"stark symbol" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to refer to an object or idea that clearly and strongly represents something else. For example: The burning house was a stark symbol of the destruction wrought by the wildfire.
But its champions, Ken Livingstone and John Prescott, prevailed (The London skyscraper that is a stark symbol of the housing crisis, 25 May).
But the sign is also a stark symbol of a decadeold fear that Detroit could become the first American city of more than one million people to have its population fall below that number.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — Throngs of veterans gathered on Sunday under a clear sky on the Mall to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a stark symbol of a war that bitterly divided the nation.
Cardinal Law's absence was a stark symbol of the difficulty he faces after weeks of disclosures about sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Boston Archdiocese, the nation's fourth largest.
Now the abandoned site is a stark symbol of the collapse of Britain's building boom and how credit market turmoil spread across the Atlantic Ocean from the United States.
The message apparently did not get to the branch at Clifton Commons, where the stark symbol of death was the first thing to greet visitors to its costume aisle.
Fifteen minutes north of the city center, hulks of empty buildings form stark symbols of why Ireland must now hunker down.
Wrapped in the flags of an adopted homeland, the bodies became stark symbols of the unrealized dream of a safe haven here for Jews from around the world.
After all, the playwright has made his point with enough stark symbols: the Grady parents are longdead and the mother, when she lived, was mute; the brothers' few friends in a nearby village are widows or widowers; and a passing girl who arouses in Josey a moment of bitter lust seems an apparition.
The passage of a generation has dulled the emotions the Cold War's starkest symbol once evoked and given rise to a detached curiosity about the city's turbulent 20th century history.
Communist regimes collapsed in the face of popular uprisings across Eastern Europe in 1989, signaling the end of the Cold War, of which the Berlin Wall had become the starkest symbol.
