One Hundred Years of Solitude: Chapter 14  Summary & Analysis

Meme’s last vacations home occur while Colonel Aureliano Buendía is still being mourned. Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo have given birth to a new daughter named Amaranta Úrsula. Meme receives her diploma as a clavichordist, and her dedicated skill in this regard is a surprising counterpoint to her otherwise frivolous nature. Her passionless playing is focused on antiquated melodies that put audiences to sleep, and though her mother invites all the town’s newcomers to hear Meme play in the hopes of attracting her a suitor, no match is found. Only when Amaranta dies as Meme able to stop playing the clavichord.

Meme’s real joy lives in being social: gossiping and partying and seeing movies with her father. After her second vacation home she had realized that her father staying at home was only a ruse played out for her benefit. Meme returns home one night, drunk and ready to tell off her mother and Amaranta, but instead she lies, telling them how much she loves them, a lie that Amaranta sees through, but Fernanda falls for. When Meme wakes later, sick with a hangover, Fernanda calls the doctor and makes Meme stay in bed for close to a week, though Úrsula is wise to Meme’s true ailment. Aureliano Segundo can also tell what Meme is suffering from and he recommits to spending more time with her.

Meme, similar to Amaranta, is not beautiful, but she is friendly and fun. Aureliano Segundo spoils Meme, redecorating her bedroom and giving her as much spending money as she wants, though she takes even more out of his wallet herself. Fernanda busies herself caring for the new baby and corresponding with “invisible physicians.” She only cares that Aureliano Segundo never take Meme to Petra Cotes’ house. Petra Cotes, however, wants nothing to do with the girl, threatened by Aureliano Segundo’s affection for her.

Among Meme’s friends are three American girls, from the other side of the tracks, one of whom is the daughter of Mr. Brown. Meme is invited to the Saturday dances, the only ones where natives and Americans mingle. Fernanda is appalled that her daughter goes to these dances, but Úrsula sees no issue. Meme is invited to play the clavichord for the Americans, and after that she is also invited to the Sunday pool parties and lunch once a week. She takes to the interests of the Americans, even learning English.

Aureliano Segundo, proud, buys Meme a six-volume English encyclopedia. She spends the time she once spent gossiping, poring over the encyclopedia, seeing her former ways as juvenile and regaling Aureliano Segundo with the story of her drunken night. She tells him she liked a redheaded American boy visiting on vacation who had already returned home with his family. Aureliano Segundo returns to Petra Cotes. Amaranta continues to sew her shroud. The invisible doctors diagnose Fernanda with a tumor in her large intestine and schedule a “telepathic operation.”

The death of Amaranta causes new upheaval. No one in the family has had any idea as to Amaranta’s true personality. She has deprived herself of romance and happiness, suppressing her desires until she nearly acts out on them with her nephews. The way that Colonel Aureliano Buendía thought about his war until his death is the way that Amaranta thinks of her adopted sister Rebeca. She prays that she will not die before Rebeca, and one afternoon, years ahead of time, she is warned that she should begin sewing her shroud on the sixth of the following April and that she will die on the day it is completed.

Several years later, a week ahead of time, she calculates that she will take the last stitch on the night of February fourth, but a power outage prevents her from finishing. She completes her work on the morning of the fifth and announces that she will die at dusk. She offers to take letters to the dead for everyone in town. She calls for a carpenter so she can be measured for a coffin and asks that the letters be buried with her. Father Antonio Isabel arrives to deliver last rites to Amaranta, who still seems perfectly well. He asks Amaranta to confess, but she says that her conscience is clean. Fernanda asks what sin could be so bad that she declines to admit it even now, but Amaranta only makes Úrsula sweat to her virginity.

Meme plays a concert that night and, in the middle of her piece, someone interrupts her to tell her aunt has died and the show is ended. After the nine nights of mourning, Úrsula goes to bed and does not get up again. Santa Sofia de la Piedad takes care of her. From bed, Úrsula teaches little Amaranta Úrsula to read. With all of her time to silently observe and meditate, Úrsula senses that Meme is upset and asks what is wrong, but Meme laughs off the question.

One night Meme says that she is going to the movies with Aureliano Segundo, but Fernanda hears him playing the accordion. Fernanda goes to the theater and sees Meme kissing a man. Fernanda escorts Meme home and the following day, a young mechanic for the banana company appears, trailed by yellow butterflies, to inquire about Meme. His name is Mauricio Babilonia. In flashback, we learn that Meme was made aware of the young man sometime before. She is bothered by him enough that he shows up in her dreams. The dream causes her to take an interest in him, and when she sees him next, she is nervous to talk to him at the movies. She looks for an excuse to go visit him at work, and he can tell she is interested. She is mortified at the transparency of her efforts. She recognizes that the yellow butterflies always precede his appearance.

When Mauricio Babilonia visits the house to deliver a package from Meme’s friend, Fernanda notes only that she can tell by his face he is going to die. When Meme opens the package inside, she finds a note from Mauricio Babilonia saying they’ll meet at the movies on Saturday. That night, he sits down beside her at the theater. She becomes obsessed and will do anything to spend time with him. She visits Pilar Ternera to have her fortune told, not knowing the woman is her great-grandmother. Pilar offers Meme the use of her bed so that she might be united with Mauricio. Amaranta’s death postpones this possibility. On the first evening she is able, she arranges to meet Mauricio Babilonia at Pilar Ternera’s.

Meme and Mauricio Babilonia make love twice a week for three months. On the night Fernanda catches the young couple kissing in the theater, Aureliano Segundo asks Meme to tell him what’s going on, but she refuses. He believes their bond has been severed. For two months, Meme is confined to her room, seemingly unaffected. Úrsula notes, though, that Meme takes a bath at night now. At night, the yellow butterflies arrive to the house. Fernanda tries to kill them, claiming butterflies at night are bad luck. Fernanda discovers the mustard plasters Meme has been using as a contraceptive one night and requests a guard be stationed outside her daughter’s window the next day. The guards shoot Mauricio Babilonia as he tries to crawl through the bathroom roof, paralyzing him. He dies of old age, alone, many years later.