This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!

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Navigate the Summary Parts: Part 1: Molly & Anna talk Part 2:  Rhodesia Part 3: Recruiting voters Part 4: Tommy's accident Part 5: The producers Part 6: Comrade Ted's excellent adventure Part 7:  Anna's detailed day Part 8:  Tommy recovers Part 9:  Pigeon pie Part 10: Psychoanalysis Part 11: Nightmare Part 12:  A toxic party Part 13: Anna talks to Tommy Part 14: Black, Red, and Yellow notebooks end. Part 15:  Saul Green arrives Part 16: Anna and Saul have sex Part 17:  Anna and Saul argue Part 18: Anna reads Saul's diary Part 19: Anna and Saul go nuts Part 20:  Blue Notebook ends. Part 21: the Golden Notebook Part 22: conclusion

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing: Pages 537 – 543

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Blue Notebook: (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Anna sleeps and has the joy-in-destruction nightmare with the spiteful energy embodied in a malformed old man with a huge, threatening penis. She knows the old man wants to hurt her, and wakes up to find Saul lying cold and inert beside her.  She realizes that he's never been in good health since she's known him, and starts trying to rub warmth back into him.  She falls asleep and becomes the old man in the dream, and then turns into similar creature but an old woman.  Then Anna wakes up and Saul wakes up a moment later.  They are both frightened and have sex out of fear and the need for comfort.

For the next week, Saul doesn't come near Anna.  He keeps a cold and cordial distance. She grows more and more jealous and unhappy.  Finally she confronts him on page 538 with, "What sort of man is it who makes love to a woman with every appearance of enjoying the process for days on end, and then switches off without so much as a polite lie?"

He laughs in a hostile way and says that she might very well ask.  She suggests sarcastically that he must be writing a novel about finding his identity.  He says he's not going to take that tone of voice from someone who has obviously never doubted her own identity.  She gets even more hostile, enjoying it, and tells him good luck but not to use her in his experiments.

Then she walks out.  A few minutes later, he follows her and says in a more normal tone that she deserves happiness but that he has never been happy and the word means nothing to him.  Their argument past, they settle down to drink coffee together.

Saul talks about his experiences as an ex-Communist suffering under McCarthyism in the United States. He mentions a boss of his in Hollywood who demanded to know if he were a Communist. Though he'd actually been kicked out of the Party awhile back, Saul made a point of refusing to answer, and he subsequently got fired.  Then he met his old boss at a party later on, and the man cried with guilt over treating him so unfairly.

He tells the story to Anna with some contempt. She points out that he's still operating under the assumption that individuals can be expected to stand up courageously for their beliefs under pressure. Saul, who usually rambles on as if to himself without paying attention to her, suddenly stares at her and demands to know what she means. 

Anna elaborates that she and everyone she knows has said one thing in private and another in public out of fear of being thought a traitor to the Party. Saul abruptly gets snotty and accuses her of showing her middle-class origins.  Anna refuses to get upset and points out that the British Communists have seen by looking at America that an entire "intelligentsia" can pressured into routine anti-Communist attitudes.

Saul declares with jarring sentimentality that he loves Britain because such a thing could never happen in Britain. Anna disagrees, saying that the exact same backlash against Communism that happened in America during the height of the Cold War happened among the intellectuals in Britain though they downplay it now.

Anna goes on to make the point that even in the democracies of the world today, never mind the dictatorships, the number of individuals willing to stand up for the truth at all costs is infinitesimal. At that moment Saul freaks out, excuses himself, and leaves the room. Anna sits there thinking that she's right. She realizes that the western belief in the incorruptibility of freedom is probably the biggest threat to freedom.

Saul comes back out of his room, looking more cheerful, and apologizes.  He says he had to leave because he couldn't take hearing what she had to say. He says that people who have suffered the kinds of experiences that he and Anna has are probably inclined to be depressed.  Anna says that on the other hand, they're probably more inclined to recognize truth. She offers him lunch.

They eat and he talks about his rotten childhood with parents that split up when he was young. After lunch, he says he wants to go upstairs and work on his writing.  Maybe five minutes later, he comes down and laments the fact that he used to be able to work all day but now can only work for one hour.  Anna experiences a moment of jarring confusion: he seems to think he's worked for one hour, but it's only really been five minutes.

Saul mentions a "friend" of his who grew up in a broken home.  He's done this before:  brought up a "friend" when he's clearly talking about himself. Anna says, "Yes, I'm sure your parents' splitting up affected you." He gets suddenly hostile and suspicious and demands to know how she knows about his past.  Anna points out that he himself told her not ten minutes earlier.  Saul gets confused and hurries back to his room.

Anna goes to her room and shuts the door, deeply shaken. She realizes that Saul does this all the time: he genuinely forgets that something has just barely happened, and refers to it as if a lot of time has gone by.
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