"Silver" is the most noticeable symbolic word in Nostromo's final sentence, decoying us somewhat from the most important one, which is "conquests." Forming a pair with "rule" in the novel's first sentence, it bookends a story that is really a thematic inquiry into the causes of human conquest, a posing of the question, "Why do we need to rule each other?" The course of the answer has unfolded to us a philosophy of almost unmitigated pessimism -- it is a book in which Decoud speaks with the author's voice and Dr Monygham has the final point of view -- but it is also one that celebrates life and the human soul as the only values in the universe. And in this symphonic, oddly uplifting final paragraph, it is worth noting that the novel's last word is "love."