In Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity, Thomas Andrae notes this story's return to the theme of people living in a hidden, preindustrial utopia which began in Barks' 1949 Lost in the Andes! "However," Andrae writes, "the story differs from its predecessors in situating its fairy world in a realm that is tied to and affects the everyday one. The geologic realm in literature has come to represent the psychologic, and this story deals with the repressed longings that underlie the civilized psyche." He goes on to say that "the Terries and Fermies represent the repressed desires that undergird the Protestant ethic, fusing work and play and functioning as emblems of unalienated labor."
