A motif is just a symbol used over and over again. Authors use them to emphasize that symbol and what it stands for. Take the use of the tree motif in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Every time the protagonist, Janie, runs into trees, she finds pleasure or pain, and sometimes both. Hurston uses the tree much like the Bible's tree of knowledge. Janie learns of the pleasures and the pain of life, much like the knowledge of good and evil, and discovers her society, and herself.
