"The fate of the San Tome mine was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a long time now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She had watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing weight. It was as if the inspiration of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall of silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between her and her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation of precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital, the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of the initial inspiration."
The "she" in this passage is Mrs. Gould. Her husband is an Englishman who has returned to the fictional country of Costaguana in order to claim his birthright, the silver mine. The San Tome mine is a treasure trove of indescribable value. This description of Mrs. Gould's worry about her husband seems to indicate that the novel will be focusing on her husband as the central figure of the effect of greed. This glimpse into the mind of Mr. Gould via the perspective of Mrs. Gould is essential for two reasons. Most obviously, the wife's concern for the corrupting effect of the great wealth offered by the silver in the mine situates the manner in which greed slowly overcomes even a person deemed worthy of love by another. The unusual term "circumvallation" is merely a fancy word for the idea of building an impenetrable wall around something. She is concerned that the intensifying evil of greed has created an obstruction between that husband once worthy of love and herself. The second reason this quote is significant is that it exemplifies the manner in which the narrative is told. The paragraph above offers a filtering of insight into a character: the narrator is describing Mrs. Gould's characterization of her husband. This multi-faceted perspective is one of the strongest elements of the novel which has lent it such high critical esteem.
"The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the notion of finality."
The title character's real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza. This passage seems at first to be merely a straightforward description of Nostromo, unfiltered through any perspective but the narrator. In reality, this excerpt offers another example of the complex approach to characterization adopted by the author. The protagonist of the story is situated as a man of inconsistencies. He is a republican and revolutionist. Even as a rebel, however, he is set apart from the mainstream with the parenthetic aside of being so "in another manner." The narrator describes him as being both suicidal and having a good head on his shoulders, which is a phrase not typically applied to people considering permanent self-destruction. The key point in this passage may be that immediately after asserting that Nostromo was imagining himself dead, the narrator immediately reverses himself and asserts that Nostromo was incapable of imagining himself dead. What this description of the title character—who is notably identified both as Captain Fidanza and Nostromo in the narrative—suggests is that he is complicated and contradictory in nature. As the story progresses, his story arc will move from incorruptible to corrupted.
"He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and dropped on his knees with a look of irrational apprehension over one shoulder, then over the other. The stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he pushed his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside. There they were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone. Taken away. Four ingots. But who? Decoud? Nobody else. And why? For what purpose? For what cursed fancy? Let him explain. Four ingots carried off in a boat, and—blood!"
The exclamation is being done by Nostromo. Having managed to save a year's worth of silver from falling into the hands of rebels by hiding it on a deserted island and leaving it in the care of a journalist, Nostromo has returned from the political upheaval back in Costaguana to discover the journalist and four bars of silver missing. He is certain that only Decoud, the journalist, could be responsible for the theft, but Decoud is nowhere to be found. It is Nostromo's anxiety over these four ingots out of an enormous trove having gone mysteriously missing that ultimate drives him to his tragic end. Nostromo is held in the highest esteem as a man of trusted incorruptibility. His return to Costaguana, however, has left him embittered and disillusioned. That facade of being resistant to the corrupting influence of greed is no longer a given and he knows if he reveals the location of the silver which everybody else assumes has been lost, he will be accused of theft. This is the dilemma facing Nostromo which sets the narrative conflict in motion.
