Introduction & Overview of Incident in a Rose Garden by Donald Justice

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...
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