the city planners by Margaret Atwood appeared in the 1964 collection the circle game the poems in this collection explore the tensions that can often be found between perception and reality I.E what may seem harmless at first glance is often revealed on closer inspection to be dark sad and disturbing in this poem Atwood uses a Sunday car ride through a quiet and ordered suburb to explore what she sees as Humanity's insane and ultimately futile desire embodied in the work of the city planners to impose rigid and stifling control not only over our own lives but also over a landscape and an environment which refused to Be Tamed the poem comprises seven stanzas which vary between two and 12 lines in length is written in free verse which means that it has no pre-established rhythmical pattern or rhyme scheme at instead uses techniques such as enjambment Pary alliteration consonants sibilance and asants to create Rhythm cohesion and musicality rather than ring on a technique such as cesura to create midline pauses atw instead chooses to modulate the Rhythm and highlight certain images through varying line lengths with some lines as short as three or four syllables which also has the effect of creating a poem with a rather disjointed feel and perhaps reflects the poet's own discomfort at what she sees the poem only comprises four sentences in total lines 1 to 8 lines 9 to 12 lines 13 to 28 and lines 29 to 38 note that the final sentence is not punctuated with a full stop conceivably suggesting that atw sees our attempts to conquer nature and Nature's fighting back against these as a vicious circle without an end as suggested by the title of the collection in which the poem first appeared comprehension of some of Atwood's ideas in this poem can be tricky due to the length of some of these sentences particularly the sentence stretching from lines 13 to 28 the poem is written in the present tense which gives it simultaneously a sense of immediacy and of universality and timelessness Atwood makes extensive use of figurative language such as metaphor and simile to communicate her perception that the orderliness of the suburbs is sterile and Sinister rather than peaceful and utopian personification a type of metaphor is also employed throughout as the suburbs and everything within them rather than passive inanimate structures become instead de facto deputies for the planners active aent of control in a constant battle against both the forces of the natural world and of human nature apart from the city planners themselves the suburbs are noticeably devoid of descriptions of people for example the power mower in line 11 appears to operate autonomously and to have a mind of its own Atwood uses words that form semantic fields of mental illness and stress such as sanities rational hysteria avoidance two fixed stare insane panic and Madness and physical illness such as sickness and Bruise to convey the paradoxical sense that the desire to impose Sanity on chaos is essentially insane the title the city planners refers to the group of people who are responsible for planning out the built environment within cities such as zoning of residential Industrial and Commercial areas transportation and Street and Road design Atwood doesn't explicitly introduce them in the body of the poem until nearly the end after she has already built up a dystopian picture of the suburbs for which she feels they are responsible the poem begins cruising these residential Sunday streets in dry August sunlight the speaker and her unnamed companion or companions are taking a weekend drive through the suburbs the verb cruising conveys the idea of leisurely travel with little effort and no Final Destination in mind which suggests that the trip is being taken purely for pleasure the fact that there is dry August sunlight suggests warmth and light the use of the noun Sunday to describe the streets is holophrastic I.E this single word doesn't merely indicate the day of the week on which the journey is taking place but also communicates the atmosphere of peace and quiet that is characteristic of this day of rest as the poem continues it is also possible to argue that atw means this metaphorically as well as literally in that Sunday seems to be a state of mind where an enforced sense of order and calm Reigns over the place whatever the day of the week note the sibilance of the Z and S sounds in these lines which enhances the sense of calm the colon at the end of line two where we would tend to expect a comma indicates that the speaker is going to elaborate on her opening statement what comes next is surprising for a number of reasons what offends us is the sanities the peaceful tone is abruptly shattered with the verb offends which communicates upset and annoyance caused by something disrespectful or insulting but what it is that offends us the sanities is equally puzzling for one thing the noun sanity is an uncountable noun like happiness or dust and as such is not usually pluralized although we realize in subsequent lines that atw's transforming of the word into accountable noun is logical in the context of the poem it serves to introduce a discordant note this in conjunction with the fact that things which are sane or rational are not usually deemed offensive suggest the reader that things may not be as they seem on the surface the inclusion of another colon at the end of the line indicates that the speaker will use the subsequent lines to explain what they mean these sanities we are told are the houses in pedantic rows the planted sanitary trees which assert levelness of surface like a rebuke to the dent in our car door the adjective pedantic describes something or someone who is obsessively concerned with Minor Details while the trees have been deliberately planted in pre-ordained and strictly measured out positions rather than having grown by themselves and are sanitary or hygienic and clean it appears that everything has been planned and plotted out according to rigid rules nothing has been allowed to spring up organically and even the trees seem to have been stripped of their individuality and connection to Nature by being obsessively pruned and manicured and it is this which offends the speaker this sterile environment asserts levelness of surface like a rebuke to the dent in our car door to assert something is to State it forcefully and confidently while a rebuke is an expression of disapproval Atwood employs personification to convey how the uniformity of the lines highlights the imperfection of the speaker's own car and they are made to feel as though theyve been scolded for their rebellious Behavior with the implication that the people who live here are brainwashed in their Conformity the peace and quiet begins to take on a more Sinister feel as we are told that there is no shouting here or shatter of glass nothing more abrupt than the rational whne of a power mower cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass abrupt noises particularly those which are evidence either of a deviation from Perfection or a sign of individuality both of which are what make us human seem to be disapproved of here note the Paradigm of the first syllables of shouting and shatter which enhances the sense of Discord communicated in these lines the phrase rational whne to describe the background noise of the power mower not only personifies the mowa serving to further dehumanize these suburbs as its human operator is removed but also suggests a constant battle to keep strictly sane and logical control over the chaos of an Ever growing nature as it cuts a straight swath in the discouraged grass note that the adjective discouraged can have two meaning meanings not only does it mean that the growth of grass is frowned upon but it can also be interpreted as a personification of the grass itself that it too feels dispirited the second stanza introduces the longest sentence in the poem as it extends over the next 16 lines encompassing three stanzas in total the length of the sentence and atws punctuation mean that it is not the easiest to understand on first reading so I'm going to start by rep punctuating it and adding an and in order for you to more easily access its sense I would suggest skipping over the part in Brackets first to get the overall meaning of the sentence but though the driveway is neatly sidestep posterior by being even and the roofs all display the same slant of avoidance to the hot Sky certain things give momentary access to the landscape behind or under the future cracks in the plaster when the houses capsized will slide obliquely into the clay Seas gradual as glassiers that right now nobody notices it starts with the dependent clause of a very complex sentence but though the driveway is neatly sidestep posterior by being even the roofs all display the same SL of avoidance to the hot Sky once more atw indicates this time through her use of but though that all is not well in this Suburban Utopia note her use of language from the semantic field of psychoanalysis I.E hysteria and avoidance which personified the driveways and the roofs and in doing so pathologized this desire to control and shut out nature through the strict imposition of regular lines even though the planners go to these lengths however there are certain things which he goes on to list that suggest all is not well in paradise the smell of spilled oil a faint sickness lingering in the garages a splash of paint on bricks surprising as a bruise a plastic hose poised in a vicious coil even the two fixed stair of the wide Windows using metaphor and simil Atwood uses the language of illness and injury to describe the Visual Evidence of the imperfections of human life The Accidental spillage of oil is a faint sickness lingering in the garages and the careless splash of paint on brick is surprising as a bruise with the implication that Perfection is Health the meticulous looping of a plastic hose is poised in a vicious coil suggesting a Viper ready to strike and the wide Windows have the appearance of eyes which are unnerving in their two- fixed stare all of which create an atmosphere which is threatening and unsettling note the use of hissing sibilance and plosive alliteration which enhance the sense of Menace in these lines it's these certain things that give momentary access to the landscape behind or under the future cracks in the plaster in other words the imperfections of Being Human cannot be completely erased and it is these which give glimpses here and there of a natural world beneath which will eventually break through the Suburban facade when the houses capsized will slide obliquely into the clay Seas gradual as glassiers that right now nobody notices Atwood suggests that she sees the houses in these residential areas as ships which will capsize and sink beneath the waves of the clay Seas as they become Rubble although this is an apocalyptic Vision there's a certain gracefulness about it as they will slide obliquely or descend smoothly at an angle to their Doom a glacia is a river of ice which slowly moves under the force of its own weight not only does His Image give a sense of the inexorability of these Natural Forces but it also suggests that we are totally unaware that it's going to happen until it's too late note the very complex sound patterning that Atwood makes use of in these lines the intertwined consonants of the C and look sounds ENC capsized slide obliquely clay and glasses as well as the asant of the long eye ENC capsized and slide and the alliteration of gradual and glass I have a certain euphony which stands in direct contrast to the discordant sound patterning of the previous lines also note the way in which the poem's structure begins to disintegrate as well at this point with the sentence split over three stanzas the second and third of which are short and in jammed making them seem fragmented in the fifth stanza Atwood turns her attention to the human forces behind this desire for Conformity and uniformity the city planners she describes them as having the insane faces of political conspirators there's a certain irony in the fact that those behind imposing these sanities on the population are in fact themselves insane in Atwood's eyes a conspirator is another word for a plotter or a schemer and suggests that the planners are consumed by an ideology which is in intent on controlling the lives and minds of the People by controlling their environment there's also an irony in the planner's insatiable hunger to map and measure and plot virgin lands being in itself chaotic with no coherent overall plan they are scattered over unsurveyed territories concealed from each other each in his own private Blizzard at uses a metaphor relating to the meteorological chaos caused by a snowstorm here to describe the way in which the planners are trapped in their own shortsighted worlds unable to see what lies in front of them either what their co- planners are up to at the same time as them or what awaits them in their future the penultimate stanza describes the planners guessing directions as they sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden borders on a wall in the white Vanishing air the sense of order that they try to impose is essentially based on guesswork which is the opposite of having a plan and the ultimate futility of their Endeavors is laid bare here through the oxymoron present in the simile of transitory or temporary lines being rigid as wooden borders that are sketched on something which is disappearing in front of their eyes the poem ends on another oxymoron as at continuing the metaphor of a snowstorm to communicate how the planners are effectively in a state of blind hysteria describes them as tracing the Panic of suburb order in a bland Madness of Snows the adjective bland is another word for monotonous and wishy-washy and Echoes the sterility and dreariness of the suburbs that so offends Atwood it's also at odds with the word Madness which is anything but bland note how the perm does not end on a full stop perhaps not only suggesting further disintegration of form to evoke the planner's own disintegrating mental state but also perhaps to indicate the speaker's belief that Mankind's desire to tame the untameable is a never ending and ultimately futile project thanks for watching if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section below and I'll do my best to answer them don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos on English language topics and exam techniques and English literature texts