What is the theme of the poem “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden?
From Shmoop Poetry on The Unknown Citizen The poem is written in the voice of a fictional government bureaucrat – someone who sits at a desk and shuffles papers all day – whose decisions affect the lives of people he has never met. You could consider it a poetic version of George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in that it concerns a Big Brother-like state that knows everything about its citizens except the things that really matter. But the poem doesn’t sound as pessimistic or tortured as either of these novels It uses good old-fashioned humor to protest the numbing effects of modern life. It’s not the most “intellectual” of Auden’s works, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful to read. “The Unknown Citizen” is proof that great poetry doesn’t have to take itself seriously all the time.
