Part Two, Chapters One through Five Summary

As Chapter One of Part Two opens, Tristram is at home at midnight about two months after the start of the Interphase, trying to eat a cereal that tastes like paper, while his wife retches in the bathroom, which he assumes is because of the poor food. In the elevator on his way to school for a graveyard shift, Tristram hears people complaining about the police watching them all the time. At school, a student who has not done his homework explains that it was because he was moved to the state hostel. His parents were taken away because his mother is pregnant. Tristram feels helpless anger. In Chapter Two, Beatrice writes a love letter to Derek, whom she has not seen for two months, except on television. She asks that he send...