Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Skully's Landing, Joel's new home, has seen better days. There's no better symbol of this than the porch columns that stand in the yard, holding up nothing. Joel notices them from his bedroom window the first morning at the Landing:
Now at the far end, opposite the house, was an unusual sight: like a set of fingers, a row of five white fluted columns lent the garden the primitive, haunted look of a lost ruin: Judas vine snaked up their toppling slenderness, and a yellow tabby cat was sharpening its claws against the middle column. (1.2.32)
The comparison of the row of columns to a "set of fingers" gives the house a creepy, human feel, as though it were buried alive. But the real key term is the comparison to "a lost ruin": people are still living in Skully's Landing, but it might as well be abandoned.