Skip to main content

Why is the poem "Unknown Citizen" used as an example of satire? What do you think Auden's purpose might have been in writing this poem?

Auden's poem "Unknown Citizen" consists mostly of an epitaph for a recently deceased person, followed by pointed questions in the last two lines. The poem has a unique perspective, that of various data-collecting bodies (government, employer, union, etc.) and their acknowledgement that the Citizen was an upstanding person. 


What makes this poem satire is the juxtaposition of the last two lines in relation to the tone of the poem. The majority of the poem is a presentation of the fact that the Citizen did what was expected and never challenged any of the authorities over him. In the eyes of these data-collecting bodies, this is laudable. Yet, the last two lines ask if he was happy and free and assure the reader that there is no reason to ask about this kind of thing. Everything was all right. 


The last two lines don't just come out of the blue; Auden foreshadows them with some of his statements. For example, it is clear that the Citizen only had opinions acceptable to the time in which he was living--"When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went." Also, Auden mentions Eugenics, which was a movement in favor of ensuring that "desirable" people reproduce and "undesirable" people didn't. Hitler took that movement to its extreme, but it was a significant movement in the United States, as well. 


Unknown Citizen was written in 1939, at the end of the Great Depression and shortly before World War II. Kristallnacht had occurred the year before, so Hitler's danger was apparent, and yet there were strong voices in the United States that were antisemitic, refusing entry into the United States of refugee Jews from Germany. It was a time when a dissenting political opinion was important because the US government was holding off from intervening in events in Europe. 


Ultimately, then, Unknown Citizen satirizes the concept, from a governmental and corporate perspective, of what a good citizen is--one who does not make waves. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more