As always, a character chooses his dream-ideal (the way Charles Gould "pinned his faith" to material interests ), and is then unable to extricate himself from it (compare Gould's "there is no going back" ). Allegorically, the startling image of Nostromo welding the silver into "his life" represents the People taking up the ideal of their independent fulfilment. It required unmatched "audacity" to convert the old social ideals to this course, but having done so they can never "shake off the treasure" of their discovered self-worth.