what is Chapter two summary

While driving away from the café, the narrator thinks about how he has been “free” since he was 14 years old, nearly 26 years ago. He takes note of some of the simple pleasures that freedom from slavery allows him, such as the high-quality car he is driving and the variety of foods he can enjoy. He describes how most foreign trade to the United States is denied by the “European Consensus,” which has lead to technological limitations such as compact disc technology not being imported from Japan. America, as he describes it, is a deeply fractured nation, “gray and ugly, redolent of violence and fear of violence” (13). The nation is in the midst of the “Bastlisch hearings,” (which the narrator does not define at this point in the novel) and that there are protests occurring across the country. While driving, the narrator is stopped at a security check-point and searched because of a “heightened security environment” (13) that allows law enforcement to pull over and question black drivers without reason. The narrator regards this occurrence with a feeling of emptiness.