Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Color Red
Colors from the red part of the spectrum (including orange
and pink) recur throughout Beloved, although the
meaning of these red objects varies. Amy Denver’s red velvet, for
example, is an image of hope and a brighter future, while Paul D’s
“red heart” represents feeling and emotion. Overall, red seems to
connote vitality and the visceral nature of human existence. Yet,
in Beloved, vitality often goes hand in hand with
mortality, and red images simultaneously refer to life and death,
to presence and absence. For example, the red roses that line the
road to the carnival serve to herald the carnival’s arrival in town
and announce the beginning of Sethe, Denver, and Paul D’s new life
together; yet they also stink of death. The red rooster signifies
manhood to Paul D, but it is a manhood that Paul D himself has been
denied. The story of Amy’s search for carmine velvet seems especially
poignant because we sense the futility of her dream. Sethe’s memory
is awash with the red of her daughter’s blood and the pink mineral
of her gravestone, both of which have been bought at a dear price.
Trees
In the world of Beloved, trees serve
primarily as sources of healing, comfort, and life. Denver’s “emerald
closet” of boxwood bushes functions as a place of solitude and repose
for her. The beautiful trees of Sweet Home mask the true horror
of the plantation in Sethe’s memory. Paul D finds his freedom by
following flowering trees to the North, and Sethe finds hers by
escaping through a forest. By imagining the scars on Sethe’s back
as a “chokecherry tree,” Amy Denver sublimates a site of trauma
and brutality into one of beauty and growth. But as the sites of
lynchings and of Sixo’s death by burning, however, trees reveal
a connection with a darker side of humanity as well.
The Tin Tobacco Box
Paul D describes his heart as a “tin tobacco box.” After
his traumatizing experiences at Sweet Home and, especially, at the
prison camp in Alfred, Georgia, he locks away his feelings and memories
in this “box,” which has, by the time Paul D arrives at 124,
“rusted” over completely. By alienating himself from his emotions,
Paul D hopes to preserve himself from further psychological damage.
In order to secure this protection, however, Paul D sacrifices
much of his humanity by foregoing feeling and gives up much of his
selfhood by repressing his memories. Although Paul D is convinced
that nothing can pry the lid of his box open, his strange, dreamlike
sexual encounter with Beloved—perhaps a symbol of an encounter with
his past—causes the box to burst and his heart once again to glow
red.
