This chapter, containing a quiet conversation between Dr. Monygham and the chief engineer, functions as a dramatic pause between the action of the gulf and the action of the Monterists' entry into Sulaco. However, the nature of the conversation continues the themes of subjectivity and Separatism that characterized Part Two. The chief engineer and the doctor both start from the acceptance of man as an isolated entity, engaged in constant struggle in an antagonistic world. The chief engineer is all for joining the fray and triumphing through the virtue of superior power. The doctor, the novel's allegory of cynicism, takes the view of tragedy and futility, in which the struggle has no saving grace because it is based on an illusory notion of benefit to an illusory notion of self. The benefit doesn't exist because improving the human condition is impossible, while the self can't be trusted because it is the most fallible quantity of all.

Fittingly in a discussion involving the nature of man, their conversation turns to Nostromo (representing the People), with the chief engineer arguing that the People are a tool to be used, and the doctor prophesizing that they have their own interests which may turn at any point to ambitions of material gain.