Contrast between the shield of Achilles and the modern shield

The classical myth of Achilles is employed by Auden to exemplify the contrast between the valiant past and cowardice present. The myth of the past is juxtaposed with the reality of the present. The poem thematically depicts a world devoid of principles and ethics, that in its march for success has lost the true meaning as echoed in phrases like “an unintelligible multitude”,  “column by column in a cloud of dust”. The Homeric myth is rendered into an allegory of the contemporary times. It is Auden’s disgust at the totalitarian regime of the modern world where the individual is relegated. The Achilles a world serves as his mouthpiece to comment on the stagnation of the Modern world.

The shield reflects the hollowness and futility of a life that verges on nothingness. The sky like ‘lead’ echoes the metallic, frigid and cold human behavior.

The modern life is one that is based on logic and reasoning. It is characterized by a lack of sentiment.

Thetis searched the shield for scenes of Greek life as depicted on Keats’ Grecian Urn. The phrase ‘white flower garlanded heifer” echoes the same. The term ‘ritual pities’ reflects the same. The ‘libation’ refers to the pouring forth of wine in honor of a God. In their flickering forge-light, she observes yet another scene. The scene is of a concentration camp where prisoners of war are kept. Officers cracked jokes to while away the time. The enemy soldiers amidst of such callousness are captured and tied to three stakes and killed. The irreverence of the picture is a reminder of the crucifixion of Christ filled with overwhelming reverence. The modern society with the loss of religious conviction is juxtaposed against an act that is emblematic of the redemption of mankind.

She looks for athletes at their games, and men and women in dance rhythmically swaying their limbs to the beat of the music. But in the reflective shield that he held there were no such ‘healthy’ images, but only those of decay and decomposition-“a weed-choked field”.

What one is finally left with is aimless; impulsive peoples out of hurt each other for no reason at all. Just like the ‘ragged urchin’ mentioned. People regress into primitivism and develop an animal instinct. Unwarranted violence, rape, broken promises and lack of humanity was the order of the contemporary times.

Hephaestus is the god of fire and metal-smith who made the shield of Achilles. Thetis, the mother of Achilles cries out in despair at the thought of the inevitability of her son’s death.“The strong/ Iron-hearted man” referred to in the poem is Paris destined to play Achilles. War, a metaphor of life, where people are caught in the race of survival of the fittest, spares no one and one eventually succumbs to the same.

The questions you may answer reading this very article:

*) Contrast between The Shield of Achilles and the shield of modern

*) shield of Achilles vs The shield of modern 

*) what are the differences between the past and the present as described in The Shield of Achilles by D H Auden

*)What are the Differences between the shield of Achilles and the modern shield

Bibliography:  https://goo.gl/FdFYQo

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

Critical Appreciation: The Shield of Achilles by W.H. Auden

"The Shield of Achilles" is the title poem in the volume of poems entitled The Shield of Achilles, published in 1955. The lyric is divided into three parts, and each part consists of three stanzas. Thus, there are nine stanzas in all. It is a fine lyrical poem in which Auden puts the classical myth of Achilles and his shield to the service of his art as a modern poet to bring out the contrast between the heroic past and the cowardish present. Auden's handling of the myth is dexterous and highly appropriate in underlying the desolation, cruelty and uninspiring barrenness of the contemporary scene.

"The Shield of Achilles" derived its theme from the Iliad. Auden represents the Homeric theme in a mock-heroic way, making necessary changes in conformity with the tone. The shield represents imagery in the art which the artist displays. The viewer is the people here. The view of life presented is controlled by dictators ruling over multitudes of common men. The ceremonies in Homer are reproduced in a mockery of crucifixion organized by officials and witnessed by people and the act is a deliberate mockery of human dignity.

Thetis searches for the mythical rites in pieties in vain. The sight of three people led to the spot of execution, watched by an apathetic crowd, is a mockery of the situation of crucifixion. The situation that follows the execution is intensely mocking.

“A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,Loitered about the vacancy, a birdFlew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:That girls are raped, that two boys knife a thirdWere anxious to him, who'd never heardOf any world where promises were kept,” 

The world of Homer and the world of the present is put into contrast through the images. In this lyric Auden has used the mythical technique popularized by TS. Eliot. The mythical method consists in juxtaposing the past and the present, with the past serving as a comment, on the present. In order that the parallelism may be effective, Auden alternates the reminiscences of the glorious past of the classical world and its legendary beauty with the contemporary scene which cuts into this past and produces an antithetical and negative effect. The contemporary scene is rendered in terms of military operations and senseless violence with implications of religion and art. Thus, Auden's poem is a carefully balanced and well–integrated whole in which we find more than one level of meaning. The myth has been worked to a deeper significance. In the poem "the shield symbolizes art, an image of the human condition. Auden's version, however, is mock-heroic, contrasting the Homeric description of the life, the modern artist must represent.

In the shield, Hephaestus (the artist) shows Thetis (the audience), not the classical city, but the plain of modern life on which multitudes are ordered about by totalitarian rulers (a faceless voice reciting statistics through a loudspeaker). Instead of the "ritual pieties", we have barbed wire enclosing an "arbitrary spot" where there is a travesty of the crucifixion being performed by bureaucrats—while "ordinary decent folk" watch, in which helpless individuals are shamefully deprived of human dignity before death. Thus, by using the mythical technique Auden has telescoped whole ages of history within the compass of a small lyric and commented upon the spiritual decay and solution in the modern age. He expresses emotion directly with simplicity. This poem is unusual in presenting tragedy without comment.

In "The Shield of Achilles", we find a successful example of Auden's use of a conceptual construct instead of the direct treatment of experience. Thetis's observation of her son's shield, in expectation of seeing the views of her own design, provides a dramatic context for an objective presentation of the horrors of a world without faith. Auden's mythopoeia imagination enables him to attain a double focus and thereby turn the Homeric legend into a befitting analogy to the post-war world of today. The beauty of the poem lies in the double-edged irony which suggests, on the one hand, a paretic; between the classical world and the present and on the other reveals the contrast between the expectations of Thetis and the reality painted on the shield. Although the intention of the poet is not chiefly the symbolic painting of the landscape, the mode of description is highly suggestive. The picture of "A plain without a feature, bare and brown," as also without any sign of vegetation and neighborhood, persists throughout the poem as a contrast to the cherished virtues of the classical city of "vines and olive trees," of "ritual pieties", dances and games.

'The Shield of Achilles' is Auden's one of greatest poems: central diction, the normal and logically ordered syntax, the form heightens without hindering the sense, and the rare rhetorical devices are kept strictly relevant to the needs of the theme. Though not evocative in the way of most odes, but rather a crisp narrative of vivid scenes and actions, this poem possesses the main features usually associated with the ode: namely, a certain elevation, a sense that the poet is rising above personal mailers to speak in a measured responsible way on something of general importance, and the use of a contrasting and comparative method. The legendary shield is presented as a magic mirror, revealing the future as well as the present and showing what is true rather than what is desired.

Auden uses myth as a symbolic metaphor, in that it both concretizes and universalizes. It is unlike history because it is not factual, but like history in that it is explanatory, and it is unlike the novel because it is not mimetic, but like the novel in that it is invented. All these features are to be found here. Auden is enabled to present, in its essence, one of the direct forms of 'the baffle of being': the contrast between the ideas of harmony and humane community, and practices of mass manipulation, moral blindness, and militarism he is able to condense recognizable worlds, as it were, into a timeless metaphor of themselves.

The first three stanzas express the State as an organization, the next three the State as Idea (Sublimated into religion and, 'therefore, involving the persecution of heretics) while the last three exemplify the consequences entitled by such a State. More particularly, the detailed revelation remarkably combines plainness with power, largely because of very subtle stylistic effects and very cogent choice of metonymic examples.

Individuality in the unknown citizen by W H Auden

 In this poem, the unknown citizen is also unnamed. This illustrates the state's perspective of its citizens. To the state, such a citizen is no more than a collection of statistics. This unknown citizen is, judging by the state's statistics, relatively obedient. He is a diligent worker. He pays his Union dues. He goes to war when there is war and embraces peace when there is peace. He has the right amount of children, as determined by the state. He buys the right products. The state notes all of these statistics about this individual, but the statistics do not tell us the personality of the man. In terms of recognizing this man's humanity, his hopes, and dreams, the essence of this individual cannot be condensed to a set of categories and appliances that the man owned. 

The poem ends with legitimate questions which are dismissed. The speaker or speakers of the poem (presumably speaking as the state or the Bureau) ask if the man was free or happy. They answer their own question, saying that such questions are absurd. Clearly, the state does not care if he had been happy or free. He was a good citizen if he was obedient. His happiness is irrelevant to them. 

Auden also presents the notion that the obedient citizen is perhaps less free and maybe less happy. If the city would instead resist the state's institutional instructions, he might be freer. And if he makes a name for himself in this way (via protest, alternate lifestyle, etc.) he or she would become "known." However, becoming known as a dissenter is something the state would try to repress or discipline. 

This poem is quite prescient considering how citizens' information is collected today. With most things computerized, all of our information is archived. Even our names are replaced with usernames and passwords. All of our information is based on bank codes, purchase records, etc. If he had been alive during the computer age, Auden might have slightly altered his poem and called it "The Unknown Consumer."