The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden:
Summary: The satirical epigraph "To JS/07 M 378 / This Marble Monument / Is Erected by the State" opens the poem. All assessments, including those from the Bureau of Statistics, indicate that he will carry out his obligations to "the Greater Community." He paid his union dues and worked in a factory. He was also demonstrated to be normal and to possess "everything necessary to the Modern Man" (radio, automobile, etc.) by the Producers Research and High-Grade Living investigators. Researchers from the Public Opinion concluded that "he held the correct opinions for the season," favoring peace during times of peace but serving during times of conflict.
Analysis: One of Auden's most well-known poems is The Unknown Citizen from 1940. The poem has the structure of a satirical elegy as if the commonplace, uninteresting citizen were so unremarkable that the state honored him with a poem about how little problem he caused for anyone. This one just states "JS/07 M 378" for the unidentified male in an unspecified place. Throughout the poem, there are a few different rhyme schemes. The mentioned organizations provide the impression that a ruthless Big Brother-style administration is keeping watch over its residents and gathering data on them as early as 1940. One may consider the nation-centered regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini from the perspective of Auden's writing.
With its reference to a
Bureau of Statistics, the poem immediately establishes the Big Brother
viewpoint. He was involved in his community, had a job, paid union dues, wasn't
radical, responded to commercials normally, had insurance, owned the correct
things materially, had the right thoughts about the news, was married, and had
the right number of kids. Emmet from The Lego Movie, who has been entirely
normalized, serves as a contrast. Was he free? is the question posed in the
poem's final couplet? The following statement is absurd: "Had anything
been wrong, we should have known." The poem's underlying meaning, the irony
that despite extensive bureaucratic data collection, some aspects of the
individual may have escaped notice, begins with these final lines. This
bureaucratic society is centered on its official interpretation of the common
good and evaluates people based on exterior, readily identifiable
traits rather than respecting their individuality, including their distinctive
ideas, feelings, hopes, fears, and ambitions.