What is the main idea of W.H.Audens poem September 1,1939?
The main idea of Auden’s poem is simply this: Apathy, or the ignoring, of hostile acts towards other humans is always wrong. Most times, confronted with incredible atrocity, people are stunned, or revert to old ways of thinking, which are useless. Hitler invaded Poland on 9/1/39 – The world stood by, stunned, angry, and helpless. Some people brought forth old ideas, that Hitler was no threat, that this couldn’t possibly happen where they were, etc. Auden shows in his poem the main idea that people will always perform incredible acts of brutality on other people, and there will always be people who say, this couldn’t have happened, this can’t happen, blah, blah, blah. Re-read the poem and see how many times Auden mentions the dead, the helpless, the Important Persons…he’s not talking about the victims, he’s talking about the people who have the power to recognize these atrocities, stop them, and don’t. They choose instead to chatter a lot of meaningless garbage. Main idea: People have
