Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One Summary and Analysis

In this chapter, Lessing describes the death of the Southern Rhodesia Communist Party. She once hears that all groups eventually dissolve into religion or mysticism, and theirs cannot do either, so people finally just drift away. Her own disillusionment with the Soviets and the Communism party come when she and Gottfried meet the Soviet Cultural Attaché in South Africa. Due to her mother's orchestrations, and partly because Salisbury is such a small town, she and Gottfried, and the baby Peter, run into Frank, his new wife and Lessing's two original children at the park.

When Chapter Twenty-One begins, it is 1948. Gottfried and Doris decide to move to London, where they will divorce but live nearby. She realizes that she is going into Soho with a small child, with aspirations of being a writer, but she...