IT IS A POETS DISTICTIVE STYLE THAT PROVIDES A VOICE THAT CHALLENGES FLAWS IN SOCIETY.

HOW DOES AUDEN’S DISTINCTIVE STYLE ENABLE HIM TO CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE FLAWS IN
SOCIETY?

Powerful texts transcend the context in which they were written, reaching the immediate and
subsequent audiences with vivacity and enduring messages about the importance of autonomy, which
are central to the human experience. A poet’s distinctive style provides a voice that challenges flaws
in society, which Auden enables and continues through his distinctive style. The challenge of
modernism is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. Modernism released us
from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom. This is
notable in the raw poetry of W.H Auden, a poet whose greatest works speak simply through tantalising
verse that aims to challenge complacency and indoctrination in readers who were being lured towards
conformity in an uncertain political climate. The distinguishing style employed in both The Unknown
Citizen (1939) and The Epitaph of a Tyrant (1939) continue to evoke powerful emotion whereby
challenging flaws in society coupled with an analogous commemoration to drive his satirical message
about conformity.

The distinctive style of Auden is enabled by the voice that is provided through the text and continues
to challenge flaws in society. The Unknown Citizen, written by W.H. Auden during 1939, is a poem
where the speaker, a representative of the state or government, directs a speech to the audience
about a monument being erected for a citizen. Written in free verse, although using many couplets,
this poem is a poem that describes the life of a certain person through his records and
documents. Form is again manipulated as this poem reads as an epigraph, an almost dramatic
monologue, spoken by an unknown voice, although we can infer their intent. This poem is a direct
parody of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, unveiled in the wake of WWI to celebrate the courage
and bravery of soldiers who fought in war. Drawing on the views of Katherine Bucknell, whose critical
analysis of Auden focuses on the poet’s representation of such regimes, the critic points out that
Auden is attune to the citizens limits: “A citizen will have no scope to develop his initiative or to assert
his individuality.” In light of such theory, it becomes apparent that Auden’s patronising speaker
condemns citizens who conform and by extension rebukes the government for expecting its citizens
to relinquish their individuality to the “Greater Community”. This poem serves as a criticism of
government’s praise of compliant soldiers in a war which failed any productive results. The Unknown
Citizen, with its long rambling lines and full rhyming end words, has a bureaucrat as speaker paying
tribute to a model individual, a person identified by numbers and letters only. It is delivered in, some
might say, a boring monotonous tone, a reflection of the bureaucracy under which the citizen served.
The poem is a powerful reminder to us all that the state, the government, the bureaucracy we all help
create, can become a faceless, indifferent and often cruel machine. It raises the two important
questions - Who is free? Who is happy? The Unknown Citizen is both satirical and disturbing, written
by Auden to highlight the role of the individual and the increasingly faceless bureaucracy that can arise
in any country, with any type of government, be it left-wing or right-wing. The tone of the poem is
impersonal and clinical, the speaker more than likely a suited bureaucrat expressing the detached
view of the state.

Texts can transcend the context in which they were written carrying enduring messages about the
importance of autonomy which are fundamental to the human experience. One of Auden’s best
known poems and written, interestingly when Adolf Hitler was at the peak of his power in Europe, is
a short, six line piece entitled- “Epitaph on a Tyrant”. Naming of the poem’s form indicates the Auden’s
experimentation with form – Auden’s way of branching out of poetry into common forms of
expression and representation, exemplifying characteristics of modernist texts. The poem talks about
a man- an anonymous “he”- a perfectionist whose poetry was understandable and who, himself,
understood “human folly” and the human psyche like “the back of his hand”. He was most interested
in “armies and fleets” and when he laughed “respectable senators” burst out in cackles of laughter.
His laugh Auden parallels, is amplified responders to reflect – the tyrant is, according to an analysis
offered by Nicholas Jenkins, “whichever dictator you hate most”. Then in a sudden drastic change of
atmosphere, Auden says- “When he cried, little children died in the streets”. One of the significant
factors that lends Auden’s poetry a rare kind of brilliance is its ability to appeal to the reader in
different sorts of ways. Therefore, there are various different interpretations of this one short poem-
the most obvious one being that of an allusion to Adolf Hitler- the Fuhrer of Germany, which rings true
on almost every count. Hitler was a man yearning to establish a Pan German empire- a perfect pure
Aryan race, he was man whose “poetry”- whose thoughts, beliefs, charisma, all reflected in his oratory
which was considered brilliant and inspired millions to support him. It was, again through his
understanding of human “folly” that Hitler managed to manipulate and delude an entire nation into
turning their backs on their own humanity and follow him in his twisted, though well-reasoned ideals.

REITERATE YOUR THESIS AND EMPHASISE HOW A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE PAIRED TEXTS
PROVIDES INSIGHT AND DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF THE EFFECTS OF CONTEXT ON QUESTIONS OF
VALUE