Themes Flashcards
(23 cards)
3 themes in city planners
Humans + environment
Conformity
Madness
Key points to note for city planners
Rhythm and tone
Disjointed rhythm - discomfort of poet
Calm and confident while angry in tone
How is discouraged significant in city planners
- Literal - growth of grass is frowned upon
- Deeper - the grass is personified - its efforts to grow naturally are futile
How are the windows powerful in city planners
Personification and alliteration - unnerving
How does city planners end significantly
Juxtaposition with “bland” and “madness” - they try to suppress and control nature, but…
…no full stop at end, signifying that the fight with nature is a vicious circle
How is the dent significant in city planners
Perfect surroundings contrasted by dent - showing that things look utopian but are masking the dystopia. The people are brainwashed. By conformity
How is mental illness and madness a theme in city planners
Words like sanities, rational, hysteria, insane etc
Pathologizes (makes it seem psychologically abnormal) the desire to control + shut out nature
Tone of the planners
Cynical, ironic and angry
Yet also
Flat, emotionless and sterile. Due to the loss of culture in the country (Singapore)
Themes of the planners
Modernisation and urban development
Erasure of history
Nature
What is significant in nature in the planners
It doesn’t appear much - showing it is being forced out
How is nature personified in the planners
Sea draws back and the skies surrender - nature has been completely defeated
How are the planners presented in the planners
Anaphore “they plan. They build.”
Unseen and unidentified
Cheng distances himself from them
Always busy. Short sentences make them seem robotic, programmed to progress
How does the view of development progress in the planners
Initially positive, then negative
What are the blemishes in the planners
The quirks - the buildings with strong history
What is the teeth idea in the planners
Extended metaphor - country personified as undergoing dental work, replacing natural imperfections for artificial, sterile veneers
What is the hypnosis line about in the planners
Brainwashing the public into forgetting the past
What does history is new again mean in the planners
Oxymoron - the past and history are different, history is the documentation. History can change but the past can’t
What are the fossils in the planners
- Relics of the natural and undeveloped country
- Fossil fuels
Either way, humans destroying nature
How does the planners end
Bleak oxymoron last line. The country’s culture and history is doomed
What is significant about the layout of the planners
It looks like skyscrapers reflected in water when turned sideways
What does the heart bleeding in the planners mean
Idiom for sorrow. Cheng has lost his ability to feel emotion in his poetry due to the sterility of his country
Themes of man w night sweats
Nostalgia and youth
Illness + mortality
Solitude and isolation
How does man w night open
Cold - alone, lacking warmth of another person
