Wystan Hugh Auden, was born in New York England, February 21, 1907. Auden was admired for his unsuppressed virtuosity and ability to write poems in imaginable verses. In 1939 he decided to write a parody of “ The Unknown Soldier.” Of his collection of Another Time. It was called, “The Unknown Citizen.” It's a poem dealing with Modernism, satire and a little of Elegy because of the “dead citizen”. According to, https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/wh-audens-life during Auden's time men were becoming numbers. Names were no longer needed. All you needed was last four digits of social security number, zip code, birthdate or nine digit telephone number. Citizens have become faceless in modern society. Which I believe is what Auden's goal was for the audience to understand.
In the poem, The Unknown Citizen. He wrote in a third point of view and in past tense. But my questions is, what was the citizen “real identity?” Was he ever free or happy? I mean if he ever did anything, we would have known right? During this poem his main focus was on how much government had grew control of the privacy one had. In line one he wrote, “ He was founded by the Bureau of Statistics.” Which gives us the assurance he's talking about government and how bureaucracies treat people as a mere of numbers and figures instead of people. In line three he says, “All the reports on his conduct agree,” pretty ironic if you tell me. The government has reports on the citizen yet no one seems to know who he is. They just know “There was no official complaint and he was a saint,” from line two and four. In deeper meaning the poem is actually talking about the ideal image of a citizen, since the narrator lists reason's why he was a worthy of the title. They have all the right information to fill in that slot that he has all the right parts of a perfect citizen. “For when there was peace, he was up for peace, when there was war, he went,” line 24...