To what extent does Atwood make the reader feel that human activities are pointless?

In the poem “The City Planners” Margaret Atwood investigates a topic of urbanization
and conflict between man and nature. Atwood does that by evoking a clear image of
senselness of human activities through using imagery, irony and tone.

Atwood uses imagery throughout the poem to explain a lot of different things using our
imagination. Atwood describes “clay seas” in order to create contrast and irony. It
creates contrast because “clay” and “seas” are things that contradict each other. They
have different texture, different purposes and even visually they look totally different.
This creates oxymoronic image that creates irony. Irony makes the tone of the poem
critical and even disappointed. If we look deeper, the meaning of “clay” in this poem, is
also a building material, which is absolutely natural. Going back the main theme of this
poem, which is urbanization, makes the noun sound quite ironic, because people are
nowadays using man-made materials to build houses, and Atwood suggests that this
activity will lead to everything destroying and collapsing into “clay seas”. “Clay”, on other
hand, could as well alliterate to the Bible; how the first humans were made from it. By
using that, Atwood might suggest that if people will not stop destroying nature,
everything will go back to the begging. This way of understanding the meaning of “clay”,
explains why its together with “seas”, because as everything collapses into the clay, there
will be so much clay that it will look like a sea.
Another imagery example is “houses capsize…” and it creates an image in instability and
dangerous, not safe environment. “Houses”, is a noun that paints in reader’s mind a
strong, stable structure which can stand for a really long time. When this noun is used
with “capsize” it contrasts each other, because structures that are theoretically stable
can also collapse. This creates suspicion in reader’s mind, because the houses in that
suburb are made from unnatural materials and so people might turn back to using
natural materials again since they seem more reliable.
The third example of imagery in the poem is “neatly sidestep hysteria”. This quote is very
euphemistic, because it describes perfection in the way that it isn’t, using diction which
contradicts the meaning. “sidesteps” means avoiding, and in this case in suggests that
people avoid thinking about the problems that they cause, and the consequences of their
actions. “Hysteria” is a strong noun which is an antonym of perfection, nature. “Hysteria”
can be good and bad, depends on in which case one uses it, in this case its bad. It disturbs
the so-called peace in that suburb, but Atwood thinks that a little bit of hysteria should
be there. She says it through critical tone.

To describe the uselness of human actions, Atwood also uses irony. Irony is mostly
achieved through contrast. A great example of constant are lexical fields. lexical field one
(neatly; even; the same; too-fixed) and lexical field two (hysteria; sickness; smell; vicious;
bruise) contain nouns and verbs that are completely opposite of each other. One lexical
set suggests perfection and neatness, peace and calmness that people created; that the
other one suggests the wildness of nature and all the imperfects within the tidiness. The
lexical sets link back to tone of the poem because they make it sound annoyed.
Other example of irony is “sanitary trees” in stanza one. It’s an interesting quote,
because “sanitary” means spotless, clean, and as they were brushed by someone other
and over again. There’s no life. They are all cut in identical mathematical shapes and
stand in linear lines. The contrast creates annoyed and disappointed tone because
“trees” are theoretically meant to be a sigh of life and nature and imperfections, but “the
city planners” made even them look ‘plastic’. “Sanitary trees” as well contain sibilance,
which reflects the disappointed tone, which I referred to earlier.
The last example of irony is “poised” which is a fake problem or situation. In this case it’s
a something man-made, perhaps a problem. “Poised” means that something hadn’t
happen yet, so its preventable. In the poem was written on 1960’s so global warming
wasn’t yet a problem, but Atwood had already referred to it. Through “poised” she tried
to tell the reader that urbanization and al of other man-made problems are preventable
if people actually want them be so. It’s ironic because this noun describes something
quite good, but to the reader it sounds as something dangerous.

At last Atwood uses different tones throughout the poem to create different moods. One
of the tones is critical. The poetic voice is criticizing the decisions of “The City Planners”
regarding the suburb. She doesn’t like the idea of urbanization, all of the perfect rows
and houses, the “sanitary trees” and everything looking ‘plastic’.
The poetic voice is also very disappointed in the actions of “the city planners”. She’s
disappointed by the fact that people don’t see the beauty of nature and want to cut is
and paint it. “Sanitary trees” is a good example because it paints a sad image in the
readers mind, of something that is natural, but forced to be linear.
The last tone Atwood uses is foreboding or foreshadowing. She predicted that something
that is a great trouble today way back on the 60’s. “Future cracks” suggests that even in
the perfect houses made from what seems ‘perfect’ building material, will break in the
future. “Future cracks” also refer to non-physical perspectives, such as environmental
problems that people did care about then, but they are very important now, for example
global warming, fossil fuels, plastic, etc.

To conclude everything, Atwood is very disappointed by the fact that “The City Planners”
are doing to nature, especially in the area of the suburb, making everything equal and
mathematical. She’s foreshadowing that nature will pay back and that everything that is
built will be broken and dirty and imperfect. The poetic voice uses irony and contrast to
depict human activities are senseless because nobody can overcome nature. As well as
using “clay seas” as imagery to paint in reader’s mind what will happen to the suburb in
the future. In my opinion “The City Planners” are egoistic workers who don’t want to care
about their actions, but only get money, and it’s just sad. As well as this being one of the
reasons everything will break apart in the nearest future.