The Unknown CItizen by W.H. Auden Essay

In a series of verse paragraphs, Dawe focuses on the 1950’s society with an emphasis on the consumerism, materialism and lack of individualism. He seeks to convince an important issue in the Australian Society-Our consumer driven culture; a culture that defines us through what we buy and consume. The focus of Dawe’s criticism of the consumerism is the family that bought home the baby from the hospital. Dawe portrays it in a satirical way; the family life and the individual lives of the family members who have been dehumanized by such a mercantile society. He instills strong commands when describing his family commodities: “One economy-size Mum, One Anthony Squires-Coolstream-Summerweight Dad along with two other kids straight off the junior department rack.” The warmth of the mum, dad and kids, contrast with the advertising language which describes them. It is as if his mum is the size of a washing machine, the father is summed up by the suit he wears, and the baby siblings have been bought like goodies in an apartment place. Dawe is not saying that this is actually true; he is using metaphors and exaggeration.

The essay begins with Henry George referring to his audience as ladies and gentlemen. He then goes on to state that poverty is a crime. A crime not committed by the poor, but rather the poor as victims of the crime. He also does not wholly blame those perpetrating the crime, he also gives a kind of notion that the victim has a hand the situation he or she finds themselves in. He says the poverty is a curse that not only the poor have but is on every level of society even the rich. He says the rich also suffer because it is like the air all the community breathes. They too must breathe it.

In the poem “America,” by Tony Hoagland, the idea of Americans being consumed with their money is shown using symbolism and metaphors. The speaker in this poem is a teacher whose name is never mentioned. One thing revealed in the poem is that the speaker has a father who is presumably very wealthy and successful. One of the teacher’s students compares America to a maximum security prison. A recurring theme throughout “America” is Hoagland showing examples of America’s greedy society using a teacher, student, and a father’s experiences. Using metaphors of money and symbols of rivers filled with merchandise, Tony Hoagland captures how the teacher begins to think after he hears his student compare America to a maximum security prison.

Life is not always easy, at some point people struggle in their life. People who are in lower class have to struggle for a job every day and people who are in upper class having their own problem to deal with. These ideas are very clear in Mary Oliver “Singapore” and Philip Schultz “The Greed” and Philip Levine “What Work Is”. In Singapore a woman works at airport and her job is to clean bathroom and in The Greed Hispanic get a job first before white and black because they take lower wages. All three poems deal with class in term of the society. The moral of the poems is that people don’t understand the perspectives of each other and by assuming, it just leads to more hatred. The author of Singapore, the author of The Greed and the author of “What Work Is”, poem have similar perspectives of survival in lower class.

The author describes this citizen as being an overall regular man in society, who did not change or impact the world by any means. He was a normal man who bought a paper every day

He believed that morality still was not understood by humans and that they were tricked by Judeo - Christianity religion. He believes that the religion has taught us to see envy as a bad moral. He

In his youth, the land was fair and free. Now, it was surrounded by war. Everything he did, every thought he had, every choice he made was touched by that reality. And he did not like it. No matter that men said he was good at it. No matter that they called him a great strategist and that he preserved the city from destruction. No matter that these things might even be true. He still did not like it.

This poem connects to themes from King Lear, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart, and The Heart of Darkness. The theme it connects to in King Lear is the what for power. In the poem, the character has a choice to choose power and therefore better himself and his circumstances. The theme it connects to in A Streetcar Named Desire is vanity. In the poem, the character doesn't want to give up his vanity much like Blanche in the play. The theme it connect to in The Great Gatsby is the hollowness of the upper social class. In the poem, the character has to choose between being in the upper social class or being happy. In other words, being apart of the upper class brings no happiness to the character. The theme it connects

From the opening line of William Blake’s poem London, chartered streets are being laid out to show how this section of London has been privatized by the government. This privatization shows how the economic struggle is a political struggle. Throughout this poem the lower class are economically oppressed and, have limited means of improving their own lives. With the streets and Thames River being privatized all of the people this speaker sees in his walk along the river are marked with weakness and woe. Arguably the speaker in this poem suggests that he is a part of the bourgeoisie since he has time to wander the city. His empathy shown in the first stanza eludes to the fact that capitalism hasn’t colonized his consciousness yet. To show a greater

We use extensive use of satire in two poems, the one written by W. H. Auden and the other by Edwin Robinson. While the combined morales from both poems creates an image in the reader's mind of the basic three classes throughout society (upper, middle, and lower class), it also be-sheathes the brainwashing that we were conditioned to. " The unexamined life is not worth living" by socrates does provide a summary of the poems. We find comfort in living unexceptional lives simply because it is the road well traveled. The author's direct setting of the poems elaborates on that simplicity kicking the reader in the head awakening their perspective to following society's standards.

It is evident in Rich’s earlier poetry that the individual represented feels the pressure to remain cloistered in such a “polar realm” and “trouble region” as society back in the 1950s. This era was one of a primarily patriarchal society, as power

“He had been, as the Old Law recommends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter – though he had never carried a weapon in his life – and twenty years the head of a household. He had used his wealth and his power for what he known both to be worth; he had taken honor when it came his way; he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honored him. Now he would let these things go, as a man drops the cloak he needs no

In the late 1930s, many countries struggled politically and economically because of the governments that rose up after the first world war. Though at first the United States prospered after the war, they soon fell into the Great Depression. To some Americans, the government’s attempts to alleviate their financial struggles made their situation worse. They viewed the government as an overbearing, controlling body that needed reform. One poem written in 1939 showcases this opinion through a satirical story of a state official praising a citizen who died. W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” criticizes the government for not truly caring about its people.

The immediate implications emphasize the determined reverence and respect that the deceased’s community gives in return for the services that the dead have so bravely performed. However, an individual is, as explicitly noted in the word itself, an individual. First and foremost, the wellbeing of each member of society stands as priority, taking into consideration that society is a collection of individual persons rather than a single unit comprised of individually unimportant subunits. The health and happiness of the people in a community will be reflected in the productivity and general harmony of the society as a whole. In the short story “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses,” the interconnectedness of individuals within a community is brought to light when Brille drops a cabbage, and “the whole Span goes three meals off…. [though] ‘I told you I did it,’ Brille protested” (Head 31). Conversely, the influences of society are not unseen in individual opinion, an occurrence that more often than not results from the sway that the general public holds over most everyone in its constitution.

However, the poet makes a reference of “Old Masters” who Auden supports that “About suffering they were never wrong”, through that it seems that some people who might have more experience in life and those people who might get through many experiences or might get used to pain in their lives, they do not neglect the signs and the events of their times. On the other hand, Auden so as to intensify the idleness which characterizes the human beings, he provides the figure of “ploughman” who seems to walk during Icarus falling and he “may have heard the splash” but in fact “for him, it was not an important failure”(15-16). By those two lines, Auden gives emphasis on the impassivity that people have in their lives, they used to give attention on things that concern their microcosm. Although that behavior has its consequences, with this intention, it is apparent that the historical event that follows proves that