W. H. Auden's Unknown Citizen

W. H. Auden poem, “Unknown Citizen” speaks of a man who does an outstanding job of being the perfect citizen. He is the poster child of a prisoner but he doesn’t seem to know it. He’s not mentally free. He could possibly believe so but he’s trapped. Trapped by his peers and what’s expected of him. He’s not living for himself but for the “Greater Community.” The citizen does everything for the Greater Community possible expected of him as a man. Auden however states “For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired” (6-7). This statement isn’t true. He served his country which in return he served to protect his community. Everything he did was always for the community. The citizen is an exceptional worker. “He worked in a factory and never got fired/But satisfied his employers.../For his Union reports that he paid his dues” (8-11). He was everything an employer could ever want. He did what he was supposed

Was he happy” (34)? He then goes on to say “This question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard” (34-35). Auden is giving a sense of sarcasm. If all seems well, how could anything be wrong? Easily. The citizen did nothing for himself. He always lived to please everyone else, “The Greater Community.” When he dies people will speak very highly of him, but will he be able to say he truly lived? Most likely he won’t. But it is hard to say if the citizen was happy or not. It would depend on one’s definition of happiness. The citizen probably found himself to be very happy but maybe that’s because he was told what happiness was; what it should be. So to him his happiness may have been maxed out. But if a closer look is taken at his life, he didn’t know what happiness actually was. He did not one thing for himself. He basically lived a life of a slave with