Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

The second and by far the most hopeless section opens with Lewis scolding himself for, having reread his journals to date, having focused so much more time on the effect his wife's death on him than on her suffering and so early having lost her late-coming happiness. He remembers her capacity for joy and pleasure as prodigious and worth reward, and observed with no little bitterness the pleasure fate takes in creating an appetite and then snatching away its satisfaction. As quickly as he determines to think more about her and less about himself, however, he identifies the fatal flaw of such a determination. For when he chooses the ingredients and measures for the recipe of her, the woman he will remember becomes necessarily molded to his liking. Instead, Lewis pines for the resistant reality of the woman he loved. As...