Love in the Time of Cholera Characters & Character Analysis

Love in the Time of Cholera Characters

Florentino Ariza

Florentino Ariza is the novel's principal romantic who lives out the very unmodern concept of a constant heart. A telegraph operator with a passion for music and books (he is a voracious reader of both classic and popular literature, especially poetry), Florentino falls in love with the teenaged Fermina, who is teaching her aunt to read. And for the next fifty-one years, nine months, and four days-for the rest of his life, in fact-he continues to love her. Garcia Marquez based this couple on his own parents, whose courtship took a similar course. The author's father was a telegraph operator who, like Florentino, sent his sweetheart telegrams while she was on a journey that was supposed to make her forget all about him. But whereas Garcia Marquez's parents married, Florentino is spurned by his beloved, who then marries someone else. On the second of the three boat voyages that shape...
(read more)