Auden\'s \"The Unknown Citizen\" How

Auden's "The Unknown Citizen"

How is this poem an "honor" to the unknown citizen? What is being celebrated or held up as honorable here? This poem "honors" the unknown citizen by glorifying all the mundane things that made him a good consumerist member of society. The modern capitalist society believes that constant spending is what is necessary for each citizen, and doesn't care about them as a person; consumerism is honorable in this poem, not individuality.

Note the use of capitalization in the poem. What seems to be the pattern? How is Auden using this one graphical choice to present the theme? Auden seems to be capitalizing letters of the institutions he is subtly satirizing in this poem -- government offices, businesses, and other trappings of Modern Society that contribute to the individual's anonymity. This calls more attention to these things, emphasizing them as the important measures of the Unknown Citizen's life, which increases the satire.

How is Auden's way of relating this anonymous man's life like Joyce's way of relating Araby? In both "The Unknown Citizen" and "Araby," it is the external environment that defines the subject. In Joyce's short story, the boy and subject is also the narrator, so there is some internal revelation, but for the most part it is things outside of the boy -- the girl, the street, the bazaar -- that reveal his character. The point of Auden's poem is that it's all externality.

4) Tease out the meaning of the line "And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education." Who is the "our"? What is meant by "their education"? "Our" is the state (presumably England) that erected this monument to the Unknown Citizen (a mocking reference to the Unknown Soldier). "Their education" refers to the citizen's children mentioned in the line previously, meaning the citizen let the State handle the raising (or at least educating) of his kids without showing any concern over it.

Auden's "September, 1939"

1) in Auden's "September 1, 1939" How would you describe the tone and progression of the first two stanzas? The tone of the first two stanzas is very dark and the rare use if enjambment really slows the progression of the poem, matching the drag in the sounds of the words. The overall effect is like slogging through sucking mud -- there is a depressive inertia in the poem, as if one does not want to go on but must.

2) What does he mean by "blind skyscrapers"? What does this mean symbolically? The line before this one comments on the "neutral air" in New York (this is before they entered WWII), making the blind skyscrapers perhaps "blind" in the sense that they aren't taking sides; blind like Justice is blind. They are also blind to the evils being committed in Europe where war has been going on for awhile. All of this is symbolic; it is also possible that Auden is alluding to tall buildings of a bygone era, where towers and lighthouses -- the tallest building -- were built specifically to see.

3) in the seventh stanza... what is the "ethical life" of which he speaks in the first line? What is he alluding to? The ethical life Auden mentions in the first line is the day-to-day affairs of the people and the government; the mundane and orderly-appearing life of correct behavior. He alludes to first the fact that in the "conservative dark" their lives aren't really as ethical as they pretend, and also perhaps to the "ethics" of the business of war.