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    The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

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    hwatson_12
    The poem depicts a powerful institution that controls every aspect of society through precision and lack of emotion. They build without stopping and have power over nature and history. Their goal is perfection through erasing flaws and rewriting the past. This leaves no room for culture, tradition or human mistakes. The poet vows to rebel against this through his imperfect poetry, dedicating himself to preserving the "blueprints" of the past that define people's identity.

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    The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

    Uploaded by

    hwatson_12
    1K views2 pages
    The poem depicts a powerful institution that controls every aspect of society through precision and lack of emotion. They build without stopping and have power over nature and history. Their goal is perfection through erasing flaws and rewriting the past. This leaves no room for culture, tradition or human mistakes. The poet vows to rebel against this through his imperfect poetry, dedicating himself to preserving the "blueprints" of the past that define people's identity.

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    The Planners- Boey Kim Cheng

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    The poem depicts a powerful institution that controls every aspect of society through precision and lack of emotion. They build without stopping and have power over nature and history. Their goal is perfection through erasing flaws and rewriting the past. This leaves no room for culture, tradition or human mistakes. The poet vows to rebel against this through his imperfect poetry, dedicating himself to preserving the "blueprints" of the past that define people's identity.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    1K views2 pages

    The Planners - Boey Kim Cheng

    Uploaded by

    hwatson_12
    The poem depicts a powerful institution that controls every aspect of society through precision and lack of emotion. They build without stopping and have power over nature and history. Their goal is perfection through erasing flaws and rewriting the past. This leaves no room for culture, tradition or human mistakes. The poet vows to rebel against this through his imperfect poetry, dedicating himself to preserving the "blueprints" of the past that define people's identity.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
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    The Planners- Boey Kim Cheng

    From the title alone, we get a sense of anonymity from the use of 'the' and are given a feeling of dehumanisation due to the repetitive use of 'they' in the first line. The 'they' that the poet refers to in the first line represents the institution, a powerful force that is very much in control. This impression of dehumanisation is continued throughout the poem, the most obvious being "Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis." Anaesthetic is administered to humans in order to numb or dull pain, pain being the thing that makes us aware and makes us alert so that if something is fallacious then we can feel it and have the means to change it. In this context, pain could be referring to any of our senses and therefore suggesting that our senses and feelings have been dulled. Amnesia adduces an idea of being made to forget not what the system indoctrinates on us but instead, the fact that they did it or are doing it. We are made to forget that the system exists and that it dictates us and our lives. Finally, hypnosis which suggests that our minds are controlled, someone else is in control of us and we are in a state of unconsciousness in which we are unaware and not ourselves. All of these suggest that we have been subconsciously dehumanised and forced to follow a new religion that requires this dehumanisation by this powerful, Machiavellian institution. This power is conveyed during the whole poem and first presented to us in the first stanza. They build and will not stop. The institution refuses to stop incessantly planning, building and destroying- they are able but not willing. This shows us that they are at the top of society, there is no one above them who can tell them to stop or change what they are doing- They are at the top and they are doing all the damage. Even the sea draws back and the skies surrender. The sea and sky are the most powerful things in the world, and they are both shown to be bowing down in fear to them. The sea and sky are represented by Greek gods outside of the poem and so this proposes the idea that the institution is in charge of God too and therefore more powerful. The institutions power causes them to fail to see the beauty in nature and therefore feel no need to protect or respect it. This lack of respect replaced by a focus on power is strongly conveyed in the final stanza where the author says The drilling goes right through the fossils of last century. This signifies the destroying or rewriting of history which in turn destroys culture and therefore traditions. The beauty that is culture and tradition is replaced and overtaken by soulless, arguably creative in their precision, repetitive housing. The world shown as becoming something nonhuman or dominated by nonhuman things. Precision and perfection and the desire for it is also communicated through a metaphor. They erase the flaws, the blemishes of the past, knock off useless blocks with dental dexterity. They erase all mistakes, mistakes that humans naturally make which again agrees with the dehumanisation. It enables us to learn from previous mistakes and to progress with these mistakes in mind. The blemishes of the past shows that this attention to detail even goes to the extents of rewriting history to make it perfect. "Dental dexterity" shows precision similar to that of dentistry; the subject of their work is minute compared to the utensils used to do so. The metaphor is continued with "The country wears perfect rows of shining teeth." This suggests that the 'teeth' of the country have been edited or veneered so that what we see is perfect, and wears suggests that it's not permanent and controlled and perhaps there is something behind this facade. There is a change in tone in the final paragraph in which the subject becomes the writer. But my heart would not bleed poetry. Not a single drop to stain the blueprint of out pasts tomorrow. Simply put, the writer is saying that he will give everything to save the original blueprints which refers to culture, religion and tradition because who we are is paramount. The writer makes a promise that through his poetry he will rebel and fight against the institution. "Past's tomorrow" conveys the idea that we are able to face tomorrow because of routine which gives us security and

    memory which reassures us and stops us making the same mistakes due to experience. All that is learnt is remembered and because of this we are able to face tomorrow. Throughout the poem, Boey Kim Cheng communicates that the institution is taking this 'blueprint' away or erasing it and with this we would have no identity, no memory and therefore no security or idea of how to move forward and progress. Boey Kim Cheng, through showing us how powerful 'They' are, gives us the knowledge that 'they' are very capable of doing so. They have the power to change everything and remove identity. The institution- them, are shown throughout the poem as something more dominant than God and Nature, Even the sea draws back and the skies surrender. And in doing this the institution has become a new religion, a religion that enforces control, dictatorship and domination. The system is something that everyone is subconsciously born into and everything done in your life will be controlled by the system, even death itself is part of the system. The poem proposes the idea of something big (The institution) oppressing something small (the inhabitants of the world) and conveys imagery of precision, attention to detail and absolute power. However, the structure of the poem being one without rhyme and with an irregular rhythm is purposeful. The massive amounts of structure, precision, perfection and control shown by the subject of the poem is contrasted by the lack of structure in the poem itself. It shows rebellion against the structure that is enforced by the institution, the writer frees himself of control in order to protest against the system. He presents a more natural form of creativity within his poetry and through a controlled reflective anger, makes apparent to the reader the rebellion and dedication to even the lengths of death to it.

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