Please help me in translating "volverse cambiantes"

Question

For the following question in my Spanish IV homework I am supposed to translate volverse in the preterite for this sentence:

Los recuerdos del niño __________(volverse) cambiantes.

I know that it should be "se volvieron." But my question is: what exactly does that mean? If I were to give it my best guess I'd say "The boy's memories start to change." If I were being literal I would say "The memories of the boy turn themselves to be changeable."

But I'm not sure. Can anyone with more experience (or even better, a native speaker!) tell me exactly what this is supposed to mean?

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

"volverse" is one of the more common ways of saying "become". Usually its used for changes that are sudden or wrenching, such as "se volvió loco" -- he went crazy.

I would say the whole sentence means " the boys memories began to be changeable" -- which is slightly different than "began to change". I guess your memories could get confused and therefore liable to change.

That sounds good to me. It's an exercise I'm supposed to do before reading the story "Génesis" by Marco Denevi, about atomic warfare. So it makes sense that someone traumatized by an explosion could have fickle/confusing memories. Awesome! Thanks! - StillLearning, Feb 3, 2010

ok, that makes sense. Sounds like an interesting story. - kattya, Feb 3, 2010

Answer 2

The boy's memories were becoming fickle.

One possible context would be if he was remembering things as he wished they had been rather than how they actually were to avoid some painful memory.

Thanks for your help! It's an interesting expression and it's funny how there are so many ways to interpret it, it seems. - StillLearning, Feb 3, 2010