#13 TSL Response: Chapter 1

     The narrator describes a gloomy environment where there are bearded men and hooded women found--in front of an oak edifice covered in iron spikes.  In any Utopia, a portion of the land which a man owns must be allotted for a cemetery, as well as a prison: two places you can never abandon.  The cemetery represents death, while the jail represents sin.  However on the way into each place, is rooted a token of congeniality: a rose bush.  This rose bush yields beauty to the prisoner on his way inside as a symbol of Nature being kind to him.