"For the sick!"

Kayerts and Carlier are perfect examples of the power socialization has over humans. Everything that makes up their personality, morals, attitudes and tastes are directed by British society. When separated and isolated from everything they are, they lose their humanity. They have seeming little control over the camp that they oversee, this task being the last remnant of the civilization that they so desperately need. When they lose their men and the power they think they have over Makola their slow descent into madness makes them shells of people. Their horribly uncultured diet of sugarless coffee and saltless rice are a physical marker of their fall and their discussions of fictitious heroes are a mental one. The last hope of progress and civilization and the virtue that comes with the steamer seems to fade as they spend more time in the foreign land where their culture is not valued. It was not madness that killed these men but the diminishing sense of personhood that is only fed with the uncaring hand of socialization.