In my opinion, there is a close parallelism between Werther, from Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, and Florentino Ariza, from Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the time of cholera”.  Both of these characters love a woman that they can’t have and in both cases the woman that they love gets married to another man. However, Werther and Florentino face their problems in completely different ways: Werther kills himself, whereas Florentino perseveres and fights for the woman he loves. Florentino loves the same woman for more than fifty years. He respects her marriage status and attempts nothing while her husband is alive. However, his love is forever unwavering and when she becomes a widow he comes back to offer her his eternal love. Werther, on the other hand, kills himself as soon as he loses his woman to another man, thereby causing a great grief to everyone around, especially to the woman that he supposedly loves. In my opinion, Werther does not feel real love. He is the victim of his own selfishness and immaturity, of his incapability to feel a true and unselfish love. Florentino, on the contrary, loves his woman more than he loves himself, and he always tries to make her happy. Florentino is strong and full of life. He is full of love.