Modern Man - The Unknown Citizen (auden) :: essays research papers

The English-born American author Wystan Hugh Auden was one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Educated at Oxford, he attracted attention as a prominent member of a meeting of young leftist writers who generally expressed a socialist viewpoint. The song I have chosen for this essay is "The Unkn aver Citizen". I matt-up the time period reflected W.H. Audens views, making the hidden citizen an example of the governments view of the ameliorate modern man in an overrated unrealistic society.In the time period that he wrote this poem in the late 1930s America was going through dangerous changes. This is the period in history in which The Great Depression was in effect. Most people living in the United States values, morals, and ethics were quick diminishing. The Great Depression fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and the people, who came to accept and accept a larger federal role in their lives and the economy. end-to-end this time period Social Security was created.Back then this poem essential have had a different meaning than today, it shows the value government has on issuing Social Security numbers. They make people believe its for your own benefit when in reality they have the best use of it to chamfer and retrieve information about your personal livelihood. We see government as people we elected to represent our views they see us as a number. "Was he free? Was he happy? The question was absurd Had anything been disparage we should certainly have heard (Auden 212)".I also felt he was expressing the particular that government makes it seem that everyone else is doing the "right thing" so you must go over him or her, and if you do so living a quality bread and butter will reward you. Their standards are so high that you will neer reach the optimum point, so you depart hard your whole life trying to improve. "His poems and essays present the idea of the good society as, at best , a possibility, never actually achieved, but which one must always work (Mendalson 112)". "Audens poems speak instead in a voice almost unknown to English poetry science the eighteenth century the voice of a citizen who knows the obligations of his citizenship (Mendalson 113).