Choose a motif in literature and note its appearance in three or four different works. What does it seem to signify?

Quoting a literary handbook from Bedford, a motif is "a
recurrent, unifying element in an artistic work, such as an image, symbol, character
type, action, idea, object, or phrase."  A motif contributes to theme, but should be
distinguished from theme.  Motif informs and casts a revealing light on theme, while
theme concerns specifically what a work says or reveals about its
subject.

One such motif recurs in much Southern Gothic
literature:  the grotesque and the unnatural.  In works by William Faulkner and Flannery
O'Connor, for instance, the grotesque and the unnatural reveal the state of existence in
the South following the Civil War.

In "A Rose for Emily,"
Emily, from somewhat of an aristocratic background, refuses to change following the loss
of her social and economic status.  Faulkner makes this concrete by displaying Emily
poisoning her love interest, keeping the body long after it ceases to be a body and
becomes a skeleton, and sleeping with it for years. 

In
"Good Country People," O'Connor presents a woman who is, herself, grotesque, in her
appearance, behavior, and ideas, and then presents a young man, a Bible salesman, who
conspires to steal her artificial leg. 

Much fiction by
Faulkner and O'Connor and other Southern Gothic writers is marked by the grotesque and
unnatural.