Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it:
The City Planners
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilt oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
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 glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
(Margaret Atwood )
To what extent does Atwood make you feel that human activities are pointless in The City
Planners?

Answer

In “The City Planners,” Margaret Atwood employs various literary devices and vivid imagery to emphasize the extent to which human activities are portrayed as pointless. The poem conveys a sense of disillusionment and critique towards the suburban landscape, which is meticulously planned and devoid of spontaneity, individuality, and genuine human connection.

Atwood uses the term “sanities” to describe the houses and trees in the suburban neighborhood, suggesting that they are excessively orderly and lack vitality. The “pedantic rows” of houses and the “planted sanitary trees” convey a sense of conformity and uniformity, as if the environment is a product of a calculated design rather than a natural, organic growth. The use of the word “rebuke” to describe the levelness of the surface of the neighborhood further suggests that the artificial orderliness is seen as a form of chastisement or reprimand to any form of imperfection or spontaneity.