Saturday, March 28, 2015

Love in the Time of Cholera & One Hundred Years of Solitude

I'm reading Love in the Time of Cholera for my independent, and I have seen so many similarities and parallels that between this novel and One Hundred Years of Solitude. At one point in Love in the Time of Cholera, there was a sentenced that said "telegrams were magical." This reminded so much of how in One Hundred Years of Solitude how things that seem "ordinary" in our normal lives can be so magical. We just don't think about it. When I read that sentence, I automatically remembered the discussion we had in class from the beginning of the year about this. Just as in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the banana massacre is interrupted as something that is so "magical" because it was unbelievable, this idea occurs in Love in the Time of Cholera. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the "new" and "latest" technologies of the gypsies' are viewed as magical, and in a similar way, the telegram in Love in the Time of Cholera allows, one of the main characters, Fermina, to remain in contact with her love, Florentino, while Fermina's father runs away with his daughter to end their relationship.  Another similarity between the two novels is how the story is told. At the beginning, the story behind Florentino and Fermina's love is unknown, and Florentino comes back to declare his love to Fermina, but their long story of half a century is not explained until later in the novel. Time is another major theme in both novels. Old age and passing time is greatly feared in Love in the Time of Cholera. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, time is cyclical and repeats itself until this ultimately leads to Maconodo's demise. In Love in the Time of Cholera, death is something that is feared, as the characters try to maintain themselves young and are so concerned with getting closer to death.

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