Gold represents greed throughout the novel. As a young man, Mustafa works as a merchant trading merchandise for gold. As he becomes richer, he is consumed with making a profit. One of his greatest regrets is letting his avarice lead him to participate in slavery.

During a terrible famine, Azemmur’s European occupiers prosper by trading gold while the locals suffer: “But our ill fortune did not afflict the Portuguese in our town: they still shipped gold. […] If anything, the drought and famine we were experiencing had only made their trade more profitable” (77). While the Portuguese exploit the region’s natural resources, Mustafa is forced to sell his mother’s precious gold bracelets to help the family survive. Finally, Mustafa sells himself into slavery, a transaction of “life for a bit of gold” (91).

When Mustafa arrives in La Florida, he finds a golden pebble which Narváez confirms to be gold. Mustafa feels ashamed that his discovery leads to the natives being held captive, beaten, and tortured. Mustafa reflects: “It was my find—the pebble of gold—that had unleashed the violence of Señor Narváez upon them” (47).

When Narváez announces that they are heading to a city as rich in gold as the city of Moctezuma, Mustafa ignores his guilt and fantasizes that when his master becomes rich, he’ll be set free and able to return to his beloved hometown of Azemmur. Later he realizes how foolish he was to believe Narváez’s “tall tales” and to believe that humans could be bought and sold. He reflects that he sold himself into slavery despite his parents’ warnings against putting a price on everything:

Now, years later, I had convinced myself that, because I had been the first to find gold in La Florida, my life would be returned to me. But life should not be traded for gold, a simple lesson, which I had had to learn twice (91).

The novel ends with a new hopeless quest for gold spearheaded by the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza. Mustafa observes that “Mendoza had all the gold of Tenochtitlán […] yet he wanted more” (300). Dorantes, having lost his fortune in the failed Narváez expedition, is also tempted again: “All his fantasies of gold and glory returned to him and he found them hard to resist. Perhaps he could have a second chance at making them come true” (394).

Mustafa alone realizes how destructive the pursuit of gold can be. He uses Dorantes’s greed to convince Dorantes to send him on the expedition to the Seven Cities of Gold. Once on the expedition, Mustafa tells a tall tale of his own to free himself from slavery and the Empire’s obsession with gold.