Charles Walker is ultimately allowed to stay on in the PhD program and retake his oral examinations with a new committee. Stoner confronts Hollis to make amends, but Hollis is still angry with Stoner, accusing him of being prejudiced against Walker because Walker has a physical disability. Hollis, in Stoner’s view, takes this perceived prejudice personally because he also has a physical disability. Hollis and Stoner never get over this conflict; for 20 years they stop speaking directly to one another. Because of Hollis’s power in the department, even Stoner’s students stop being familiar with him to prevent Hollis from thinking they’re associated with Stoner.

Stoner continues to be assigned difficult freshman- and sophomore-level classes to teach. This drains him of his love for teaching and keeps him on a schedule that makes it difficult to be at home for Grace. Stoner spends more and more time on his own in his office. He starts wondering if life is worth living. He has an out-of-body experience while looking out of his window at the snow.

Throughout the winter, Stoner continues to have these out-of-body experiences, “a dissociation that he had never felt before; he knew that he ought to be troubled by it, but he was numb, and he could not convince himself that it mattered” (186).