The dead leader
The society is upset when the owner of the plantation turns up dead one morning. This can be seen as a descent into chaos, since the owner was the one whose orders kept the plantation running. His death signals that the novel will discuss the way guilt and blame fall to the people who are easiest to blame, because of prejudice and assumption. The question of "who killed him?" becomes the major dilemma of the book, but the novel shows that the pursuit of "justice" here is rather chaotic and nearly random.
The dilemma of justice and perception
There is a clear motif in the book about this symbolic dilemma. When someone tries to discover the truth about a legal issue, how can perception be accounted for? If the racist Sheriff decides to pin the murder on a black man, who will stop him? And in the end the novel shows that he uses his perception with almost no second thoughts. Couldn't the crime have been committed by a member of his family? That doesn't really matter, because the Sheriff already has prejudice that determines which possibilities he will consider and which ones he will not.
The elderly assembly
The band of elders who come forward to claim the murder is clearly symbolic—it is even the titular image. The symbol does two things; one, it shows that the murder can be seen as a good thing. To the slaves on the plantation, it is a good thing that their oppressor died, and they are proud of his murder. They are willing to die for that pride. The second value of the symbol is that it shows the union of their community. The novel describes various white people nervously awaiting the Sheriff, scared that this organized assembly could begin an uprising.
The symbolic guilt claims
The way guilt is spread through the community confuses the officers of the law. Typically, no one confesses to a murder, but here, only one person did commit the murder, but there are a score of people wanting credit for it. This symbolizes the way some guilt can be shared and some cannot; for instance, there is a clear irony in the symbol. There is a shared guilt; the guilt of oppression and racist prejudice, which should be shared by the white community but is instead abdicated. The confessions prove that at the end of the day, the Sheriff will arrest whoever he wants to arrest.
The scapegoat
There is a scapegoat named Charlie who's name has four of the letters of "Christ," and whose admission of guilt leads to his death. Interestingly, his murder by the hands of Luke (another important Bible name) doesn't clear Mathu (another Bible name) of guilt. This confusing symbol shows that there is serious injustice here; the symbolic darkness of the plot shows that at the end of the day, the Black community is powerless to see justice. More than one can be killed for the same crime; Mathu still will likely die for the crime Charlie already died for.
