The section on the island that follows pursues the theme of subjectivity as it relates to the individual. The three Isabels, which stood for individuals isolated in the gulf of subjectivity and which gave their symbolic name to Part Two, are now reduced to the "Great" Isabel, representing the individual in the abstract: blessed with sweet water, now concealing the silver that stands for the true "treasure" of individual character.

As the two men labor to conceal the treasure, their individualities are contrasted: Nostromo, whose entire sense of self is a dream-ideal of reputation, and Decoud, the skeptic, whose "complex nature" contains the "fatal touch of self-contempt."