This crucial and wonderfully-written chapter follows Nostromo as he awakens, physically and morally, into a changed situation. With the Monterists in control of the town, and himself "a marked Ribierist," he finds himself no longer welcome in society in the old way. He experiences the change as a sudden and dramatic loss of self, and slowly accepts the idea that the idealized "self" of the loyal retainer was nothing but a childish illusion. He thus begins an inner revolt against exploitation that allegorically stands for the People's dawning labor consciousness.

As yet, however, he has no clear idea of how to successfully revolt against society. Wandering alone at night, he is presented with images of the solitary social outcast on the one hand, and of the faceless social marcher on the other, each equally abhorrent. Having placed the allegorical People in this confused state, Conrad then stages for him a brutally pessimistic reproduction of Plato's cave using the abandoned Custom House, in which the light from above, representing to Plato the universal truth of goodness, here reveals a universal truth of torture and death, embodied in the slain Hirsch and introduced by the cynical Dr Monygham.

The chapter ends with an entertaining dialogue of error, deception and misinformation between Nostromo and Monygham, concerning the silver which Monygham believes lost and Nostromo knows to be hidden. Underlying the dialogue, the symbolism of treasure as integrity of character lends a powerful double meaning to virtually every phrase, as Nostromo struggles to somehow regain his lost "personality" and manifest his desire for revolt.