In D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” there were a large number of literary tactics used, such as imagery, symbolism, and foreshadowing to define one of the main themes throughout their stories. Death and rebirth can be clearly identified as one of the main themes in these two stories. In Lawrence’s story his theme is that death brings about a new understanding, change, and as a result rebirth through the two characters, Mabel and Fergusson. In O’Connor’s story her theme is that characters who are spiritually or physically grotesque must undergo a shocking and violent experience or death to be spiritually reborn. Which is done through the Grandmother and the Misfit. These themes are greatly emphasized in Lawrence’s and O’Connor’s stories through the use of many symbols and imagery, which will be discussed in further detail. Right from the start D.H. Lawrence gives the reader a sense of what kind of turmoil Mabel is going through and how her thought process is geared more towards death. For example: “Now, for Mabel, the end had come. Still she would not cast about her. She would follow her own way just the same. She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent, she endured from day to day. Why should she think?This was at an end. She thought of nobody, not even herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfillment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified.” (6,7) This portion of the story clues the reader in on what Mabel has already planned and how she wants to meet death. Symbolism also begins to play an important role in the story when Mabel visits the churchyard where her mother’s headstone rests. She took her time cleaning the area around her mother’s grave. This was the only place that offered Mabel a sense of security. “Once under the shadow of the great looming church, among the graves, she felt immune from the world, reserved within the thick churchyard wall as in another country” (7). The strongest symbolic meaning Lawrence used in the story was the description of the pond. The pond, water, and clay all represent one major idea: death. The pond is described as being “a square, deep pond” (8), which makes the reader imagine a watery grave. At the pond, Ferguson pulls Mabel and himself out of the pond (death) and which ultimately pulls both of them back to life (rebirth). When Fergusson goes into the pond after Mabel, he is symbolically going to his death, “he sank in, and the water clasped dead cold round his legs. As he stirred he could smell the cold, rotten clay that fouled up into the water” (9). The water is taking hol