City Planners Flashcards
What is Margaret Atwood well known for?
The dystopian fiction novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ as well as another dystopian novel called ‘Oryx and Crake’ which explores a dystopia future after an environmental catastrophe
What is free verse?
A poem written with no consistent rhyme or metre
What are the main ideas in this poem?
That modern urbanization is superficially ‘perfect’ but in a sinister way it prevents any sense of community/ warmth.
The speaker also seems wary of the way in which modern development is overtaking and controlling the natural world.
What is the speaker doing in the poem?
Driving through the residential streets of very ordinary suburbs. It should be a relaxing Sunday drive - but there is something ‘wrong’ and sinister: “pedantic rows” - it’s too perfect and clinical.
How does the speaker seem to feel in stanza one?
Like an outsider / alienated from the community she lives in. The words “offends” and “rebuke” (meaning she’s being ‘scolded’ or ‘told off’) imply that the built environment doesn’t make her feel welcome.
How is the town/city described?
Rigid. Inflexible. Oppressive. Lifeless.
“levelness of surface”
“pedantic rows”
“planted sanitary trees”
“the same slant”
What is implied about the speaker and their family in stanza one?
They don’t fit in to the ‘perfect’ surroundings.
They are too messy and ‘normal’
“the dent in our car door.”
“no shouting here.”
What is the relationship between the town and the natural environment in stanza one?
What’s the speaker’s attitude towards this?
The town attempts to impose order and control on the natural world.
The speaker is critical of this.
What’s interesting about the use of the word “sanities” in stanza one?
It’s ironic - this neighbourhood feels anything but ‘sane.’
It shows there’s a madness in being too rational/ too fixed/ too pedantic.
What’s the effect of Atwood’s personification in:
the “power mower whines and is cutting a straight swathe…”
The town sounds strangely evacuated and empty - soulless. There’s a lack of human inhabitants and the personification makes it sound like the town is running itself.
What method is Atwood using when she includes the following words in the poem?
shouting, shatter, cutting, bruise, poised, vicious.
Why she do this?
Here Atwood uses a semantic field of violence.
This conveys that there is an ominous sense of violence/ threat hanging in the air.
What is sibilance?
Repeated ‘s’ sound in words near to one another.
What might Atwood’s use of sibilance in the following line imply?
“Cruising these residential Sunday streets in dry August sunlight and sanitary trees assert levelness of surface”
The repeated ‘s’ sound is symbolically associated with snakes. Atwood may be making an allusion to the biblical story of the snake in Genesis tempting Adam and Eve’s fall from paradise – evil. This suggests the underlying ‘wrongness’ of the town. This is later reinforced by the line: “plastic hose poised in a vicious coil” which is again reminiscent of the snake in Genesis.
What does the speaker think about the City Planners’ attempt to impose control on nature?
The speaker is critical of this but also feels that it is madness and actually futile (impossible.)
What do the following quotes reveal about the City Planners’ attempts to impose control and order?
Someone has spilt “oil” somewhere, there’s a random “splash of paint” on a wall, and a “hose” has been left lying around carelessly
All three of these instances symbolise the futility of the City Planner’s efforts to erase spontaneity, chaos and disorder from human lives.
