The mural of the very neat garden is a symbol of the society that Dr. Hitz has helped create. In the garden, everyone has a role and people in purple uniforms (the hosts and hostesses) take away the weeds and cut down the old and sickly plants to make room for new plants. The garden represents the population control policy. The old must be thrown out in order to make room for the new so that the garden can remain neat and well-tended.

The description of the garden as plentiful, “Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use” (Paragraph 13), emphasizes the perfection that is created through control. The painter’s response to the mural that he is painting, however, subverts the ideal that the mirror presents. The fact that the painter, the creator of the mural, believes it is a lie makes evident that there is something wrong. The otherwise innocuous description of people carrying weeds, sickly plants, and raked leaves to trash-burners highlights that wrongness when Vonnegut reveals that someone must choose to die every time a baby is born.