When he first arrived at the prison, he played the defiant philosophe; soon thereafter he became the suffering prisoner; by the end of his stay, he was the remorseful sycophant. Some years later, he famously justified such moral shilly-shallying as the direct result of unequal power relations. Humans, he suggested, actually have very little agency most of the time, and must strike poses depending on who has influence over them; life, in short, demands moral compromises.
