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.