Chapter 3 Summary

In this chapter, the narrator explores several aspects of his life as a first year student at the University of Michigan. He joins his father's fraternity, "simply to please him", and observes the male bonding that goes on there - the heavy drinking, the girl chasing, the indulgent laziness of many contrasted with the academic diligence of a few. He comments on how his father's knowledge of his sexuality created a bond of hatred and anger not only between the two of them but between his father and mother and juxtaposes these observations with his own judgmental comments on the mannerisms, both academic and personal, of an effeminate black English teacher. He also comments on how he kept the various components of his life separate such as his activities with the fraternity, his sexuality, his psychiatric treatments for that sexuality, and his study...