The novel reaches its imagistic crescendo with the symbolic geography that opened it, now fully invested with meaning: Punta Mala being symbolic of death, Azuera of dreams, the space between them representing human life in the void, the "dark gulf" symbolizing subjectivity, the clouds symbolizing illusions and here taking the form of the silver that (like Azuera) stands for the dream-ideal. The whole becomes an image of Mankind "overhung" by the great, glowing "mass" of the unattainable, illusory dream-ideal.