The Unknown Citizen (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

“The Unknown Citizen” articulates a social, ethical and political awareness that Auden refined over a period of years. Critic Arnold Kettle, writing in Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, believes that Auden’s participation in the political realm during the 1930s positively influenced his development as a writer. Kettle states that Auden’s involvement encouraged him to explore the relationship between personal or private experiences and public or social development, and led him “to see himself as part of a social situation, not merely as one lonely man.” It also assisted him, according to Kettle, in developing a poetic text that was socially orientated, turning outward toward common experiences rather than inward toward situations which are solely personal and individual. “The Unknown Citizen” reflects the qualities Kettle outlines as the poem explores the structures of contemporary society through the individual, an individual who stands as a representation of the greater social fabric of which he is a product. Thus, the individual is not simply one man but every man. Political poetry, Kettle states, makes the reader conscious of power, thereby “opening up the world rather than attempting to enclose a part of it in some sort of mystic purity.” With its ironic condemnation of modern life, “The Unknown Citizen” rejects romantic or mystic notions and confronts the reader with a construction of the world many fail to recognize.

However, in W. H. Auden, Dennis Davison criticizes Auden’s portrait of modern society as “too superficial.” He notes that in Auden’s attempt to portray the sense of conformity social forces press upon the individual, he overlooks the conflicts that exist between social institutions. For instance, tensions between trade unions and big business are common. The balance between the supply of manufactured goods and consumer demand is delicate; capitalistic society often wavers between economic booms and periods of sluggish growth. The tensions that arise from these situations are, according to Davison, “equally characteristic of modern mass-society as are the conformist influences.” By failing to recognize them, Auden’s assessment of society falls short and leads the reader to consider only part of the complex issues that shape who we are.