The Unknown Citizen
The Average Man
W. H. Auden satirizes the United States as an entity, which restrains individual advancement. Through depersonalization, the government rewards those who actually never do anything. However, the "Unknown Citizen" has a monument built as a symbol of his perfection. Thus, Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" shows how the government makes each individual merely a number unless they do not conform to society's norms.
The monument of the "unknown citizen" is erected not to honor the memory of a man, but to show how he is the perfect example of a good citizen (Auden). In this poem, the citizen is just an average person who never stands out among the rest of the population. For example, "Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views," (Auden 9) illustrates how he holds the same opinions as the majority. Scabs were workers who would not go on strike or work for lower wages, which caused them to be despised by their fellow workers. This negative view of the scabs was the......
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Approximate Word Count: 1031
Approximate Pages: 5 (250 words per double-spaced page)
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