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his color red is found in Beloved’s blood, and Amy Denver’s red velvet for which she longs as well as Stamp Paid’s lucky red ribbon, for example, is an image of hope and a brighter future. Furthermore, Paul D’s “red heart” represents feeling and emotion, and he compares the red in a rooster’s crown to the lack of red in his tobacco-tin heart (Morrison, 1987:73). For Paul D, slavery took away not only freedom but also the brightness in his heart. Even a simple barnyard animal can be proud of his color, but Paul D cannot. 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. 4. The “heart” and the symbolic meaning The description of a heart is used many times in the novel, the most obvious being Paul D's “Red heart” comment while he is having sex with Beloved. The heart in this book represents life. Baby Suggs does not have life until she is freed and realizes her heart is beating. 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—a symbol of an encounter with his past—causes the box to burst and his heart once again to glow red. That is to say Paul D does not have life until his tobacco tin is forced open, leaving him a red heart. Conclusion To sum up, in the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison enhances the effectiveness of Beloved with symbolism. She attempts to promote a variety of different themes and ideas by symbolizing them in minor events and situations. This symbolism is evident throughout the story and is very crucial to the understanding and analyzing of the text. Examples of symbolism in Beloved are important. And the symbols of scars, numbers, color and heart are discernible throughout the novel. In the whole story, symbols of scars are distinguishable, and the most obvious one is Sethe’s scar, which was referred by Amy as a “chokecherry tree”. Sethe’s scar is the symbol of the burden that Sethe carries. Besides Sethe’s scar, there are scars such as Beloved’s and Paul D’s. No matter what kind of scars, for the white,