Original artwork, not a still
People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The speaker compares love’s power with the illness caused by a tiny organism. Outsiders may dismiss the woman involved as ordinary, but that does not make the man’s suffering less intense. The analogy challenges the assumption that emotional effects must be proportional to an observer’s estimate of their cause.
Context reviewed
