Active Reading Chapter 14

Magical Elements:

The butterflies that are always around when Mauricio is around Meme. Magic.

Characters:

Meme – sees the changing relationship between her parents but stays quiet – starts going out more and more, getting drunk and sleeping with Mauricio – tells obvious lies like she wants to get caught – seems to really dislike her mom, but still appeases her at times

Summary:

Meme comes back home in time to mourn her great great uncle’s death. Aureliano goes back to Fernanda’s and a year later, they have another little baby named Amaranta Ursula. Meme got her degree as a concert clavichordist. The relationship between her mom and dad is noticeable, but she lies cleanly and tells them that she is happy in her family. Meme spends more time out of the house, and gets drunk one night. This helps start a new better relationship between Meme and Aureliano. They spend a lot of time together, but Meme never goes to see Petra, as promised to Fernanda. More Americans come to Macondo and they befriend Meme. Aureliano does everything to keep his daughter happy, and buys her American stuff like makeup and curling irons and encyclopedias.
Amaranta grows older as the years pass by. She begins to sew a shroud for Rebeca, who she wants to die before her. Then Death comes to see her, to inform her that the night she finishes her very own shroud is the day she will die, most likely before Rebeca. Amaranta stretches this out for more than four years. She finally understands what the Colonel went through his last days on earth, living a repetitive life. She finished up on February 4th, and decided to do one last thing before she died at dusk the next night: she would give letters to the dead. People delivered their letters and messages to an un-grieving Amaranta. Some did not believe that Amaranta was going to die, since she went about preparing for her own funeral in a jovial sort of way. Before her daughter died, Ursula shouted that she had no sins to confess because she was still a virgin. Then Amaranta died peacefully.
Meme was growing into a woman already. Fernanda one night caught her kissing some guy at the theater, after seeing that her daughter had lied to her. The guy Meme was kissing was Mauricio Babilonia. They had a weird start, since Meme had hating him because of his arrogance. But now she found herself wanting to see him, to embarrass him, but he would not allow that. They saw each other not too much, but he drove her crazy so that she lost her appetite and her sleep. Meme went to go see Pilar, her great grandma, who showed her how not to get pregnant, and that they could sleep in that old canopy bed of hers. Meme did sleep with Mauricio after a while, and this went on for a couple of months until Fernanda caught them in the theater. Fernanda locked her in her room, next to Ursula. Ursula then noticed that Meme took baths at night, and there were always butterflies there. Fernanda thought this was suspicious, and put a guard in the backyard. Mauricio was shot trying to get into the bathroom, where Meme waited for him, naked, to make love to him again, as they had done for the months she had been locked up. Mauricio was put in bed for the rest of his life, without a complaint, and alone.

Quotes:

“‘What do you know,’ Aureliano Segundo said laughing [to Meme], ‘If your mother only knew.’”
This was how her dad responded when she told him a secret, but then she stopped telling him stuff. She should have not stopped, because it could have prevented the solitary death of her lover, Mauricio.

“‘Let no one have any illusions,’ [Ursula] shouted so that Fernanda would hear her. ‘Amaranta is leaving the world just as she came into it.’”
This stood out because Ursula did not know about the weird stuff that Amaranta had done, touching her nephew Aureliano Jose and Jose Arcadio.

Themes:

Death - Amaranta and Mauricio died.

Solitude – They both died alone. Neither of them complaining of their solitude.