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.