- Joe keeps trying to communicate through tapping. He begins to understand insanity.
- Joe feels like a prisoner and imagines how in ancient times slaves would be imprisoned in ships and made to row until they dropped dead.
- Then Joe imagines the slaves in ancient Carthage. He once read about how people in Carthage would seal their wealth by taking a strong young man, blinding him, and shackling him like a lock between the door and the wall.
- Joe thinks of the slaves who built the pyramids; of the slaves who were forced to fight each other in the Roman Coliseum; and of the slaves who were de-limbed and mutilated for disobeying their masters.
- Joe thinks of himself as a slave, since he was also taken away from his home without his consent and made to work—but unlike other slaves, Joe doesn't even have the luxury of death to end his suffering.
- As Joe keeps tapping, the doctor comes into the room and starts to prod him, trying to figure out what's wrong. Finally, the doctor just injects Joe with morphine. Because morphine solves everything. Joe doesn't want to be suppressed and tries to fight the doping sensation, but eventually he slips into a stupor.