The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden: Poem, Summary & Analysis

The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden: Poem, Summary & Analysis

Shortly after immigrating to America in 1939, the British poet W.H. Auden composed "The Unknown Citizen." The poem was written in honour of a guy who recently passed away and who lived what the government considered to be an exemplary life. It is a type of sarcastic elegy. Really, this life seems to have been perfectly mundane—exemplary only in the sense that this individual never questioned or deviated from societal norms. Text of the Poem (To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He 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 That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid…