#2.
Symbol: Niagara Falls
Dirk Burnaby as well as many other characters in the novel discuss the pull and strength of the powerful Niagara Falls. It is warned that if you spend too much time around the Falls it would put evil thoughts in your mind. "The Falls exerted it's malevolent spell that never weakened."
This majestic cataract is seen as a beautiful poison, like a thorny rose. One can be drawn closer and closer by it's beauty, only to be washed away by it's powerful strength. Clyde Colborne discusses in the book, that 'Most Niagara natives kept their distance from The Falls, so they were immune' from it's fatal call.
"But if you drifted too near, even out of intellectual curiosity, you were in danger: beggining to think thoughts unnatural to your personality as if the thunderous waters were thinking for you depriving you of your will."
Niagara Falls is a symbol of temptation and evil. It represents the beauty and glamour of life drawing us closer and closer, but the final result is death. The Falls is the devil, tempting innocent, even strong minded people closer and closer, daring them to do the unthinkable. Everyone in town and who has ever experienced The Falls seems to understand the effects, and the community as a whole has a reverence regarding the cataract; both out out respect and fear.
Dirk Burnaby once said to Clyde Colborne, "You had to have a deep, mysterious soul to want to destroy yourself. The shallower you are, the safer."