Cheng and Atwood show how The Planners of suburbia and The City Planners form and mould our society and the way we live.

by stivanovhotmailcom (student)

The ideas and perceptions of the people who control our world shape the way we live. Cheng and Atwood show how “The Planners” of suburbia and “The City Planners” form and mould our society and the way we live. In “The City Planners” Atwood shows how society has become over sanitised, becoming a “utopia” of a society. In “The Planners” Kim shows how past beauties of the world, created by man, are now being seen as unwanted and are being erased, and that this is a necessary change for our world to advance beyond the simplicity of the past.

The sanitised, utopian society is created by the one track mindset of “The City Planners”. “Houses in pedantic rows, the planted sanitary trees”, Atwood uses the familiar “House” of society, a root we can all associate with, as a “pedantic”; an adjective showing the world we live in is designed to be a perfect, correct, equal world of forced formality and conformity; “row”, reinforcing the idea of uniformity and a straightened world. The verb “Planted” shows how our society is a false, “planted” man-made environment, in which “levelness” and similarity is the number one goal. The utopia of Atwood’s “The City Planners” is a perfect society. People live in quiet secluded lives, no “shouting” of pain, sorrow or restlessness, all is quiet, perfect. Atwood uses the cliché phrase “shatter of glass” to show perfection. “Glass” is smooth, hard, clear and unwanted when broken, and Atwood depicts to use how our lives have formed into a transparent, flat, “unbroken”, perfect world. Atwood also describes the slip into dystopia. The extended metaphor and links to nature “capsizing” contradicts the regular views of a “residential Sunday street”. The noun “Sunday” is usually related with a day of rest, peace, and religion, and is very opposite to the dystopia of “capsizing” “houses” and the “blizzards” of collapsing society. Atwood also describes the “City Planners” as “Insane” “Political” figures, who are wrapped up within their “private blizzards”, unable to understand the implications of designing what they believe as the perfect society. Atwood coveys the idea of the city being built by “The City Planners” and a “bland madness” that’s as interesting as “snow”. Atwood uses analogy “bland madness of snow” to show “The City Planners” mindset as two negatives. The “madness” of “The city Planners” shows lack of cohesion and ideology, meaning that society is becoming bland and uninteresting, all “pedantic rows” and “neat” “driveways”.

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The once beautiful creations of “The planners” are now being seen as old and unwanted; over time society has changed to reject these once stunning buildings and through the change in attitude over time society has destroyed these old buildings in replace for an organised, perfect society. In the first stanza of the poem Cheng talks about the original planners during the period of enlightenment, where people were gifted with the “grace of mathematics”. Cheng uses the verb “Grace” to give the idea of “mathematics” a very positive, almost perfect idea, as if it is a divine gift. This new found grace is used to help buildings of all “permutations of possibilities” be built in “alignment” with the roads, all in “desired” places. “The Planners” “build and will not stop”, a new age of settlement and building is upon the world, one in which the continent shrinks, “the sea draws back and the skies surrender.” Cheng uses the verb “surrender” to identify the battle that has taken place between humans and nature in order for humans to gain the ability to build where we want, “at desired points”, and how we want, “With gaps all plugged with gleaming gold”. After the first stanza Cheng transitions the poem to a more negative feeling, in which the desire to keep the past is losing out the making way for the future. “The Planners” “erase the flaws”, they clean off the “blemishes of the past.” Cheng uses the noun “blemishes” to show how the world now views the buildings of the past as a stain upon the landscape, an unpleasant view within the perfect city of their world. “The Planners” work with some care to erase the past, they work with “dental dexterity” to help “knock off useless blocks” with as little pain and suffering as possible, they work with fine tools and anaesthetics. Cheng uses the nouns “Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis” to describe the metaphorical actions taken by “The Planners” to ease the transition into a society that “wears perfect rows of shining teeth”. The verb “perfect” conveys the idea of the city designed by “The Planners” to have all of the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics; the world “they” have created is as good as it is possible to be. The verb “shining” gives an almost other-worldly view on the “rows” of “perfect” buildings. The buildings are “shining” with brilliance; they are all perfect and spotless, they are bright with a sparkle of reflected light. Cheng uses an extended metaphor of dentistry to describe the transitions of the seemingly random buildings to “perfect rows” of perfect sparkling “teeth”. The metaphor is also extended through the means of transition, “anaesthesia” for the pain, “amnesia” as an attempt to forget the past, and “hypnosis” to transform the state of mind of general society to accept the changes. “The Planners” build with total disregard to the buildings built in yesteryear; they’re attempting to completely rewrite the past. In the last stanza Cheng uses very emotive diction to describe his views of “The Planners” and their ideas about the creation of society. Cheng uses the imagery of blood to give a very stark, negative end to the poem. The negative diction “bleed”, “single drop” and “stain” give a very forbidding, dark mood to the end of the poem, showing how the actions of “The Planners” can only lead to a bad ending. The final stanza gives the idea that the reality lapses behind the dreams of the planners, and seldom do they catch up to one another in a perfect way that they envision. Cheng also uses irony to show the negatives of the new society. “Would not bleed poetry” shows that there is no longer a place for the art form of poetry in the modern would. Cheng stops herself “bleeding poetry” in order not to disrupt the “blueprint”, or fabric of society.

The once good creation of society builds the world we have today, but through over perfection the world can turn into an uninteresting sheet of glass, that will one day crack and society will slip into dystopia. In “The City Planners” Atwood analyses the ideas of a perfect society, but realises that no world can actually be perfect without imperfections. In “The Planners” Cheng analyses the change between the innovative building and planning of the past, and the transition to a uniform world of the future. Both Cheng and Atwood talk about The Planners in a very negative light. Atwood describes The Planners using very negative and emotive diction, describing them as “insane political figures” that have no regard for the ideas of others. She shows that the ideas of “The City Planners” are slowly but surely destroying society. In “The Planners” Cheng talks about “The Planners” in a much more reserved way, referring to them as “they”. Like Atwood, Cheng blames the planners for the damage they have done to society, but talks more of what they have done to change the past, rather than how Atwood explains the way they are going to destroy the future. Cheng in “The Planners” talks her mind and feelings, saying how she blames the planners for the destruction of her art form.

Through the actions of “The Planners” of suburbia and “The City Planners” our world is shaped and the way we lived impacted on. In the poems “The Planners” and “The City Planners” Cheng and Atwood Describe the world of once beautiful creations has been turned into an over-perfect over-sanitised world that has destroyed many off the good things in life. Through the poems Cheng and Atwood have showed that if the planners are allowed to rein free over our society it will only end badly.

Words: 1364