Nostromo, like Decoud, has a brush with suicide, and again Nostromo passes the
test that Decoud failed. There are two levels to his defense. The first is at
the level of his idealized reputation: he imagines the "disgrace" going
on even without him. Compare his adventure in the gulf, when he was ready to die
to "save" his reputation ;
here again the reputation trumps issues of life and death. But this is not his
final reason. His second level of defense is, once again, a strong sense of self
where Decoud had none (see his earlier "gust of immense pride"
). He literally cannot imagine himself dead. We have just been told that this
subjective self-worth is almost a form of "insanity," so once again
the novel leaves us with the grim message that we need our illusions to keep us
alive.