Love in the Time of Cholera

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“How to Write a Love Letter”

In this activity, students will write a love letter that evokes Florentino’s emotions and passion.

Florentino Ariza’s need for love affects every aspect of his life throughout the novel, and his romantic mindset prevents him from writing even a business letter that does not sound like a love letter. In this activity, compose a brief love letter. The addressee can be either real or imaginary. In your letter, include:

• The reasons you love the addressee
• The way the addressee makes you feel
• How and why you hope to spend time together
• What you have to offer the addressee

Review Florentino’s actions throughout the novel and determine the key factors that influence his letters. Consider how his emotions would affect his character voice. Try to model these characteristics in your letter writing.

Display or post your letter for the class. Be prepared to discuss the process of writing a love letter and the traits you see in Florentino that inspired your tone and style.

Teaching Suggestion: Students might benefit from review or introduction to the elements of love letters, which often make use of literary devices such as metaphor, simile, figurative language, and verse.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students with musical interests and/or intelligence, consider allowing them to compose and share a love song instead of a love letter. Students may share their song with the class and explain their process, reflecting on what makes a love song different from or similar to a love letter.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. The novel explores different kinds of relationships, such as those between childhood sweethearts, parents and children, and husbands and wives.

• How does the novel represent the different kinds of romantic, platonic, or familial relationships? (topic sentence)
• Analyze and discuss 3 different kinds of relationships from the novel, focusing on the nature of the relationships and the way they evolve. Pinpoint specific relationships to serve as examples in your discussion.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, assess whether the novel itself presents a hierarchy of relationships; provide brief rationale.

2. Nostalgia plays an increasingly prominent role in the novel, becoming a particularly powerful force in many of the characters’ lives as they age.

• What is the overarching role of nostalgia in the novel? (topic sentence)
• Choose 3 characters and compare and contrast the role nostalgia plays in their lives. Use text details and cited direct quotations to help substantiate your topic sentence.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate the extent to which nostalgia impacts the lives and decisions of the characters in the novel.

3. The novel is set in an unnamed Caribbean city on the northern coast of Colombia.

• How does the unnamed city in which the novel takes place change over time? (topic sentence)
• Using textual support, describe the qualities of the city in which the novel takes place, highlighting its changing features throughout the novel and what these changes symbolize.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, summarize the influence of the city in shaping the lives and ideas of the characters.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. The novel begins and ends with death by suicide: the suicide of Jeremiah de Saint Amour in the beginning of the novel and the suicide of América Vicuña at the end of the novel. Why do you think García Márquez chose to begin and end his novel with death by suicide? What is the symbolism of these deaths? How do these deaths reflect the overarching themes of the novel? In a 3- or 5-paragraph essay, discuss the role fulfilled by these two characters and their significance to the novel’s structure and theme. Include text details and cite any direct quotations.

2. Throughout the novel, García Márquez often refers to women who are widows or unmarried as “free.” What makes these women free? How do men undermine women’s freedom in the novel? In a 3- or 5-paragraph essay, discuss the significance of the description of these women as “free.” How does the representation of women’s freedom in the novel agree or disagree with contemporary feminist theory?

3. Toward the end of the novel, Fermina Daza says to Florentino Ariza that the whole world has changed, and he responds by telling her, “I have not. […] Have you?” (Section 6). What does Florentino mean when he says that he has not changed? In what ways has Florentino’s love kept him suspended outside of time? In a structured paragraph response, analyze the ways in which Florentino’s romantic idealism ignores and/or transcends realities such as aging and death.

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. How is Juvenal Urbino’s death caused by his pet parrot?

A) Urbino has a nightmare about his parrot that gives him a heart attack.

B) Urbino falls while trying to retrieve the parrot from a mango tree.

C) The parrot pecks out Urbino’s eyes, which leads to infection and death.

D) The parrot leads Urbino into a dangerous alley where he is mugged and shot.

2. When does Florentino first meet Fermina?

A) While delivering a telegram to her father

B) In a shared class at school

C) Right after her husband’s funeral

D) Soon after her wedding

3. How does Florentino’s doctor illustrate irony when he tells the young Florentino, “Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can…because these things don’t last your whole life”? (Section 2, Pages 50-75)

A) Florentino’s love will actually last his whole life.

B) The doctor dies soon after.

C) Florentino never suffers again in his life.

D) Florentino dies soon after.

4. Which of the following quotes best illustrates Fermina’s internal conflict between her desire for romantic love and her self-sufficiency?

A) “Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.” (Section 1, Pages 1-25)

B) “Resentments stirred up other resentments, reopened old scars, turned them into fresh wounds, and both were dismayed at the desolating proof that in so many years of conjugal battling they had done little more than nurture their rancor.” (Section 1, Pages 26-49)

C) “Instead, she was something she never dared admit even to herself: a deluxe servant.” (Section 4, Pages 210-220)

D) “One night she came back from her daily walk stunned by the revelation that one could be happy not only without love, but despite it.” (Section 2, Pages 76-100)

5. Why does Lorenzo Daza not want Fermina to marry Florentino?

A) Lorenzo Daza thinks that Florentino is too ugly.

B) Lorenzo Daza wants her to marry somebody of higher social standing.

C) Lorenzo Daza does not think any man is good enough for his daughter.

D) Lorenzo Daza does not like Florentino’s mother.

6. What is Florentino’s nickname for Fermina?

A) “Fermie”

B) “My love”

C) “Crowned goddess”

D) “Lion lady of my soul”

7. How does Florentino react to news of Fermina’s engagement to Urbino?

A) He does not react at all.

B) He vows to kill Urbino.

C) He cries for a week.

D) He begs Fermina to take him back.

8. Why does Florentino decide to stay in the city?

A) He loves the city too much to leave.

B) He does not have the resources to leave.

C) He cannot bear to be far from Fermina.

D) He needs to take care of his mother.

9. Why is Florentino unable to write a good business letter?

A) His handwriting is terrible.

B) His grammar is very poor.

C) He has no knowledge of business.

D) His letters always come out too lyrical.

10. What does Florentino mean when he reflects that “human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves”? (Section 4, Pages 150-185)

A) That people are reincarnated after they die

B) That people evolve over time

C) That people suppress much of their past because of trauma

D) That people always distance themselves from their parents as they grow older

11. How does Fermina find out about her husband’s affair?

A) She smells something unusual on his clothes.

B) Her best friend tells her.

C) She receives an anonymous phone call.

D) She sees her husband with his mistress.

12. What is unique about the letter Florentino sends the widowed Fermina?

A) It is extremely long.

B) It is extremely short.

C) It is a song.

D) It is typed rather than handwritten.

13. Who tells Fermina to “[a]lways remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability”? (Section 6, Pages 273-300)

A) Leona Cassiani

B) Lorenzo Daza

C) Florentino

D) Juvenal Urbino

14. What happens to América Vicuña while Florentino and Fermina are on their cruise?

A) She returns to her family.

B) She dies by suicide.

C) She gets married.

D) She reports Florentino to the authorities.

15. In what way is it significant that in the original Spanish of the novel, the word for “cholera” also means “passion”?

A) The disease of cholera becomes a metaphor for love.

B) Several characters fall in love because they are sick.

C) A primary theme is that love is best avoided.

D) The disease foreshadows the prevalence of adultery.

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. What is the nature of Florentino’s relationship to Leona Cassiani? Why is this relationship such a significant part of Florentino’s life?

2. How do Florentino’s and Fermina’s ages impact their relationship after Urbino’s death? How do their ages impact the way others respond to their relationship?