There is poetic justice in Gamacho's end, given Barrios' love of riches and his reliance on tradesmen (see his biography, ). This is the first of several instances in Mitchell's story in which loose ends are tied up in perfect fashion or main characters are rescued from improbable cliffhangers at the last moment. By satisfying the light reader's expectations in the context of Mitchell's history, Conrad pokes fun at those expectations, and makes the point that our desire for Story is a version of the same need that delivers us to Propaganda. Compare Conrad's deliberate frustration of reader expectations in Part One, that served in its own way the same purpose: to prove upon the reader the book's argument, namely the necessity of the organizing dream-ideal.