A RE- READING OF LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA AND PALEHORSE, PALE RIDER IN THE COVID PANDEMIC SCENARIO

 The whole world has changed her outlook towards the end of the year 2019 withthe   outbreak   of   Covid   19   pandemic.   We   live   in   isolation,   separation   and segregation and hence the life has become pain stricken. Death may knock at each door without any warning. Let’s analyse some other pandemic occasion such as   the   Spanish   flu   and   the  cholera.   Here  I   am   trying to   converge   the instances of cholera and Spanish flu with reference to the present scenario via literature. Good literature always mirrors the historical and cultural aspects of the   society.   The   backdrop   of   literature   should   always   be   truthful   to   the contemporary issues. In other words literature should be read as documents of historical and cultural discourse. The world had witnessed the Spanish flu in1918 and the cholera towards the last part of the 20th century. Love in the Time of Cholera is a very famous work by the Latin American Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquis. As the name suggests it is actually a love story which is written in the backdrop of the pandemic, cholera. A number of currently using words like quarantine, isolation, epidemic, etc. are often seen in this novel. Florentino Ariza, the hero of this novel is self-fashioned according to then the social, cultural and political milieu. This is also known as cultural politics in which the Latin American culture with all its vividness is depicted.The social segregation and all other kinds of separations during the outburst of this pandemic are simply visible in this novel. It has marked a division among the humanity as we are experiencing right now.   The second novel, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which is written by the American novelist, Katherine Anne Porter, the social backdrop is the Spanish influenza,which caused mass death in the early part of the 19th century. This is yet another example for a fiction which is set at the time of a severe pandemic, Spanish flu which has spread during 1918. Death is a major image in this novel. Funeral processions are recurrently occurring at the meeting time of Adam, the hero and Miranda, the heroine. This is ironic as Adam himself has become a victim to the pandemic whereas Miranda is able to surprisingly overcome the contagion. All manners of panics as we really experiencing at the time of Covid 19 are often visible in this work also. The novel itself is set at the war time and the financial issues under the war fund collection is also depicted in this novel. 

 The sufferings of humanity is same in all generations, even though the mode ofexperience is different a little bit. The working class has to struggle the most inall these instances and the socially and culturally abandoned community has towork hard to regain their previous status. Two of these novels are really hearttouching love stories and the respective novelists are telling it under a critical social, cultural and political situation. 

DINESH A

Assistant Professor of Sociology, Alshifa College of Arts and Science