Journey

by

Patricia Grace

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Journey makes teaching easy.

The City Planner Character Analysis

The city planner is the story’s main antagonist, representing the forces of colonization that the narrator faces. Going into the meeting, the city planner has the same agenda as many other New Zealand government officials before him: that is, he wants to gain control of Māori-owned land. The power difference between the narrator and the city planner is clear in the beginning of the story, as the narrator, despite being elderly, must take an entire day to travel all the way into the city in inclement weather to meet the official in his office. Additionally, the city planner speaks in a bureaucratic tone that is very different from the narrator’s conversational tone and immediately begins condescending to the narrator. He becomes increasingly rude throughout the conversation, suggesting that because the narrator will be dead, what happens to his land should not matter to him, and ultimately telling the narrator that having a Māori family living on the land will decrease land value. This personal prejudice against the narrator’s Māori identity is reinforced by institutionalized racism, as the city’s racist zoning laws prevent the family from subdividing their land. Furthermore, it is clear that the narrator does not know the city planner’s name, or does not feel comfortable enough with him to use it, as the reader learns that the city planner is called Paul only when the narrator kicks his desk and is forced to leave. The city planner therefore represents the forces of colonization threatening the Māori population of New Zealand.

The City Planner Quotes in Journey

The Journey quotes below are all either spoken by The City Planner or refer to The City Planner. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Modernization and Colonial Violence Theme Icon
).
Journey Quotes

They’d be given equivalent land or monetary compensation of course.

But where was the sense in that, there was no equal land. If it’s your stamping ground and you have your ties there, then there’s no land equal, surely that wasn’t hard to understand.

Related Characters: The Narrator, The City Planner
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Journey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Journey PDF

The City Planner Quotes in Journey

The Journey quotes below are all either spoken by The City Planner or refer to The City Planner. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Modernization and Colonial Violence Theme Icon
).
Journey Quotes

They’d be given equivalent land or monetary compensation of course.

But where was the sense in that, there was no equal land. If it’s your stamping ground and you have your ties there, then there’s no land equal, surely that wasn’t hard to understand.

Related Characters: The Narrator, The City Planner
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis: