But the overall impact highlights the novel's underlying themes: the hypocrisy of many but compassion of some; the way craven people get the callous rulers they deserve, yet now and then rise to a nobility that deserves better.
It's the stigma inside of others, it's the shame, it's the embarrassment, it's the disapproving look on a friend's face, it's the whispers in the hallway that you're weak, it's the comments that you're crazy.
We are going to be dead pretty soon and all those cancer stories point us in one direction only: towards the need to stop being a craven, imitative, second hand timid flunkey and herd-animal.