The death of Jefferson
In the context of Jefferson's life, his side-family with his slave and their children are preserved from the actual rule of law. Jefferson represents the broken patriarchy therefore, because his own family breaks the law which he upholds as the main symbol of its authority. That is hypocritical because he does not use his power to enforce the law as he himself would have it, but instead navigates politics split into two identities, the person he is in the public eye and the person he is in his private life. When he dies, the whole family is made the victim of the wrong law that he upheld.
The analysis of slavery
When Jefferson dies, his unofficial slave wife and their family are all sold by the estate into new slavery where they are not privileged by Jefferson's approval and love. Now, their story is not a story of privilege and mercy, as it was at first. It is instead a full-blown reckoning of slavery. The family suffers the weight of Jefferson's hypocritical opinion, and they go from a seat of honor to the lowest forms of slavery. The family splits off into various narratives that constitutes an analysis of American slavery in its different aspects.
The symbolism of white slaves
The children are symbolically light-skinned. In fact, they often pass for white people. That makes their community confused whenever it is revealed that they have no right as citizens. They are not real humans in the eye of the law, because they are owned like animal property. The fact that they are white in appearance is a symbolic reminder of the absurdity of slavery. Since it looks like white people are enslaved, the absurd reality of racism and slavery becomes clear.
Eligibility and Clotel
Clotel is a forbidden love because she is not legally allowed to be married to anyone. For her, love is illegal, and childbirth is automatically illegitimate. That astonishing and evil aspect of her character is inherited; her mother was the same way with Jefferson. That role is a commentary on human nature. Through romantic attraction and love, some men realize that Black women are actually suitable as romantic partners and mates. That is symbolic because it shatters the myth that Black people and white people are essentially different. Nature views both as essentially same, symbolized naturally by Clotel's natural ability to conceive by Horatio Green.
Mary's freedom
Mary escapes, which is symbolic in the same way that remnant theology is symbolic in Judeo-Christian prophecies. By showing an apocalypse or doom where one person survives, that is a symbolic way of invoking a better future. By saying "Mary escaped and found true love and was happy forever after," the novel invokes a kind of resolution and peace whose very existence provides a counter-balance America's atrocious and asinine history of prejudice, slavery, and racism.
