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Incident in a Rose Garden | Introduction

Donald Justice included “Incident in a Rose Garden” in his 1967 collection of poems, Night Light, and revised the poem for his Selected Poems, published by Atheneum, in 1979. Unlike most of Justice’s other poems, “Incident in a Rose Garden” tells a story. The three characters, the Gardener, the Master, and Death, play out a familiar scene in which Death, whom Justice describes in stereotypical fashion as adorned in black and being “thin as a scythe,” mistakes the identity of one character for another. The language is simple, yet formal, the dialogue straightforward, the theme clear: Death may come when least expected; live life with that thought in mind. Other themes addressed include the relationship of human beings to nature, self-deception, and fate versus self-creation. In its use of stock characters and situation and its obvious moral, the poem resembles a medieval allegory.

In the revised version of “Incident in a Rose Garden,” Justice moves from an objective point of view, which contains only the dialogue of the characters, to a first person point of view in which the Master relates the story. This change allows for a more detailed description of the Gardener and Death and gives the surprise ending more bite. The relationship between a consciousness of death and an appreciation of life is a theme in Wallace Stevens’s poetry, which Justice notes as a primary influence on his own writing. Justice dedicates the poem to poet Mark Strand who, like Justice, writes about the presence of death in everyday life and the ways in which the self responds to and is shaped by that presence. Strand was a student of Justice’s at the University of Iowa.

Incident in a Rose Garden Summary

Title
The title of the poem makes use of understatement in the same way as the poem. By titling the poem “Incident in a Rose Garden” instead of, for example, “Death Visits the Master,” Justice creates a sense of mystery, of suspense. Readers are never told directly the significance of what is happening but must make the connections themselves. Setting the poem in a rose garden underscores the relationships among death, nature, and human beings and shows the folly of human beings in thinking that they are somehow not a part of the natural world, which includes death.

Gardener
In the first stanza of “Incident in a Rose Garden,” the Gardener addresses his Master, telling him that he “encountered Death” in the garden. The Gardener recognized him “through his pictures,” meaning the stereotypical ways that death has been personified in painting and illustrations: all in black and “thin as a scythe.” This description evokes death’s identity as the grim reaper. A scythe is an instrument with a long blade used to cut crops or grass. It belongs in a garden. The personification of death, however, is as old as humankind and forms a part of every culture. The image of Death’s wide-open mouth evokes the devouring void, the very nothingness that comes with the... » Complete Incident in a Rose Garden Summary