What's your interpretation of this sentence?

Question

Before this ugly edifice [the wooden jail], and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower if civilized society, a prison.

Answer 1

The soil was fertile and nice even though it was associated with a prison?

Answer 2

Isn't that from The Scarlet Letter? It's talking about the setting, laying out for you that there's a jail, a grass area before it, and then the street. It's not a big urban area, it is an area condemning criminals and the wrongdoers of the world. Plants the people consider to be unsightly weeds grow before that structure which houses the undesireables of their society, that which they consider civilized. The ugly, unwanted plants find kinship in the soil on which stands the place to keep the unwanted away from the "good" folk.

Answer 3

My interpretation is that even the soil was overgrown with weedy vegetation, as somehow the prison and jail imparted their ugliness to even the plot of land.

My opinion of this sentence is that is sucks. It uses way to many words to communicate an idea that is itself stupid. I cant see what it could possibly add to a storyline. But I can see how it would turn readers off with its complexity.

Answer 4

Somehow, the original wooden jail was transformed into a prison. The original wooden jail represents simplicity, a kind of slap on the hand for screwing up. While, the formidable prison represents the hard-core punishment more common in current times. The prison is more institutionalized, more unforgiving, while the wooden jail is more traditional, more simple.

Answer 5

That a prison is the good that corrects the ugliness created by society. And even even the worst and worthless land can be be tamed into providing a worthwhile institution to society.

I like China Jon's interpretation.

Answer 6

Hawthorne's scarlet letter right? Theres a rose bush in the middle of weeds symbolizing "civilized society." If you read on, it's ironic because the roses are suppose to be for the prisoner.

Answer 7

The ugly vegetation was just more of what had already grown up from that place: an ugly prison.

;-D Setting the mood in a very poetic style.

Answer 8

Nathaniel Hawthorne's words no doubt, The Scarlet Letter I believe. Complete description, he does have his way with words doesn't he!?!? He meant for you to notice the connection between the fertile soil, the weeds, and the prison. What you make of it is your own interpretation.

Answer 9

My interpretation is that the writer was so far up his/her own fundament that s/he couldn't be bothered to express him/herself clearly. There are so many subordinate clauses and general preciousness about this sentence that a half-decent copy-editor would spike it, pronto, and say Do It Again.

Answer 10

My interpretation is that there was once beautiful scenery where we now have our prisons where the bad people of our society go.