Rose Symbol
The symbol of the Rose is present in the first story The Rose of Tuolumne. The Rose is Jenny, or Jenny's beauty and power of captivating the opposite sex. It symbolizes purity and beauty of a girl but also the dangers of picking a rose as its thorns can cut. Ridgeway upon falling in love with the Rose and fetching a kiss from her gets stabbed.
The Fool's Asylum Symbol
The Fool's Asylum in the story The Fool of Five Forks represents the rejection of the Fool, the assumptions about him as a person. It also represents Fool's unfaltering hope and dreams of future.
Wan Lee's Porcelain Figure Symbol
It is a figure of "a pagan's god" and Wan Lee carries it with him all the time. The figure is a representation of otherness, of different beliefs and in the last scene where the figure lies crushed on Wan Lee's chest is symbolic because it portrays the hatred for that otherness but it also represent a life being shut down, crushed because of that hatred.
Motif of Night
Motif of night is present in the first story The Rose of Tuolumne when Ridgeway falls in love with Jenny and when she exposes her second suitor of stabbing Ridgeway. It appears that night foreshadows the dangers that come with falling in love with the Rose. It is also present in the story An Episode of Fiddletown. Clara takes Carry away with her in the middle of night and later Carry returns to her at night. Here the motif of night has a positive meaning as it is present in moments when a mother and daughter find the way to each other.
Centenarian Allegory
In the last story of a centenarian, it is an allegory of history. The centenarian represents history. When the narrator asks her questions about history her answers are ambiguous inconsistent and filled with personal experiences showing us that the history itself is like that: it had to be written by someone with all the inconsistency, lack of different perspectives which leaves the reader more confused than before.
