fermina and her husband Dr.Urbino are cultivated after their marriage.

Love is not a necessary premise for marriage sometimes and a couple may love their lover after their marriage.Marquez used marriage in his works to tell us that love is not always idealized and romantic,but it can also have different manifestations and forms.

Dr.Urbino,his knowledge,versatility,and good looks made him become the object of intense courtship among the girls of his rank.After he met Fermina,his desire to conquer Fermina was far greater than his love for Fermina.He didn't love her he knew.All he did was to make Fermina to marry him.He maintained good relations with Fermina's father Lorenzo Daza,and gained him as a significant ally.He tried to use his family's position in society to win Fermina's heart by making her back to church school.His pursuit of Fermina was not because he love Fermina from his bottom of heart.

Fermina,who is like Urbino,married him without love too,and in her situation she would have accepted any suitor.Because she was going to be twenty-one,if she refused,she might repeat her aunt Escolastica's fate and become a poor woman who would never marry.On the one hand she blamed her aunt for being involved in her love,on the other she felt pity of the loneliness of a single woman.Fermina wanted to get married with somebody to avoid the tragedy that happened to her aunt.

Although there is no love as the foundation of their marriage,but there are something more lasting than love to maintain their relationship.So in their more than half a century of marriage,although there were little arguments and trouble in their marriage,and these did not disturb their stable marriage.Love can be cultivated in a relationship of mutual patience.And they must admit that,in their long marriage,they loved each other for a long time.And at the end of Urbino's life,he shouted"I love you"to Fermina.

Conclusion

In the novelLove in the Time of Cholera,Gabriel Garcia Marquez fully shows his understanding of love and discusses the relationships between love and cholera,marriage,sex and death.Facing cholera,war and death,the people have been fighting with all the sufferings and have survived.Marquez wants the people to notice the people's life in Latin America and contemplate causes of underdevelopment of economic and loneliness of society in Latin America,and thus explores a way to refresh the whole country.In his works,he creates many characters who are trapped in the abyss of loneliness because of social issues,conservative thoughts or others,and he gave deep sympathy to these tragic figures.He encourages ordinary people to follow their inner thought to do what they want to.

Marquez believes that love gives people hope,love brings people happiness,and love can conquer diseases and everything.For contemporary people,love is not a luxury whatever they meet in life as long as they know what is true love.True love guarantees a happy marriage and help the couple face and conquer any problems that might happen to them.