Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis

Father finds that Kay is too immature for the London School of Economics, but he allows her to transfer to the urban, coeducational, non-affluent, intellectually fervent University of Chicago. Kay lives on the edge of campus and acquires a nucleus of intellectual, beer-drinking friends. She declines to join sororities, which invite her only with difficulty because of her being half-Jewish. Kay is more surprised than distressed by this touch of anti-Semitism. Kay declares an American History major, is challenged by a great books course that uses the Socratic method, earns an A and is rewarded by Father with a hundred dollars to spend on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Kay finds it hard to balance academic and social activities. She becomes ardently anti-fascist and pro-labor while remaining basically conservative.

Chicago's ASU is far more radical than Vassar's, composed mostly of...