unnamed port city somewhere near the Caribbean Sea and the Magdalena River in Colombia. While the city remains unnamed throughout the novel, descriptions and names of places suggest it is based on an amalgam of Cartagena and the nearby city of Barranquilla. The fictional city is divided into such sections as "The District of the Viceroys" and "The Arcade of the Scribes." The novel takes place approximately between 1880 and the early 1930s. The city's "steamy and sleepy streets, rat-infested sewers, old slave quarter, decaying colonial architecture, and multifarious inhabitants" are mentioned variously in the text and mingle in the lives of the characters. Major themes Narrative as seduction Some critics choose to consider Love in the Time of Cholera as a sentimental story about the enduring power of true love. Others criticize this opinion as being too simple. This is manifested by Ariza's excessively romantic attitude toward life, and his gullibility in trying to retrieve the sunken treasure of a shipwreck. It is also made evident by the fact that society in the story believes that Fermina and Juvenal Urbino are perfectly happy in their marriage, while the reality of the situation is not so ideal. Critic Keith Booker compares Ariza's position to that of Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, saying that just as Humbert is able to charm the reader into sympathizing with his situation with his first-person account, even though he is a "pervert, a rapist, and a murderer," Ariza is able to garner the reader's sympathy, even though the reader is reminded repeatedly of his more sinister exploits through the charming third-person narration. Relationship between love and passion The term cholera as it is used in Spanish, , can also denote passion or human rage and ire in its feminine form. (The English adjective has the same meaning.) Considering this meaning, the title is a pun: cholera as the disease, and cholera as passion, which raises the central question of the book: is love helped or hindered by extreme passion? The two men can be contrasted as the extremes of passion: one having too much, one too little; the central question of which is more conducive to love and happiness becomes the specific, personal choice that Fermina faces through her life. Florentino's passionate pursuit of nearly countless women stands in contrast to Urbino's clinical discussion of male anatomy on their wedding night. Urbino's eradication of