W.H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how irony and satire are at the heart of W. H. Auden's poem, "The Unknown Citizen", which is about a man who remains unnamed throughout the entire poem. It discusses how this unnamed citizen, however, represents the society that we live in and the modern men and women who have come to live by society's terms. Through tone and content, it also demonstrates how Auden is able to illustrate the cost of losing one's own identity.

From the Paper:

"To emphasize the image of a man living a very ordinary life, Auden gives us more details that relate the individual to his or her place in society. For example, we are told he served the "greater Community/except for the War till the day he retired" (6, 7). He was a also factory worker, he pleased his bosses, and paid his dues--all of these facts paint the picture of someone who lived an ordinary life. In addition, Auden includes that the man "wasn't a scab or odd in his views" (10) and he "added five children to the population, which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation" (27-29). We don't get the impression that he was unique, for even where there was "peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went" (25, 26). All of these images depict a man that is formed by the society that surrounds him."

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