"But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." ((Chapter 1/PAGE 45-46))
The only thing that hasn't completely depressed me in this chapter thus far: the rose-bush. It seems to be the only thing contradicting the whole scene at the dark building with the group of gray hooded people. It is nature, and although the dark building that has been beat up and run down due to the effects of age and weather, it remains the only pleasurable sight on the scene. Perhaps it is signifying that although man can commit sin against his fellow man, nature is always there to comfort those who see the beauty in it. The prisoner, the criminal, they look at the rose-bush and its growth on such a miserable place in the Earth, yet it serves as a symbol of kindness and hope to the sinners.
Good look at the rosebush. The idea of sin and how humans can treat one another are central themes of this novel.
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