This dawn is reminiscent of the "gloomy, clouded dawn" that ended Part
II ,
and like that one heralds the birth of socialism in threatening and even violent
imagery. "The liberated Sulaco" has a grimly ironic ring alongside the
"hateful and immense" San Tomé mine of the next paragraph, and
also alongside Nostromo's enslavement to the silver. The "gulf as grey as
ashes" adds to the sense of a barren future being born, and continues the
symbolism of the gulf as subjective isolation, suggesting that the tremendous
upheaval undergone by Nostromo (allegorically, the People) has not been perceived
at all by the greater society.