Australian and Dustin's Life in the Grand Scheme of Things

Aussie has built a whole like almost religious mythology around this treasure that allows him to always be searching for it, but never quite finding it. He expects that eventually his own charms will prevail over the power of evil. Next, Holman visits Spruce Island, inhabited solely by three elderly men who had lived all their lives and what he describes as a tumble down shelter. The journey through these islands makes crystal clear, which is that civilization is not an unalloyed good.