 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||
|
This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!
Navigate the Summary Parts: Go to the beginning Blue Notebook (Anna's diary) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Anna draws a thick black line across the page. Then she describes how she bought her current flat to provide room for her ex-lover Michael, but also to provide room for her four notebooks. She describes how disturbed she felt after Michael rejected her and she brought out her four notebooks and read through all of them. She feels that Michael's rejection changed her entire personality, and that her notebooks are filled with untruthful content. Words have come to mean nothing and she feels like she's breaking down. She describes her most terrifying nightmare, which is about destruction. First, a primitive wooden vase comes alive in her dream and starts dancing around. In later instances of this nightmare, the vase is a misshapen old man. The destructive force is always deformed and yet very lively and energetic, and it radiates a joyfulness found in being spiteful and destructive. When she describes this nightmare to her analyst, Mrs. Marks asks if Anna senses anything good or creative about the weird little figure's vitality. Anna thinks the figure is totally evil, but Mrs. Marks says it's only dangerous as long as Anna fears it. Anna has the nightmare again, and this time the figure is not a vase or an archetype but is embodied inside an actual acquaintance of hers. Recognizing this force in an actual human is far more frightening than seeing it in an image out of mythology. Anna draws a heavy black line across the page. Then she describes a meeting she attended at Molly's house for the comrades. Jewish Comrade Henry had just returned from a trip to the Soviet Union. He addresses the general meeting with a watered-down version of what he recently learned about Stalin's mass murders of the Jews. Then when the non-Party members go home, he addresses a smaller, closed meeting and tells the unvarnished truth. An American Jew named Nelson stands up and denounces Henry for hiding the truth from the main meeting even though Henry has probably suffered extreme pressure from the "top brass" to stop him from speaking at all. Anna goes into the kitchen to find Molly crying. Molly says (page 461), "It's all very well for you, you aren't Jewish." Anna steps outside, and Nelson comes out and insists on giving her a ride home. She realizes she finds him attractive. Then she draws a heavy black line across the page. |
