The Unknown Citizen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1940

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“The Unknown Citizen” is a 29-line poem with an additional three-line epitaph placed at its beginning. It is written in the form of an elegy, which is a serious poem that reflects upon the life of a deceased person, usually to laud or lament their loss. While elegies are normally highly poetic and emotional, Auden uses matter-of-fact statements here to create an ironic tone. Overall, the State makes positive statements about “JS/07 M 378,” but the erasure of the man’s individuality creates a feeling of sinister surveillance. Further, the use of first-person plural adds to an assessing tone rather than a lamenting one. A traditional elegy is written in a series of heroic couplets, two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. Auden does use end rhyme but varies the order of the rhyming, and also adds internal rhyme. His lines also vary in terms of length and meter. There is a rhythmic quality to the poem, but it is not even, and this adds to the impression of underlying dissonance that suggests the State can mimic the poetic spirit of the individual, but it cannot fully appreciate or duplicate it.

First-Person Plural Narration

Individuals are often wary of groupthink or any perspective that purports to act as an omniscient judge. Due to this, the first-person plural narration Auden employs for “The Unknown Citizen” enhances the thematic resonance of the poem. The collective voice of the State imparts the sense that the man was being observed without his consent by a group of others to whom he was only “JS/07 M 378.” Further, the man’s life—and death—was assessed by a collective body that was not personally invested in his individual well-being, but in self-preservation. For example, in a sentence like, “Our researchers into Public Opinion are content / That he held the proper opinions for the time of year” (Lines 22-23), the importance is placed on the researchers’ contentment rather than the man’s. These types of statements from the State build up to create a quality of surreality in which the observations of conformity replace actual experience. The first-person plural adds tension through its unreliability.

Consonance of “T”

The sing-song quality of children’s verse is employed by Auden as a device to create ironic juxtaposition within “The Unknown Citizen.” Many critics have noted that the State’s worrisome presence, and the troubling aspects of its denial of individual freedom and happiness, is covered up by a chipper tone conveyed in rhyming lines like “Except for the War till the day he retired / he worked in a factory and never got fired” (Lines 6-7). However, another sound device also lets the reader feel that there is a rising malevolence underneath the seemingly cheerful cadence. The use of the repetitive “t” in the poem hints both at the ticking sound of a typewriter being used to fill out reports as well as the ominous ticking of a timer, which increases anxiety for the reader. Something is about to go off in this seemingly calm, hyper-efficient world. The “t” appears in “retired,” “factory,” and “got” in the above example (Line 7), but also in the opening explanation of how the citizen “was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be / One against whom there was no official complaint, /And all the reports on his conduct agree” (Lines 1-3). This allusion to ticking increases tension at the same time as the rhythmic cadence suggests innocence.