Auden's Satire

Modern society seems to be a common theme among the twentieth century poets we’ve been studying. Whether it is J. Alfred Prufrock, basically lost and unconnected amidst all the people of the big city, or the speaker in Lawrence’s “The Snake,” who struggles between his natural instincts and what society has taught him is right, modern society is a topic common to much of the poetry we’ve read. Therefore, in going with this theme, I found Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” to be a very interesting poem. This interest comes not only from how Auden’s poem compares to some of the other “society” poems we’ve read, but also in some of its own individual merits.

Compared to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Snake” I find that Auden takes a somewhat more satirical look at modern society. Take, for example, the final two lines of “The Unknown Citizen,” which read “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” Evidently some sort of government official, the speaker in this poem acts as if he knows everything about the unknown citizen. The speaker is even confident enough to state that the man’s happiness was a given, but readers can see the satire in the speaker’s delusion. Impossible for an official to know everything about an individual, Auden satirizes modern society/government in their very attempt to do so. The speaker seems to think the unknown citizen had everything he could ever need, “A gramophone, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire,” but readers realize that there is so much more to life than material possessions. Therefore, in reducing the citizen to one who needs nothing more than to have the right material possessions, Auden satirizes the shallowness of the modern age. Eliot and Lawrence also have their own complaints with modern society, but Auden is interesting to me in that he uses satire to make his own complaints.

Yet, even without comparing his poem to the works of other poets, Auden’s “The Unknown citizen” is interesting in its own rights. Take, for example, the title of the poem. When I first started this poem the title led me to believe it would almost be like an ode to someone who had died. And I suppose, in a small way, that’s what the poem is; however, it is certainly not presented in the manner one would expect. The speaker’s clinical, aloof way of talking about the citizen takes away all tenderness normally expressed in poems about one who has died. Therefore, by juxtaposing the tenderness the readers expect to the rough, modern approach of the speaker, Auden displays how cold and sterile modern society can be. Therefore, even based solely on its own rights, “The Unknown Citizen” is a very interesting poem.

All the poems we’ve read so far about modern society have been rather bleak. But, I suppose bleak times call for bleak poetry. Indeed, written during the very beginning of WWII, it is not much of a surprise that Auden would satirize modern society throughout “The Unknown Citizen.” Nevertheless, despite the bleakness of this poem, I still find that the comparisons it makes to other “society” poems and its own individual merits still make “The Unknown Citizen” a poem worthy of recognition.