The accident occurs just after Florentino presents her with his letter, which she refuses because she must first obtain permission fro m her father. The final clue that their romance will end in disaster is Fermina's refusal of Florentino's camellia, which she justifies by declaring that a camellia is a "flower of promises. She does not want to be bound to him, and acts distant and overtly casual, almost uncaring, about their dangerous meeting.
Like Florentino, Lorenzo Daza, Fermina's father, is a man of great mystery; we do not know exactly why Lorenzo is not held in high public regard, or how he, as a man with no known profession, obtains enough cash with which to pay for his home in full.
Florentino is overwhelmingly direct in his approach of Fermina. His harassing, serious demand that she obtain her father's permission to accept his letter feels strained and outrageous. Florentino insists that his need for her father's permission — in effect, his need for her — is 'a matter of life and death,' for he truly believes that without Fermina, his life will be meaningless. He is desperate and determined to obtain not only permission to court Fermina, but, ultimately, her undying love and adoration.
Florentino idolizes Fermina, and calls her his "crowned goddess," for he sees her as an ethereal creature, a heavenly angel not of this earth, a woman well beyond his humble realm.
First he lurks outside Fermina's house for months, just so he can watch her walk to school. Later, when Fermina rejects him, he goes to every public event where she'll be in attendance, in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.
In the meantime, he lurks on docks, in the street, and on trolleys, trying to pick up women. He has a lot of success with the ladies, but he's so discrete about it that people actually start rumors that he's gay. There's also a sort of morbidity to his love affairs — his lovers tend to consist of widows, jilted women, and an escapee from the insane asylum with a dagger hidden in her bodice. Despite his many, many affairs, Florentino is obsessively devoted to the woman he loves.
It's this extreme dedication in combination with his promiscuous sexual encounters that raise a lot of the questions in the novel about the nature of love.
See our discussion of " Themes: Love " for more on this. Sometimes Florentino's behavior seems contradictory — if he's so devoted to Fermina, why is he sleeping with hundreds of other women? Florentino's romantic vision doesn't always match up with reality like when he tells Fermina Daza that he's still a virgin at the age of 76? Yeah, right. So I think Marquez makes a mighty attempt to show enduring love does exist despite all, and that Fermina and Florentino have it for each other. But I would find theirs more convincing if the author had built a more enduring platform for it.
Florentino's torrent of bad poetry, and his suitor's adolescent embrace of it I love pun intended this topic!
What appears to not sit well with most readers is Florentino's senseless, completely non-reciprocated infatuation with Fermina on the one hand and his sexual promiscuity on the other. I believe in the Nitzchean model of love, whereby love is primarily a selfish emotion.
It evolves unilaterally, through the eyes of the beholder who enjoys the emotions that the object of affection generates within himself. To put it simply, when in love, one loves the way the object of affection makes one feel rather than the object itself, which may be, as someone pointed out above, narcissistic but in any case, no less real.
Florentino is the glorification of this construct. He is so consumed by his feelings and so burdened by his lack of gratification that he helps others win over the affections of their loved ones —and runs for lover of the century- as a means of vicarious vindication.
It could be argued that his actions are a product of his 50 year-old conviction that that he could make Fermina love him and that he could make her happy if only he would be allowed to try. Sure, it was real, in the context of the story. But in this novel, love doesn't deserve to be idealized. Marquez treats it as a strangely pleasurable human ailment, or a drug addiction. The central love in this story is very real, but it has its disgusting elements as well as beautiful ones.
In this context, it seems that the only love that isn't real is the kind that disavows certain aspects of itself like lust, obsession, passion in favor of the whitewashed, safe, clean formalities such as in Fermina's lifeless marriage to Urbino. Likewise, love is not worthy if it is simply lust, which is shown in Florentino's relationship with America Vicuna and many others.
Geoffrey Sep 17, PM -1 votes. Saurabh What you are describing is passionate love. There are other forms of love and to exclude them restricts your life. His love is that he truly wishes the best for her to the point of self-denial. Throughout the novel he facilitates her liaisons with his contender because of the choice she has made, but he wins her in the end. Mae Oct 03, AM -2 votes. Either you guys are very young, or Latinos love in a different way. In fact, I know very real stories like theirs.
Sometimes, my dears, reality is stranger than fiction. And i don't thinke Florentino's and Fermina's love is so strange. I am a caribbean born and bred 50 something, and I can guarantee you that this happens, and very often they end up happily ever after.
Florentino's mom has been saving up some money by running a pawnshop out of their home, and she uses the profits to rent a bigger section of the house to prepare for the arrival of Florentino's new bride. Florentino, for his part, has been promoted to First Assistant at the telegraph office. Fermina agrees to a two-year extension.
The whole engagement is kept on the DL. Lotario Thugut buys the transient hotel, and Florentino is given the permanent use of a room to use whenever he likes. He spends more time there than at work or at home.
Florentino lives at the hotel with the prostitutes who work there and an elderly woman who occupies one of the rooms. He gets to know the girls and shares meals with them, but never goes to bed with them.
One evening the woman who cleans the hotel tries to seduce him, but Florentino refuses — he's saving his virginity for Fermina Daza. One day, four months before the date set to formalize the engagement, Lorenzo Daza shows up at the telegraph office and asks to speak to Florentino. As it turns out, last Saturday Fermina was caught writing a love letter by one of the nuns at school — reason for expulsion. Interrogated by her father and by the school administration, Fermina refuses to confess the identity of her lover.
Her dad searches her room and finds three years' worth of letters, signed by Florentino Ariza. Thirty years later, she will receive a letter saying that her aunt died in a leprosarium. Desperate to put an end to the relations between his daughter and the telegraph operator, Lorenzo Daza goes to talk to Florentino at his work.
He takes Florentino for an 8 a. When Florentino refuses to make such a promise, Lorenzo threatens to shoot him, but doesn't. Instead, Lorenzo takes Fermina away on a trip.
When she asks where they're going, he responds, "To our death. As a farewell, Fermina cuts off all her hair and sends it to Florentino in a braid. The journey is a nightmare for Fermina. Men and mules die. They sleep on urine-stained cots. They narrowly escape roving bands of soldiers at war. Fermina gets ulcers on her buttocks. Unpleasantness abounds. The group finally stops in the town of Valledupar, where Fermina's mother's brother lives. They're received by a huge effusion of relatives, including Fermina's cousin Hildebranda, who will become her close friend.
Hildebranda instantly sympathizes with Fermina's torment, and consoles her with a big manila envelope full of telegrams from Florentino. How does Florentino know where Fermina is? Lorenzo made the mistake of telegraphing his relatives to let them know he was coming, forgetting that Fermina's boyfriend is in charge of the telegraph office.
Florentino and Fermina maintain a correspondence via telegraph for the three months that she's in Valledupar, and for the remainder of her journey, which lasts a year and a half.
Fermina starts to enjoy herself, and actually feels happy in the country with her cousins and relatives. She visits a fortuneteller recommended to her by Hildebranda and is told that there's nothing standing in her way of a long and happy marriage.
The telegraph continues to play a significant role in the relationship between Fermina and Florentino. Across the wire, Fermina and Florentino solidify their plans to marry as soon as they are together again. And at one point Fermina implements the telegraph to send Florentino an urgent message requesting permission to attend her first adult dance. Florentino becomes obsessed with the story of the Spanish galleon that reputedly sank off the coast in He hires a boy swimmer named Euclides to help him find the sunken treasure.
Euclides, only twelve years old, is a clever navigator and a skillful diver. He learns the routes of the galleons from the period and thinks he knows the approximate site of the shipwreck.
The two young men set out on an expedition to find the sunken ship. After much searching, Euclides grows impatient with Florentino and tells him he'll never find what he's looking for if Florentino won't tell him what it is. Florentino refuses to tell. After three fruitless Sundays, Florentino tells Euclides his secret.
Euclides, more informed and skilled at navigating the sea than Florentino, changes their search route. One day Euclides spends an extraordinarily long time submerged on a dive.
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