The City Planners by Margaret Atwood
Themes
In ‘The City Planners,’ Atwood engages with themes of society, control, and the
future. She depicts a world in these short seven stanzas that is doomed to fall apart
and be rebuilt. The city planners forge insane streets made of perfect roads and
houses. All the roofs face the same way, and the grass is discouraged from growing.
Everything and everyone has to fit into the same structured box. But, Atwood’s
speaker is more in tune with this world than others seem to be. She knows that there
are cracks in the foundation and that it’s all going to fall apart and sink into the earth
some time in the future. These lines are very likely allusions to the climate crisis,
something that necessitates a change in the way cities are planned.
Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
Stanza One
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
(…)
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
In the first stanza of ‘The City Planners,’ the speaker begins by describing something
that initially seems pleasant. She is “Cruising these residential” streets on a Sunday in
the “August sunlight.” This seems like a perfectly normal and even peaceful thing to
do. Sunlight is usually a symbol of warmth and happiness, while placing the scene on
a Sunday suggests a day of rest and thankfulness, as noted in the Christian tradition.
In the third and fourth lines of the stanza, Atwood creates an
interesting juxtaposition when she adds, “what offends us is / the sanities.” The entire
scene, the speaker and the “we” she represents says is pedantic and offensively sane.
Everything is organized in terribly boring and practical lines. It’s clear right away that
there is no room for creativity in this world.
The only indication of life, and life that could be interesting (but isn’t), are the trees.
She describes them as “sanitary,” as if all the interesting, free, and natural growing
shapes have been removed from them. It’s easy to imagine that they’ve been cut and
pruned in specific ways, just like the houses and streets. They “assert / levelness of
surface” that the speaker sees as a rebuke to the truth of the world, a dent “in our car
door.” With this line, the “our” helps the reader understand that she is speaking for
herself and whoever else she’s driving around with. She sees the dent in her door as a
marker of reality, a reminder that nothing is truly perfect all that time.
In the last four lines of this stanza, the speaker notes how quiet and “rational” the
world around her is on this August day. The suburbs are quiet. There’s no screaming
or broken glass or anything else untoward. Those who live there have sought to
separate themselves from anything remotely unpleasant. Atwood describes the grass
as “discouraged.” This is an unusual way to speak about something natural, but make
sense when one considers the sanitary trees and the levelness of the suburban world.
The grass is discouraged from growing by the mower.
Stanza Two
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
(…)
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
The second stanza of ‘The City Planners’ is slightly shorter than the one before it,
with only ten lines rather than twelve. It begins with the word “But,” signaling to the
reader that although she’s described the world this way, it might not all fit that same
description. Before revealing what she means, she adds that the “driveways neatly /
sidestep hysteria / by being even,” and the roofs are all built with the same slant. The
world is, on the surface, perfectly designed to keep the population sane and in
control. But, this is exactly what is driving the speaker crazy.
It’s at this point, after the semicolon in line five of the stanza, that the other side of
the situation comes through. Although everything seems perfectly constructed, there
are a few details that signal to the speaker that humanity can’t be so easily contained
and trained. There is the smell of “spilled oil,” and a splash of paint “on a brick” that
she says is as “surprising as a bruise.” This simile brings to mind the stark nature of a
blue or purple bruise on light-colored skin. This is exactly how the smudge of paint
felt to her.
There is a good example of alliteration in the second to the last line with “plastic” and
“poised.” These words are used to describe the coiled hose sitting outside a home.
The image of the hose as a snake waiting to strike suggests that there is something
deeper going on in this residential neighborhood. Perhaps, the people who live there
are being driven as crazy by their world as the speaker is.
The last line of this stanza slightly personifies the “wide windows” on the houses.
They seem to stare out at her as if they’re “too-fixed” on a single objective.
Stanza Three
give momentary access to
(…)
the future cracks in the plaster
The third stanza of ‘The City Planners’ is only three lines long, as is the stanza that
follows it. The previous stanza ended with an enjambed line, the first line of stanza
three picks it up where it left off, describing for the reader how the windows give the
speaker a brief insight into what’s going on beneath the surface. It allows her to see
“behind or under / the future cracks in the plaster.” She knows that the perfect facade
the city planners have created isn’t going to last.
Stanza Four
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
(…)
The fourth stanza also starts with the second half of an enjambed line. Here, the
speaker adds that the plaster is going to crack when the houses capsize and sink into
the “clay seas” of the earth surrounding them. By depicting the houses as future
sinking ships or glaciers, the speaker is suggesting that they, and everyone in them,
are doomed. This manner of life, so carefully planned and predicted, can’t last.
Human nature is fundamentally at odds with it.
Stanza Five
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
(…)
each in his own private blizzard;
The fifth stanza transitions into speaking about the “City Planners” named in the title.
Atwood uses a metaphor to compare their faces to those of “political conspirators.”
This doesn’t mean they are politicians, but that they look like they’re trying to put
together some political, immoral plot. These people are scattered around the world,
on “unsurveyed territories,” each seeking and each confined in their “own private
blizzard.” This is the first mention of snow in the last lines. It appears again in the
following two stanzas.
Stanza Six
guessing directions, they sketch
(…)
on a wall in the white vanishing air
The surveyors don’t know where they’re going. They’re sketching “transitory lines
rigid as wooden borders” on something that’s sure to disappear. This is a lovely
simile that thoughtful depicts their efforts and how hopeless the task of trying to
confine and contain creativity and human nature is.
Stanza Seven
(…)
order in a bland madness of snows
The surveyors are “tracing the panic of suburb / order in a bland madness of snows.”
The poem concludes with these lines, allowing the reader to determine if anything
could come next. It does suggest that this is where the cycle starts again, and a new
suburb is created, just as mad and sanitary as those that fell apart, sinking into the
earth. The “panic” and “order” of the planning are juxtaposed in this last line,
finalizing for the reader their image of what the residential neighborhood is like.
In the final line, she uses the ungrammatical word “snows.” This could suggest that
she’s trying to step outside the bounds of what is ordered and perfect and convey
something of a steady decline of structure. It is also possible in these final lines to
read the snow and vanishing air as indicators of the climate crisis and how impactful
city planning can be on a green economy.
Literary Devices
Atwood makes use of several literary devices in ‘The City Planners.’ These include
but are not limited to enjambment, alliteration, and imagery. The latter is one of the
most important literary devices that a poet can use in their work. It refers to the
creative arrangement of descriptions a poet employs in order to help the reader
envision what their scenes. These should require the reader to use multiple senses in
order to fully understand them. For example, the second line of the poem “streets in
dry August sunlight” and these lines from the second stanza: “the smell of spilled oil
a faint / sickness lingering in the garages, / a splash of paint on brick surprising as a
bruise.”
Alliteration is a kind of repetition that’s concerned with the use and reuse of the same
consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. For example, “wall” and
“white” in the second line of stanza six and “gradual” and “glaciers” in the second
line of stanza four.
Enjambment is an important formal technique that occurs when a poet cuts off a line
before the natural stopping point of a sentence or phrase. For example,
the transition between lines three and four of the first stanza and lines one and two of
the fourth stanza.