"Unknown Citizen"

Explication of “The Unknown Citizen”

Was he really free? Was he really happy? Those are the questions the readers of W.H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” ask themselves at the conclusion of the poem. The rather simple-looking title alludes to the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” which many war veterans are buried after being found unidentified. Although this poem is not necessarily about that particular tomb, title sets the tone for a variety of unknowns, in which the clueless outside world looks into the complicated mystery of a seemingly not-so-complicated man, only knowing what “he was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be.” This speaker of the poem is analyzing this mystery, but the premise of the speaker and the ambiguity of the ending imply the existence of faults that lie within the public’s dependence of government agencies to make assumptions of someone’s life. Written after World War I, the poem is a satire that blames the growing prowess of state governments for causing innocent citizens to seem like numbers instead of souls.

Although “Producers Research,” “High-Grade Living,” and “Greater Community” are all fictional, they are easily recognizable as distinct government agencies in “The Unknown Citizen.” Also, “The Press” easily stands for the collective that is composed of the entire media. The reports and statistics that these agencies come up with are consistent with the “Modern Man”, a stereotype that represents the average American man, replaceable with any particular name. All of these reports cite that this unknown citizen was a war veteran who never did anything wrong because “had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” An overstatement exists when this man’s typicality makes him “in the modern sense…a saint,” but when in reality the indistinctness of his life makes him far from one. What we collect from the references to state agencies is that the facts show that he should have been happy, but inherently the public cannot make such assumptions off of facts, as numbers and statistics only skim the surface when it comes to explaining the character and predicament of someone’s life.

The innocence that surrounds this unknown man is what makes him “unknown” in the first place. In a modern society, in which the media persuades the public to concentrate on those who are always up to no good, those “against whom there [is] no official complaint” blend into the vast majority that go through the motions of their daily lives, as opposed to the minority that becomes the center of attention through their unlawful acts. “When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went,” the speaker states. The unknown man, regardless of whatever hardships he may have encountered as a result of his time at war, went with the flow of the crowd, and when that is the case, why would the government suspect anything to be wrong with him?

The quantitative findings of this man’s life from the outside world fail to take into account what happens behind closed doors. Sure, he “worked in the factory and never got fired” and “was popular with his mates,” but that is not enough to declare him free and happy. Trauma and anger often exist with war veterans as they try to acclimate themselves back to the civilian atmosphere, and it is entirely possible for the unknown citizen to have these feelings locked up inside of him, as the civilian world after the War pressured veterans into acting like the gruesome combat and bloodshed was not as bad as it was. Also, the attention of the speaker may have been commanded because of the possible mysterious death or disappearance of the unknown citizen. He had an average job, an average family, an average life, but statistics could never classify someone’s soul as average, which is where the satire comes into play.

The unknown citizen, plainly known as codename JS/07/M/378, is obviously more than just an unknown citizen, but in a society used to basing conclusions off of cold, hard facts, the speaker represents the outside world’s cluelessness that results from such dependence. This satire brings to light the predicament that many war veterans face, the lack of recognition that results from either their placement in the Tomb of the Unknown or a life as an unknown.