The City Planners

Question 1

Who is the author of The City Planners?

Answer 1

Margaret Attwood

Question 2

What are the central themes of The City Planners?

Answer 2

• Urbanisation
• Impermanence

Question 3

Suggest an introduction for The City Planners.

Answer 3

Through the poem’s central themes of urbanisation and impermanence, Attwood succeeds in critiquing humanity’s obsession with controlling the environment and mankind’s efforts to impose order and rationality to a world that isn’t rational.

Question 4

What is the structure of The City Planners and how does it reflect the central theme of the poem?

Answer 4

• Enjambement = Sense of flowing ease accentuating idea of the narrator cruising through the neighbourhood, accentuating freedom – opposite to the rigidity of plans and blueorints
• Irregular stanzas = Imitating chaos of nature and juxtaposing the orderly nature of the suburbs

Question 5

Is there a rhyme scheme to The City Planners and if so, how does it reflect the central theme of the poem?

Answer 5

• Free Verse = Chaos of nature will always overcome rigidity of mankind’s planning

Question 6

How does Attwood make The City Planners such as Striking Poem?

Evidence #1

4 pieces of evidence recommended

Answer 6

• ‘But through the driveways really sidestep hysteria by being even’
• ‘Hysteria’ & ‘Even’ = Stanza #2 emphasises the pristine perfection and uniformity of urban spaces, the driveways are ‘even’ and the roofs have the same slant. As a result, there is no ‘hysteria’ in the neighbourhood – everything is orderly and civilised

Question 7

How does Attwood make The City Planners such as Striking Poem?

Evidence #2

4 pieces of evidence recommended

Answer 7

• ‘the smell of spilt oil a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of point on brick surprising as a bruise’
• ‘Sickness’ & ‘Bruise’ = Used to describe minute imperfections, perhaps writer uses these images to satirise these imperfections in the overly perfect neighbourhood
• Plosives = Creates disgust towards these imperfections

Question 8

How does Attwood make The City Planners such as Striking Poem?

Evidence #3

4 pieces of evidence recommended

Answer 8

• ‘when the house, capsized, will slide obliquely into clay seas, gradual as glaciers that right now nobody notices’
• ‘Nobody notices’ = Tone is critical and scathing about lack of human care towards climate change, as they reference glaciers which ‘nobody notices’

Question 9

How does Attwood make The City Planners such as Striking Poem?

Evidence #4

4 pieces of evidence recommended

Answer 9

• ‘are scattered over unsurveyed territories, concealed from each other, each in his own private blizzard’
• ‘Unsurveyed territories’ = Poem appears to be critical of the relentless continuation of urbanisation and planning, as they are continuing to expand into ‘unsurveyed territories’
• ‘Concealed from each other’ = Planners are sly and selfish
• ‘Blizzard’ = Metaphor describing fury of planning and building that these companies are doing

Question 10

What is your personal response in The City Planners?

OR How can the ending to ‘The City Planners’ be interpreted?

Answer 10

• Metaphor for effect of mankind on nature, as we try to draw ‘rigid’ lines (perhaps referring to a blueprint) to control nature’s disorder – ‘Madness of snows’
• OR could be referring to ‘snows’ more literally, suggesting that humans are now tarting to urbanise previously undeveloped wilderness