Read "Gould Concession" as idealism, as the novel often encourages us to do, and this becomes a denunciation of the dream-ideal itself. Indeed, in the speech that follows this declaration, the chief engineer expands the fate of the mine into a general principle, "a story that will never grow old." The deeper implication is that any unifying dream-ideal is "compromised" because of the inveterate, inextinguishable hostility of the world.