How does the author use symbolism in the novel, The Trees?

The author uses mirrors to symbolize danger and inevitability. Before the Reverend Fondle is killed in his bedroom, he sees a Black man in the mirror. This leads him to have a flashback of his own father killing a Black man when he was a boy and to possibly reflect on karmic justice, although he is a Christian: “His last thought, if he was capable of one, might have been that those other brown people were onto something with that notion of karma” (138). While driving with Jim and Ed, Herberta Hind spots a state trooper in the rearview mirror, a man who represents a temporary threat of racial violence to them. While this situation passes without incident, it serves as a reminder of the inevitable danger that follows the Black main characters.