[386] The Unknown Citizen
Guest poem submitted by Jacob Hale Russell, <jrussell@>:
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
-- W. H. Auden
|
I've always enjoyed this poem as a brilliantly composed portrait of a
bureaucracy taken to the excess -- the point where it dehumanizes individuals,
its subjects, in the absolute. Auden meticulously selects his words to express
the obsessive inanity of this mindless, mechanized State which knows its citzens
only by letters and numbers, evaluates their worth with statistics, and has a
formulaic standard for virtuous living. The tone of the final two lines -- a
spokesperson's spin on the situation -- is both ironic and chilling.
The ultimate question, of course, is whether this is a portrait of a society to
come or perhaps the society we already inhabit.
Jacob Russell.
Auden's biography from www.poets.org:
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in 1907. He moved to Birmingham
during childhood and was educated at Christ's Church, Oxford. As a young man he
was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as
William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At
Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong
friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.
In 1928, Auden published his first book of verse, and his collection Poems,
published in 1930, established him as the leading voice of a new generation.
Ever since, he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an
ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation
in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also
for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary
variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific
and technical information. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the
writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James.
His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest,
and his travels provided rich material for his verse.
He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in
1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and
became an American citizen. His own beliefs changed radically between his
youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and
Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central
preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant
theologians. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist,
editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the
twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding
generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.
W. H. Auden was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973,
and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York
City and Austria. He died in Vienna in 1973.
From: amitc <amitc@>
I first read this poem when I was very young. To be sure
I didn't fully understand the import of every phrase, but
nevertheless I enjoyed it. I recall sensing depth in this
poem. At that time, I wasn't interested enough in poetry
to know Auden's name, so the poet was forgotten.
Until now. Thanks for bringing this marvellous poem back
into my life.
- Amit.
From: rhines757@
This poem by W.H Auden is an obvious jab at society and it's governing
population. The author writes if the citizen was "...free? Was he happy?
The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have
heard." Basically, this conveys to the reader that the author thinks that a
person is only known if something bad should happen; that is, if one is
involved in a scandal, or has a wrongdoing inflicted upon him. Irony is also
seen in the fact that the citizen is "unknown," for it seems that this man
has done everything right, and for this he should be commended. Auden makes
his view towards society clear through "The Unknown Citizen," that is, that
one is only recognized if, somehow or another, his name is tarnished.
From: "Paul Murphy" <da_murph@>
Instead of this poem being a criticism of our society, I believe that Auden
is criticizing communist or marxist society! Afterall, "The Unknown
Citizen.....served the Greater Community" from the sounds of it, this
citizen did everything he was told (he worked in a factory, was for peace
during peace-time, went to war at war-time)
Paul Murphy
From: JFWF1@
I think Auden's poem is more like the facism of the US govt today.
From: "Dela" <greendestiny_89@>
In WH Auden's poem, the speaker is the governement or the state. It
views the individual as statistics, figures, numbers, data. The time
period in which Auden lived/wrote this seems to affect his protest
that's protrayed in this poem. For example, during the Great Depression,
social security is coming into use, and althought it is great, it
greatly diminished the individual into numbers that can be tracked down.
Thus, I think Auden is criticizing how a democracy is allowing the state
to become more and more powerful to the point where it's morphing into
some kind of dictatorship. Moreover, the "unknown" citizen is praised
and used as an example in the story shows how the so-called democratic
society encourages its people to become average. No, even more than just
average. The state wants the people to cease to be individuals with
their originality in actions and thought, their pride for their work,
and become a unit in the Greater Community, or the bureaucracy. This
bureaucracy is unlike others because it revolves around technology. It
could not 'live' without technology, because it is technology that has
allowed the governemnt to become so powerful and almighty. Thus,
technology has taken over the lives of individuals; reducing them to
mere numbers that is part of the Machine, or the bureaucracy.
From: robin wilson <rowilson@>
I think Auden is against any unthinking bureaucracy - soviet, fascist or
capitalist. His point is that people who are good at measuring things often
fall into the trap of assuming:
* things which can be measured easily are more important than
* things which can be measured with difficulty and much more important than
* things that cannot be measured at all.
In practice, for most people, our personal priorities are just the other way
up.
The sin lies not in measuring things, but in ignoring things like freedom
and happiness that are very hard to measure.
Robin Wilson.
From: "edward chen" <echen_teb@>
I believe Auden is trying to say that a person should not try to satisfy
everybody else his entire life, since he "satisfied his employers", "wasn't
a scab or odd in his views" and "his reactions were normal in every way".
The title also fits this idea because if a person strives to satisfy
everybody else his whole life, nobody will really know him which leaves him
"unknown".
-Edward
My view might be wrong, but I think this is a new way to see Audens opinion.
From: "Madisin" <swirlangel@>
i think this poem , even tho that it talks about an unknown citizen, he
is actually not 'unknown.' this is because he has been checked by so
many people and groups (over 10) , so how can he be unknown if so many
people spent time studying him?
just my thoughts~
From: FattyBones <fattybones@>
This poem is named to echo the Unknown Soldier monument at the Arlington
National Cemetery near Washington DC.
It is not a satire on bureaucracy, but an attempt to humanize the
Unknown Soldier.
( \_________/ )
(_FattyBones_)
From: "Stan Smith" <stan.smith1@>
To say that this poem is about life in a Communist society (that now
obsolete concept) is to miss the point. Indeed, the author of such a
claim
might be said to be in denial about the nature of modern American - and
more
widely western - capitalist society, with its instrumentalist attitude
towards the citizen and its pervasive manipulation of 'Public Opinion'
(capitalised in the poem) in the service of the status quo. Stalin's
Russia
used more directly brutal ways of controlling its population. Since it
was
not a democracy, it did not need to deceive, wheedle, manipulate or
otherwise inveigle its citizens into believing, and doing, what it
wanted.
Auden explicitly identifies the society he is critiquing as his own
contemporary US one. In March 1939, when the poem was written, Auden had
just emigrated to the USA, where he was to become a US citizen in 1946.
The signs of Americanness are everywhere, from the Bureau of Statistics
to
the Eugenist at the end (constructive Eugenics was a US as well as Nazi
fad
in the 1930s. The Soviet Union did not have fads; it had 'Five Year
Plans').
The reference to 'his employers, Fudge Motors Inc' makes the
identification
specifically American. This is the US way of identifying a business
corporation; in Britain the words would be 'Co Ltd' - for 'company,
limited', while the Soviet Union in 1939 was a collectivist, statist
society
and did not therefore have business corporations and separate employers,
only the State. 'Fudge Motors' is obviously Ford motors by any other
name.
The reference to not being a scab and to paying his (union) dues is also
specifically American: there were no independent trades unions in the
Soviet
Union, nor could the (workerist) concept of a 'scab' - someone who
refuses
to take part in a strike authorised by his union - make any sense in a
society which claimed to be the 'workers' state' and in which strikes
were
therefore outlawed. At the same time, in ways which make American trades
unionism very different from that practised in Britain and Europe, the
union is clearly itself 'corporatised', hand-in-glove with employers in
the
assumption that an obedient operative is what is required: he never got
fired, did his job satisfactorily, but also paid his union dues. His
'Union'
(capitalised, like Fudge Motors) keeps records about him just as the
Bureau
does and, no doubt, his employers. in both cases, he is an ideal
'worker',
for unions which are run like corporate enterprises (AFL-CIO) as much as
for
corporate capital. The use of Social Pyschology to supervise workers'
attitudes is very much part of US modernity in the 1930s, as is
'Producers
Research' and 'High-Grade Living' as monitors of consumer/ producer
affairs,
critiqued in the 1950s by such social commentators as Vance Packard (and
see
Auden's comment on such matters in his various prose writings collected
in
Mendelson's 'The English Auden'). There was no separate 'Press' as a
powerful public institution in the USSR, though Auden implies its
alleged
independence in the West is actually delusory: it's also part of the
establishment ethos, reinforcing conservative values (George Bush is not
the
first president to have a fawningly docile right-wing Press as his
cheer-leaders). Health-cards, Instalment Plans, phonographs, radios,
cars
and refrigerators are not commodities a Soviet worker would have had the
benefit of, any more than access to a newspaper bought every day. A
square
meal might have been the preferred option. The 'proper opinions for the
time
of year' are again irrelevant to Soviet autocracy: opinions only matter,
and
are only thought of as 'proper' by our masters, when we have the (at
least
technical) option and opportunity to be enlightened, and thus change our
minds (and thereby, possibly, our masters). The reference to teachers'
reports on parents (not pupils) has very much a US application, in a
context
where parents feel at liberty to query, as in Tennessee, for example,
the
teaching of evolutionary theory (and NB the current controversy,
unbelievable in Britain and Europe, about the quasi-theological fantasy
of
'intelligent design'). Nor would the Soviet Union under Stalin give a
damn
about whether a worker was 'free' or 'happy', though it would agree in
regarding such matters as really, in the real perspectives of the State
and
the economy, an 'absurd' question.
Some specifically English features persist for this new arrival to the
USA.
Look at the way the 'Unknown Citizen' is classified in the files:
'JS/07/M/378'.
JS " John Smith, the British way of identifiying your average guy; the
US
version is John Doe.' 07': an in-joke year of birth: Auden was himself
born
in 1907. 'M' " 'Male'. '378' probably also has some personal, in-joke
significance, but I can't pin this down. Any ideas would be welcome.
The State which erected this monument is a bland, 'benign' version of
the
Big Brother society Orwell was to satirise in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
To
say it is about 'Communist' society is to miss the point, for what are
probably tendentiously 'US-patriotic' reasons. The same claim was
regularly
made in the Cold War about Winston Smith's Britain, which, if you read
the
book, is actually an outpost of the American empire, America's 'Airstrip
1',
the forward base of US global power in the struggle with the
(fictionalised)
Soviet bloc (which has taken over the rest of Europe, as was feared in
1948). And indeed, in 1948, Britain's role in the Atlantic alliance was
to
provide one giant airbase and early warning system in preparation for
war
with the Soviets.
The point of Auden's poem (remember he was still a European socialist
when
he wrote it) is to call into question our cosy assumptions that life is
great in western capitalists democracies. By this time, he had no
illusions
about Soviet brutality (he had seen enough in Spain). But he's saying to
his
adoptive country: 'Don't be smyg, don't be self-satisfied, don't feel so
superior: you live in a massively manipulative, bureaucracy-dominate
society, where your supposed 'free' opinions are actually orchestrated
by
the 'hidden persuaders' of State, Press, PR, media, etc. You are better
off,
more aflluent, than others, but you are no less unfree. You simply think
you
are free. (Peter Ustinov once said that in the USA, 'freedom' often
meant
sitting on your front stoop in a rocking chair, with a can of Budweiser,
saying 'Where else can you do this?') This is consistent with a whole
range
of poems Auden wrote in the 1940s. See, for example, 'The Managers'. A
very
good point is made by one of your contributors, that 10 different
organisations seem to know all about JS, so he's hardly 'unknown' - know
everything, in fact, that's external, but know nothing, I would add,
about
what he was really like, how he really felt: this is why he remains, as
a
citizen -as opposed to an operative, a worker, a consumer, a function of
the
state, a family man, etc - UNKNOWN.
Stan Smith
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From: "Stan Smith" <stan.smith1@>
To say that this poem is about life in a Communist society (that now
obsolete concept) is to miss the point. Indeed, the author of such a
claim
might be said to be in denial about the nature of modern American - and
more
widely western - capitalist society, with its instrumentalist attitude
towards the citizen and its pervasive manipulation of 'Public Opinion'
(capitalised in the poem) in the service of the status quo. Stalin's
Russia
used more directly brutal ways of controlling its population. Since it
was
not a democracy, it did not need to deceive, wheedle, manipulate or
otherwise inveigle its citizens into believing, and doing, what it
wanted.
Auden explicitly identifies the society he is critiquing as his own
contemporary US one. In March 1939, when the poem was written, Auden had
just emigrated to the USA, where he was to become a US citizen in 1946.
The signs of Americanness are everywhere, from the Bureau of Statistics
to
the Eugenist at the end (constructive Eugenics was a US as well as Nazi
fad
in the 1930s. The Soviet Union did not have fads; it had 'Five Year
Plans').
The reference to 'his employers, Fudge Motors Inc' makes the
identification
specifically American. This is the US way of identifying a business
corporation; in Britain the words would be 'Co Ltd' - for 'company,
limited', while the Soviet Union in 1939 was a collectivist, statist
society
and did not therefore have business corporations and separate employers,
only the State. 'Fudge Motors' is obviously Ford motors by any other
name.
The reference to not being a scab and to paying his (union) dues is also
specifically American: there were no independent trades unions in the
Soviet
Union, nor could the (workerist) concept of a 'scab' - someone who
refuses
to take part in a strike authorised by his union - make any sense in a
society which claimed to be the 'workers' state' and in which strikes
were
therefore outlawed. At the same time, in ways which make American trades
unionism very different from that practised in Britain and Europe, the
union is clearly itself 'corporatised', hand-in-glove with employers in
the
assumption that an obedient operative is what is required: he never got
fired, did his job satisfactorily, but also paid his union dues. His
'Union'
(capitalised, like Fudge Motors) keeps records about him just as the
Bureau
does and, no doubt, his employers. in both cases, he is an ideal
'worker',
for unions which are run like corporate enterprises (AFL-CIO) as much as
for
corporate capital. The use of Social Pyschology to supervise workers'
attitudes is very much part of US modernity in the 1930s, as is
'Producers
Research' and 'High-Grade Living' as monitors of consumer/ producer
affairs,
critiqued in the 1950s by such social commentators as Vance Packard (and
see
Auden's comment on such matters in his various prose writings collected
in
Mendelson's 'The English Auden'). There was no separate 'Press' as a
powerful public institution in the USSR, though Auden implies its
alleged
independence in the West is actually delusory: it's also part of the
establishment ethos, reinforcing conservative values (George Bush is not
the
first president to have a fawningly docile right-wing Press as his
cheer-leaders). Health-cards, Instalment Plans, phonographs, radios,
cars
and refrigerators are not commodities a Soviet worker would have had the
benefit of, any more than access to a newspaper bought every day. A
square
meal might have been the preferred option. The 'proper opinions for the
time
of year' are again irrelevant to Soviet autocracy: opinions only matter,
and
are only thought of as 'proper' by our masters, when we have the (at
least
technical) option and opportunity to be enlightened, and thus change our
minds (and thereby, possibly, our masters). The reference to teachers'
reports on parents (not pupils) has very much a US application, in a
context
where parents feel at liberty to query, as in Tennessee, for example,
the
teaching of evolutionary theory (and NB the current controversy,
unbelievable in Britain and Europe, about the quasi-theological fantasy
of
'intelligent design'). Nor would the Soviet Union under Stalin give a
damn
about whether a worker was 'free' or 'happy', though it would agree in
regarding such matters as really, in the real perspectives of the State
and
the economy, an 'absurd' question.
Some specifically English features persist for this new arrival to the
USA.
Look at the way the 'Unknown Citizen' is classified in the files:
'JS/07/M/378'.
JS " John Smith, the British way of identifiying your average guy; the
US
version is John Doe.' 07': an in-joke year of birth: Auden was himself
born
in 1907. 'M' " 'Male'. '378' probably also has some personal, in-joke
significance, but I can't pin this down. Any ideas would be welcome.
The State which erected this monument is a bland, 'benign' version of
the
Big Brother society Orwell was to satirise in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
To
say it is about 'Communist' society is to miss the point, for what are
probably tendentiously 'US-patriotic' reasons. The same claim was
regularly
made in the Cold War about Winston Smith's Britain, which, if you read
the
book, is actually an outpost of the American empire, America's 'Airstrip
1',
the forward base of US global power in the struggle with the
(fictionalised)
Soviet bloc (which has taken over the rest of Europe, as was feared in
1948). And indeed, in 1948, Britain's role in the Atlantic alliance was
to
provide one giant airbase and early warning system in preparation for
war
with the Soviets.
The point of Auden's poem (remember he was still a European socialist
when
he wrote it) is to call into question our cosy assumptions that life is
great in western capitalists democracies. By this time, he had no
illusions
about Soviet brutality (he had seen enough in Spain). But he's saying to
his
adoptive country: 'Don't be smyg, don't be self-satisfied, don't feel so
superior: you live in a massively manipulative, bureaucracy-dominate
society, where your supposed 'free' opinions are actually orchestrated
by
the 'hidden persuaders' of State, Press, PR, media, etc. You are better
off,
more aflluent, than others, but you are no less unfree. You simply think
you
are free. (Peter Ustinov once said that in the USA, 'freedom' often
meant
sitting on your front stoop in a rocking chair, with a can of Budweiser,
saying 'Where else can you do this?') This is consistent with a whole
range
of poems Auden wrote in the 1940s. See, for example, 'The Managers'. A
very
good point is made by one of your contributors, that 10 different
organisations seem to know all about JS, so he's hardly 'unknown' - know
everything, in fact, that's external, but know nothing, I would add,
about
what he was really like, how he really felt: this is why he remains, as
a
citizen -as opposed to an operative, a worker, a consumer, a function of
the
state, a family man, etc - UNKNOWN.
Stan Smith
--
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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
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