Chapter Two Summary and Analysis

The author speaks of the role of truth in autobiography. She says the first part of the book is easier because most of the people involved are gone. She notes that writer's lives do not belong to them. As she writes, she learns about herself, and thinks that she has been worse than she thought all along. The author speaks of the battles she had with her mother, of the anguish of trying to find the truth in all she was told by her parents. Lessing feels that people today have an expectation that things will get better, but history has shown that people should expect what has always happened, wars, famine, sickness, and that good times are temporary. She includes the view of a historian she has recently read, who claims that our current mistrust of the government...