W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” as a Satirical Poem

W. H. Auden, (1907-1973), a major poet of the modern period, is typically modern in his choice of subject, technique, and articulation. Like T.S. Eliot he represents the dreadful picture of a modern spiritual ice-age in his poetry in his perspectives of history, theology, and philosophy. Using the desolate and rocky background of Post-War Europe of 1930’s he delineates the rise of dictatorship, the exploitation of the poor and underprivileged, economic disparity, spiritual bankruptcy, anxiety, and boredom of modern life. Thus his real subject for poetry is a man and his day-to-day activity, and nature is merely the cinematic setting for that activity. It is quite an anti-romantic approach to life and sometimes tragic in vision.

Auden, in his poems, often introspects the human element engaged in the human activity. And his men often do stand amidst the bleak atmosphere of modern society. The Unknown Citizen is such a story of a modern man who finds himself nowhere and leads a life of anonymity. The ironic title attacks the very snobbery of our social identity mischievously polarized by economic, commercial and ideological pressure groups. The entire poem and its language looks like a compilation of detailed facts about the average man written in the flat matter of fact tone of a report. The overall aim of this scheme is to promote experimentation and innovation of our identity and to complement in diverse ways the goals spelled out in the individuality and freedom for creating environmental consciousness and related behavioral practices among citizens of this world.

This poem  right through it appears, is attacking the concept of a human being who is not much more than the product of all the economic, commercial and ideological pressure groups which force him to conform to a standard pattern of life and thought. The unknown citizen is the everyman who is controlled by the conventions of bureaucracy and the welfare state which ignore the individual freedom of a citizen. The unknown citizen is known by his number JS/07/M/378, not by his name. His personae is obscured by the mechanized social behavior. Only but few annals are stored: He was an obedient worker at Fudge Motors Inc. he had union membership and did not work against the wishes of his employers. He owned a car, a phonograph, a radio, a Frigidaire and maintains installment plans. He was in touch with all reports and news published in the newspaper. All these impose uniformity in his behavior and activities which seem to be dull and monotonous. Any personal variation is immediately spotted by social psychology workers or other bureaucratic corrective mechanisms of Government.

The firms like Producers Research and High-Grade living declares that the man was fully sensible to the advantages of the installment plan. Here Auden satirizes the commercial or exploitation which almost destroys a modern man. The firms carry out investigations to find out the likes and dislikes of the consumers to promote the sale of their goods like a car, phonograph, radio, Frigidaire etc. Auden protests against the society which manipulates a man by the laws of mass organization, commercial exploitation, social research, and spying system. This kind of criticism of the killing of individual’s freedom and happiness came and still comes from the very different viewpoints. The novels of D.H. Lawrence exposed the effect of modern society on man’s emotional life. Auden was very much influenced by D. H. Lawrence. Moreover, as a left-wing thinker Auden makes bitter attacks not on the mass organization of society but on the capitalist exploitation of that society of course in some lines of the apoem he shows his divergence from a left-wing analysis:

   “But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc,                

 Yet he wasn't scabbed or odd in his views.  

For his union reports that he paid his dues

Our report on his union shows it was sound”.

The poem shows how the average people is pressed into conformism by some evil social forces. Of course, there is often the antagonism and conflict between these social forces. Apart from the obvious conflicts of labor and capital, there is the population problem as indicated in the High-Grade Living and the proper size of the family suggested by the Eugenics’. What Auden, therefore, means to say is that modern man has lost his identity in this society. They are turned into mere number where the identification mark is not the personality.

So, each line of the poem is ironical. There is total regimentation in modern industrial society in which a man is reduced to a mere sum number. He losses all individuality and simply conforms to a pattern, any violation of which is regarded as an eccentricity. Though some critics are of the opinion that as in the post-1918 period the possibility of a satisfactory Trade Unionist or a happy collaboration of capital and labor is fabulous. Auden’s view is false. They state a question; “How did an unknown citizen manage to avoid the repercussion of the General Strike of 1926 or the economic crisis of the thirties – when three and three-quarter millions in Britain were unemployed by 1932?”

Of course,the poem can still serve as a warning against the social pressure of our mass-society. Using the style of Rilke (the poet shared with Rilke a concern with the relation of the individual sensibility to the external world and also an aesthetic and symbolist dimension) he here uses the contemporary social landscape and geography as symbolical of the human condition and the human psyche.  Auden whose topography is always political, economic or psychological in this poem uses all his tools in a satirical way in the Swiftian model.


NOTE: these following questions can also be answered-
1) Evaluate the unknown citizen as a satire
2) Satirical elements in the unknown citizen by W H Auden
3) Is the unknown citizen a satire poem by W H Auden