Throughout the novel Fuentes demonstrates the extent to which memory makes meaning. As the novel opens with Cruz on his deathbed, the invalid protagonist reconstructs his life through varied memories. As Cruz is incapacitated at the age of 71 and unable to enjoy the abundant material pleasures that marked his life, memory is the only thing he has. Rather than bemoaning his present circumstances, the aged Cruz takes comfort in his rich and varied memories that compose the novel itself. In several instances, Cruz even celebrates memory using especially poetic and hyperbolic language. Fuentes reveals in his protagonist and supporting characters that memory is supremely dynamic, but its mutability adds to its potency.

Even as a young man grieving the death of his first love, Regina, Cruz wonders to himself, “who knows if memory can really prolong existence” (75). Fuentes presents memory as a meaningful, if unreliable, tool; Regina and Cruz completely (and tacitly) elide the memory of their first sexual encounter (which in fact was one of brute force), preferring to remember “that fiction about a mythical beach” (75) that Regina herself constructs.

Catalina, when faced with the prospect of an unhappy marriage to Cruz, also “must deny the memory of the rough, strong foot that sought out her own during dinner” (47).