What issues in this story are similar to real-life issues that you have thought about or had some kind of experience with?

For some odd reason, every time I even think about even picking up a Romance novel, my thoughts beforehand are always negative. "This couldn't happen in real life," that's what always goes through my mind. When truly, whenever we read or watch a movie, we don't want to hear about something that is possible. We want to fantasize and imagine about things that will never happen in our lifetime. Lately though, this idea has been changing in my mind. Maybe the messages and ideas hidden in the ridiculous plot lines actually have a meaning, actually have a truth.

When I first started reading Love In the Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I already knew the entire premise. Having already seen the movie,(not the best, but definitely not the worst, have you seen Nine?) I knew the basic story. A young, rich, beautiful girl named Fermina caught the eye of a middle-class boy named Florentino. They fell madly in love, when Fermina's father finds out, he whisks her away and eventually had her married. Florentino seeing this, waits and pines for Fermina for fifty-two years until they can finally be together. I know what you're thinking, not the most original idea. The thing is though, once you really get into this novel, there is something about it that sings.The way the author describes their love, how it is not a need, but a want. In most love stories, they need to be together, it's only lust. Marquez writes Florentino and Fermina's love in a such an endearing that make you not only pity them, but also applaud them.

As I read this novel, I began to think of my own life, the life I want as I grow older. For my entire childhood, I expected love to just fall into my lap. Watching so many movies, where it came easy, and the only tricky part was how to keep the love. When truly, love is earned. Through trust and the act of caring. Most people do not think objects mean love. The only thing they want from one another is for them to care. They want each other to want to be around one another. They don't want jewelery or cars, they want someone to understand them, to truly care about them.


Being a skeptic about love and relationships, I can tell you love doesn't come easy. It's hard and you have to work at it, and what you want isn't exactly what you get. Love is one of the only things in the universe that has a 100% certainty that you will get hurt. Isn't worth it though? If you had ten minutes of happiness, and then a lifetime of misery, wouldn't that be better than never being content, never feeling love? If I was you, I would go with the former.


Though Love in the Time of Cholera was on an extremely drawn out scale, the message it sends to its readers is timeless, "It is life, not death that has no limits."