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For the past two thousand years in Western civilization, the cross is perhaps the most significant and meaningful symbol in the average person's life. It is indeed perhaps the most simplistic and plain icon known to man, but it is at the same time the most universally recognized. It symbolizes Jesus' death by crucifixion, according to Roman-Christian mythology. Jesus' dying on the cross meant two things. One, that he would be saving all of mankind from their sins, and they would be able to spend an afterlife in heaven. The second would be his own suffering and sacrifice; the pain he'd have to endure to actually attain eternal salvation for mankind. The double meaning, symbolically, that the cross has to man is not unlike the symbolic nature of trees, shrubbery, and plants in general in Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. While the aforementioned are symbols of growth, healing and guidance, they also symbolize pain, sorrow and regret.
In the novel's beginning, Morrison portrays trees primarily as good, symbolically. The first example of which is when Amy Denver sees the whip marks on Sethe's back...