The ancestral treasure
The opening of the novel is a wonderful example of how symbolism occurs in literature. A man who feels very much like a proper protagonist is in the desert, languishing about the social damage he caused the love of his life by impregnating her before their wedding. However, he carries a secret; secretly, the social opinion is actually a mistake. He and she actually did get married, but he became stranded before he could prove it to anyone. He only gets a chance to make peace with one person, the person whose approval matters most. The woman's father finds him in the desert, and they die in the desert, and their skeleton's guard a treasure they only discovered moments before dying. The treasure is a symbol for the inheritance of one's own ancestral honor. That's why the treasure is guarded by dead father and grandfather.
The femme fatale
Nell believes she is the femme fatale, and she constantly pushes men away because she is lovely, but she feels she has no honor to offer a suitor. She believes she is a bastard child, and therefore, she believes (according to an old, out-dated notion) that since her parents weren't married, her existence is not sanctioned by God. She feels condemned to death and hell and loneliness, like Persephone. Jung noticed the profound archetypal value of such female characters, calling them an "Anima figure." As an Anima figure, Nell's union with her true love is the major crisis of the novel. When she receives true love, she realizes that she is not a disgraceful, shameful person at all.
Redemption and romance
When Gale persists in pursuing his true love, Nell, he is offering her forgiveness and honor, but she feels she does not deserve those from someone whose family and name she respects so deeply. Oddly, the narrative has elements of Asian or Eastern ethics. A person can see in this romance a symbolic dance of opposites, the invasive, authoritative, incisive masculine who protects his village from bad guys, a man of high repute, and his union to his opposite, a person whose true worth is obscured by the evil of misplaced shame, a lovely woman who is demure, yet firm, and who has too much respect to "taint" his name. Their union is literally a triumph over shame, and their reward for winning is absolute redemption. They come together into the chamber of death, and they encounter the bones of her forefathers, and the gold they hide. That is heavily ornate symbolic language to describe their union in symbols. That is what a marriage feels like.
Rojas as foil
Why does Rojas not qualify as a spouse to Nell? The answer is clear. He does not have integrity. He loves her in an entitled way. He tells her not that she should come with him, but that she has to come with him. This is a violation of the Western concept of nobles oblige, and it is a violation of the honor that is paid to women through Western chivalry. Rojas is not an honorable person, and he believes that because of her low social rank, Nell is as good as his, but his assumption is wrong. She is secretly too honorable for him. She escapes in the night.
The waterhole as provision
After the ensuing conflict with Rojas, after the group recovers, there is a famine caused by a lack of rain. They await the rain because that will bring them food to scavenge and hunt. This symbolism is so ancient and well-documented that perhaps one might say that Gale and his gang are stuck inside a Biblical symbol. In the Bible, the examples are ample: Jonas, Elijah, Moses, John the Baptist, and even Jesus Christ himself—they all go through "desert seasons" where they are limited to a small provision of water. The symbolism refers to certain seasons of one's emotional life when the name of the game is "survival and endurance." There is a strangely mystic, ascetic feel to the symbol, as if Gale's resolve is being toughened so he can make more clear-headed decisions later. This is fasting symbolism.
