The Unknown Citizen by W.H Auden

In the final exam dickens lines of the poem, Auden brings this irony most to light, "Was he free? Was he dexterous? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have comprehend" (28-29). The colon at the end of the counterbalance line is used purposefully to make us stop for a second, before the final impact and irony of the last line. The speaker is suggesting that the bureaucratic institutions of bon ton know everything t present is to know about us. They would certainly had heard if the man acted crazy in public, wrecked his car composition drunk or any other itemize of activities considered alfresco the bounds of what is "normal," "right," or "proper." Even though Auden is conveying how recent government is always watching and recording us in these final dickens lines, he is similarly being wry about the deceased. For even if such institutions know our every move, they but know us in an anonymous, i.e. statistical, way that makes us as anonymous as the individual buried under the monument. The opening night inscription alludes to this irony as the individual is "bureaucratically" cognize as "JS/07 M 378."

To connote the sing-song nature of the man's hum-drum life, Auden uses connotation to repay such images of the deceased. In reference to his opinions that are proper jibe to the current public opinion, Auden writes, "When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went" (Auden 24). Auden is not solo using consonance here to mimic th

Auden, W. H. (1940). "The Unknown Citizen." In Michael Meyer, (Ed.). The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

The deceased lived a life as a number by never involving his own thoughts or value into his life. He is known only as a number and did everything a "normal" person is supposed to do in a material society.

He worked, reproduced, bought material things and never interfered. At one point Auden uses parentheses to demonstrate just how much the mountainous Brother-like bureaucracies knew the man, by telling us that even his union's background was check over: "(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)" (Auden 11). The poem's verse scheme also mimics the repetitive and hum-drum or sing-song nature of the deceased's life. The poem is twenty-eight lines with an ABAB rhyme scheme turning into an ABBCDDEEF rhyme scheme after the first five lines, a pattern repeated excepted for a dual rhyme scheme of lines 25-27. The rhyming allows the reader to read through with(predicate) the man's life in the same sing-song way he lived it. The rhyming becomes hum-drum at a point, as in the following two lines that describe how the man kept his insurance up-to-date and only had to visit the hospital once, successfully, "Policies taken out in his strike prove that he was fully insured,/And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured" (Auden 16-17).

e hum-drum nature of the man's existence; he is also us
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