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MonkeyNotes-Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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The reader should notice Garcia MarquezÂ’s narrative strategy in
this opening chapter. The narrative opens with something out of
the ordinary and also mysterious--the death of a friend, the
discovery of his friendÂ’s lifelong affair. Then, the character goes
home and the narrator begins to describe something quite inside
the ordinary and not at all mysterious, the domestic issues
between a woman and a man who have lived together for more
than fifty years. He even goes so far in entering the mundane as
to include a long disquisition on the coupleÂ’s fight over the soap
and their fight over the doctorÂ’s habit of urinating on the toilet
rim. It is this subtle balance between the epic and the everyday
that makes Garcia Marquez one of the great writers of all time.
The doctor dies and the chapter ends with a eulogy to this
fictional character. In doing so, Garcia Marquez is afforded the
opportunity of introducing some exposition on the city and the
history that informs the novel. However, he quickly moves on to
introduce another plot, one not expected by the reader since the
doctor has been the primary focus in the first chapter. At the end
of this chapter, the reader is suddenly plunged into the story of
unrequited love that has lasted for over fifty years. After having
shown us the devotion of this old couple, Garcia Marquez
makes us curious about the man on whose face Fermina Daza
has just closed the door.
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