Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Major Biblical symbolism and sorcery? In the same book? A book that isn't The Crucible?
Yup. First of all, Eliot's narrator begins the whole book—the whole darn book, people—like this:
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. (3.1)
So wait, writing is magic? Losing sleep to pound out term papers is magic? Actually, yes.
Writing has the power to create challenging new visions, and to take us far from humdrum events. Adam Bede sure isn't Harry Potter. But it gives us pictures of a strange world that, nonetheless, has fascinating similarities to ours. What do you know? It is kind of like Harry Potter.
And we're not making too much of this. Adam Bede, after all,has wands and omens and things that go bump in the night. Just like Harry Potter. Early on, Adam hears "a smart rap, as with a willow wand" (50.4). Um, creepy.
This isn't any old "rap"; this rap marks the moment, in Eliot's book, when Adam's life is thrown into a tizzy. Take that rap seriously. Adam sure does:
He believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. (50-51.4)
What's going on here? Is Hayslope really under the sway of ghosts and goblins? Should we get Tim Burton to adapt Adam Bede? Or are we all nuts? That tapping is never explained or rationalized away. Eliot allows it to hang over the novel. And we, like Adam, are left in uncertainty.
Maybe we aren't spooked out, but that "what was the tapping?" business persists like a mild toothache. It's a finely designed piece of psychological realism, getting us to feel a bit of what Adam feels. And Eliot pulls it off by creating a book as disorienting and uncertain as real life occasionally is.