How do the poets convey their disapproval of the strong impact that modernization has on Singapore?
In this young developing world around us, people everyday become more obsessed with perfecting the appearance and facades around them. Everything seems like they could surely take on a makeover. In the two poems, ‘ The Planners’ and ‘remembering trees’, their respective poems, Boey Kim Cheng and Joshua Yap, have expressed their disappointment that modernization that have affected countless people. Not everybody wants to perfect their country for the better and let their memories slip away. Both poets reveal their feelings of lost behind the contrasting structure and literary devices of their homeland, Singapore.
Boey conveys his disapproval by expressing his disgust towards the attitudes of the planners and their self-centeredness. His use of exclusive pronoun to emphasize on the importance of the planners, referring to the Singapore government. Despite respecting their importance, his use the exclusive pronouns is used to set himself apart from them, allowing the speaker to feel distant from the planners. Through Boey’s eyes, the planners do whatever they think will perfect this city without caring about what the citizens think. Boey’s dismay is supported by the repetition of these two simple sentences. ‘They”, the planners, are planning and destroying the history of Singapore, not the speaker. Not only does the speaker not want to be included, the planners do not plan to include anyone else in their jobs.
Boey not only wants the speaker to feel excluded, he also wants he/she to know how much trauma the Singapore citizens are going through caused by the planner’s actions. This disturbance is further highlighted in the lines, ...
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...tic change of Singapore.
Yap included an obvious comparison of the old Singapore with the modern Singapore. This comparison reinforces the changes Yap is trying to point out to readers, The lines, ‘there used to be big trees… now I see the light’ reveals the typical changes in modern cities that Yap feels very strongly about. Trees were one of Yap’s most vivid memory and they helped him remember Bukit Timah. But now that they are gone, the feeling of being sheltered and protected is slowly faded. The raindrops that use to be shield from Yap are now exposed. These remembrances are further supported with the adjective, ‘unfamiliar’. The old bukit timah is gone along with all the precious childhood memories. Allowing readers to reflect on how big the changes are, Yap brought in mother nature, sunlight and rain. Even mother nature has adapted to the new environment.
Life is not always easy, at some point, people struggle in their life. People who are in the lower class have to struggle for a job every day and people who are in upper class also have their own problems to deal with. These ideas are very clear in Mary Oliver’s “Singapore”, Philip Schultz’s “Greed” and Philip Levine “What Work Is”. In "Singapore" a woman is likely lower class because she works at the airport and her job is to clean the bathroom. In both “Greed” and “What Work Is”, the speakers make the same conclusion about the struggle in the lower class. “Greed” furthermore discusses how Hispanics get a job first before whites and blacks because they take lower wages. All three poems deal with class in term of the society. The shared idea
buildings seem to shed their long years and are once again as they were; huge,
She also introducing new urban building standards. This this article she talks about, the idea some people have of tearing it down and rebuilding. She also talks about ideas people have about some parts of towns. In Boston, she talks about the area of North End, and the change that it was over gone. During her second visit to this area, she discovered that it had changed. She talked to other about it, although the statistic were higher than the city, the people still saw it as a slum. They felt that they needed to tear it down in order to build something better. This leads to the conclusion that the urban planners to do understand that the people of the city need. They have ideas that were developed years ago that they are still using. These ideas do not take account what the people want. The author also introducing new ideas of a perfect city to live in and what it would look like. The idea of a garden city was introduced. This city would be built around a park. Although the new ideas sounded great they could not be put into place today. The idea of a Garden City is something that sounds nice, but it is not possible in society today. Today a city should reflect economic status, and in order to achieve this the city should be big, and convey an image of power. A city that has aspects of nature in it would not convey that image. That upkeep of a city of that kind would also be difficult. The do understand the author's point of view. The planners often times do not take into account the desires of the people. The town that I grow up in want to become more urbanized. In order to do this, they are building a large shopping center. This shopping center is located in the canyon rim. This canyon rim has been important the people for many years. We come to the area to walk, what bass jumpers, and enjoy the scenic views. This new shopping center took away this area. Many of the people
It describes how the conservative farmer follows traditions blindly and the isolated life followed by him. It reflects how people overcome physical barriers and that later in life come to their social life too. Where a neighbor with a pine tree, believes that this separation is needed as it is essential for their privacy and personal life. The poem explores a paradox in human nature. The first few lines reflect demolition of the wall,?Something there is that doesn?t reflect love a wall?
Analysis: This setting shows in detail a location which is directly tied to the author. He remembers the tree in such detail because this was the place were the main conflict in his life took place.
‘City Life – What’s the Plan for Melbourne’ written by Rod Urban, the senior director of Zenith Construction, is an article published in a weekend lifestyle magazine issued by a large newspaper. It tries to convince the reader that instead of having ‘random’ suburban estates full of excessively large houses we should have a well-planned inner city. The audience for this professional and assertive sounding piece are Melbournians who love their city.
When we arrived to the place, I could not believe my eyes: everybody seemed to be different. My friends looked even more willing to share their morning experience than ever. I received sincere smiles from various strangers, but it did not seem unusual. However, it really seemed like everything has changed. Even the birds were producing different melodies than usual by warming up their voices in the sunny trees.
Roppongi Hills in Tokyo is often mentioned as one of the largest and most successful city renewal projects that have ever been made after World WarⅡin Japan. The project started in 1984 and took about 17 years to complete. The plan involved the city government, the land developer Mori Building Co., and the residents living in the construction area. Just to reach agreements with 500 right holders, the company had spent over 15 years (“Roppongi Hills.”). The concept of the renewal plan seems totally opposite from that of Jane Jacobs, but there is a point in the history of this Roppongi renewal plan that is equivalent to her philosophy. Jane Jacobs’ idea regarding a local community in the city was accidentally realized in the process of building the Roppongi Hills half a century later in Japan.
As I walked down the sidewalk, my nose picked up the salty scent of the sea breeze. I looked ahead and saw the gleaming beach in the far distance. Before me, the tranquil city along with the endless blue sea sandwiched the golden beach that stretched across for miles. Then my eyes were grasped by the incredible beauty of the city skyscrapers that stood hundreds of meters tall, and they probably had also captured the sight of many other tourists. Some people were jogging and others were bike riding Just as the yellow sun rises from behind the buildings. It’s easy for many people t...
Upon arrival into the jungle of vast buildings, the first thing noticed is the mobbed streets filled with taxi cabs and cars going to and fro in numerous directions, with the scent of exhaust surfing through the air. As you progress deeper into the inner city and exit your vehicle, the aroma of the many restaurants passes through your nostrils and gives you a craving for a ?NY Hot Dog? sold by the street venders on the corner calling out your name. As you continue your journey you are passed by the ongoing flow of pedestrians talking on their cell phones and drinking a Starbucks while enjoying the city. The constant commotion of conversing voices rage up and down the streets as someone calls for a fast taxi. A mixed sound of various music styles all band together to form one wild tune.
William Blake uses repetition, rhyming and imagery in his poem to help promote the idea that London, England is not the city that people dream that it is, the city itself can be a
The fleeting changes that often accompany seasonal transition are especially exasperated in a child’s mind, most notably when the cool crisp winds of fall signal the summer’s end approaching. The lazy routine I had adopted over several months spent frolicking in the cool blue chlorine soaked waters of my family’s bungalow colony pool gave way to changes far beyond the weather and textbooks. As the surrounding foliage changed in anticipation of colder months, so did my family. My mother’s stomach grew larger as she approached the final days of her pregnancy and in the closing hours of my eight’ summer my mother gently awoke me from the uncomfortable sleep of a long car ride to inform of a wonderful surprise. No longer would we be returning to the four-story walk up I inhabited for the majority of my young life. Instead of the pavement surrounding my former building, the final turn of our seemingly endless journey revealed the sprawling grass expanse of a baseball field directly across from an unfamiliar driveway sloping in front of the red brick walls that eventually came to be know as home.
Woolf, therefore, takes advantage of the lyrical short stories’ structure to create a liminal space that both breaks through barriers to form a unified, impressionistic world and to emphasize the imposing negative aspects of such a transitory structure. As a result, Woolf prompts the reader to question whether the liminal space created within the short story is positive in its ability to unite nature and human or negative in its apparent unsustainability. Regardless, the form and structure of the short story are pivotal in Kew Gardens. Without the liminal space of the short story, it is questionable if Woolf could have succeeded in creating the unstable, yet peaceful, world in Kew Gardens.
Historic poetry is unique in the respect that it gives readers an insight into a certain historic time period that textbooks cannot provide. Historic poetry not only gives a description of the time period but it allows the readers to connect to the emotions of the poet and to a point experience what it would have felt to live in that era. This is the case with William Blake’s poem London. London not only describes the horrid condition of England’s lower class during the industrial revolution but it also connects this description with a strong emotion response from the speaker. Blake’s stylistic and structure choices through out the poem paint a dark and morbid view of London but the emotion of the poem remains divide. The words of the poem’s speaker evokes both sympathy for the lower classes at the same time as he is chastising the people who have the power to change the situation.
... the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle; and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unknowledged legislators of the world” (MacEachen.).