Chapter 22

Operating now as a divided dual consciousness, both experiencing the narrative firsthand and watching at a spectator's remove, the narrator realizes that the doctor's experimental treatment worked.

In an interaction with the commandant, the consequences of inaction are reiterated—the world watched Vietnam's destruction, the commandant insists, and most of the spectators did nothing. Insisting that he tried to do the right thing, the narrator objects to the comparison, but the commandant, the commissar, and the doctor all reject his protestations.

As they supervise his deterioration, the three men casually debate his culpability and try to establish the extent to which he can be exonerated for his crimes of inaction. They weigh the value of the agent's life, the lives of Sonny and the major, and—the narrator is shocked to hear—the life of his estranged father, whom Man killed after receiving a letter from the narrator saying "I wish he was dead." He'd considered it only a casual complaint among friends, forgetting that his "friend" also happened to be a powerful and dangerous political dissident.

The doctor and the commandant leave, and the narrator and the commissar find themselves alone as Sonny and the major's ghosts look on. To the narrator's surprise, the commissar takes his gun, places it in the narrator's hand, and leans down to touch his forehead to the muzzle, begging him to pull the trigger. He, too, he reveals, is having a crisis of belief—he's worked his whole life for this position and now finds himself running a reeducation camp designed to reeducate a man whose education he himself was largely responsible for. His work has begun to subvert itself, and he no longer believes in his cause, but he's become so immersed that he doesn't know who he is outside this context.

Calming himself, the commissar leaves, and the final stage of the narrator's reeducation commences: an audio recording of screaming, played constantly in the cell until the narrator's will finally breaks and he himself starts screaming about absolutely nothing.

Chapter 23

"Nothing," the narrator reveals, is the watchword that finally signifies the end of his reeducation. It's due to this nothing-obsessed fit that the commandant, concerned for the camp's reputation, finally authorizes his release.

Unable to simply return to normalcy after such a mental ordeal, the narrator is temporarily moved back to his old cell for an adjustment period. He's free to come and go as he pleases, but he rarely exercises this newfound privilege—instead, he huddles in the cell's corner, clearly traumatized by his experiences and rarely speaking. To coax him back to normal communication, the doctor suggests he write out a copy of his existing confession. When he finally completes the task several months later, he asks for more paper to write down what's happened since.

Returning to see the commissar for the first time since the ordeal, the narrator notes a newfound similarity between them: just as he, the narrator, lives now as a dual consciousness, Man and the commissar, too, live as two men together in the same body.

He's made arrangements, the commissar reveals, for the narrator and Bon to flee the country. Grateful, the narrator realizes that the commissar is the only person who has never tried to bifurcate his two divergent minds. At this moment of realization, the narrator's choice of pronoun shifts—instead of "I," he begins referring to himself as "we."

The narrator reunites with Bon, who—now wearing an eyepatch—has clearly had an eventful year of his own. The two await their departure to a new life aboard a ship full of refugees.

Analysis

In...