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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Where was Auden living when he wrote this poem?
In the United States. He moved there from England in 1939.
And what had he seen in the years before that?
He went to Spain during the Civil War and to China with Isherwood in 1938.
So what kind of world was he writing in?
A world heading towards war, with dictators demanding total obedience.
Keep that in mind: the poem is about obedience too, even though it is set in a comfortable society.
Count the institutions that report on the citizen. How many can you find?
The Bureau of Statistics, his union, Social Psychology workers, the Press, insurers, his health card...
And consumer researchers, Public Opinion researchers, the Eugenist and the teachers.
Was this pure fantasy in 1939?
No. Gallup started opinion polls in 1935, and Mass-Observation began in Britain in 1937.
Exactly. Auden exaggerates a real trend to show where it could lead.
What does the title remind you of?
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, like the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey.
Why was that soldier unknown?
Because his body could not be identified after the war.
And why is the citizen unknown?
Because the State only knew his records, never him as a person.
That contrast is the bitter joke at the heart of the title.
written in 1939 after Auden moved to the United States; first published in The New Yorker in January 1940; collected in Another Time (1940).
social insurance numbers, opinion polls and social surveys of the 1930s lie behind the poem's many official reports.
mass production, advertising and the instalment plan explain the citizen's list of possessions.
the poem shows that a comfortable society can demand the same obedience as a dictatorship.
the State's Eugenist recalls a real, now-discredited movement that claimed control over family life.
the title parodies post-war memorials; the citizen is unknown despite being fully recorded.
Using context in an answer: the poem's catalogue of reports, from the Bureau of Statistics to the Public Opinion researchers, reflects the 1930s growth of official records and opinion polling, which Auden exaggerates into total surveillance.
Explaining an allusion: the title echoes the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; Auden reverses its meaning, since his citizen is unknown not because nothing was recorded about him, but because the State never saw him as a person.
Linking history to a detail: the reference to the State's Eugenist approving five children recalls the eugenics movement of the period and shows the State intruding into family life.
Connecting place and satire: details such as Fudge Motors Inc. and the Instalment Plan reflect the American consumer society Auden had just entered.
Nineteen thirty-nine, a numbered man; the State recorded all it can.
A soldier with no name lies in a great abbey, honoured because no one could identify him. Twenty years later, a factory worker with a number instead of a name gets a marble monument, though the State knew every fact about him except who he was.
Some Clever Teachers Explain Unknowns stands for Statistics, Consumerism, Totalitarianism, Eugenics, Unknown Soldier: the five contexts of the poem.
S.C.O.R.E. - Surveys, Consumer goods, Obedience, Records, Eugenics
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When was "The Unknown Citizen" written and first published?
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Which memorials does the title parody?
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What was eugenics?
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What is the Instalment Plan?
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Name two 1930s developments in collecting information about people.
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Who is the citizen's employer?
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Writing that uses irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticise faults in society.
A system of government or management run by officials, departments and fixed procedures.
A political system in which the state seeks total control over public and private life.
A discredited movement that claimed the state should control human breeding to "improve" the population.
A way of buying goods by paying for them in small regular amounts over time.
An unidentified British soldier buried in Westminster Abbey in 1920 to honour all the unidentified war dead.
A poem that imitates a tribute to the dead in order to criticise or ridicule.
Behaving in accordance with accepted rules and standards, often at the cost of individuality.
This lesson sets W. H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" in its time and place: Auden's move to America in 1939, the 1930s growth of statistics, surveys, mass production and the all-powerful state, and the war memorials to unknown soldiers that the poem's title parodies.
"The Unknown Citizen" was written in 1939, soon after W. H. Auden left England for the United States, and first appeared in The New Yorker in January 1940 before being collected in Another Time (1940). To read it well, you need to know the world it satirises. The 1930s saw governments and businesses gather information about ordinary people on a new scale, through social insurance records, market research and opinion polls. Mass production and buying on instalments filled homes with cars, radios and refrigerators, and advertising shaped how people thought. Abroad, totalitarian states demanded total conformity, and the now-discredited science of eugenics claimed the right to manage family life. Above all, the title echoes the tombs of the Unknown Soldier built after the First World War. This lesson explains each of these contexts and shows how they sharpen the poem's satire.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was born in York, grew up near Birmingham, and was educated at Gresham's School and Christ Church, Oxford. By the 1930s he was the most celebrated young poet in England, the central figure of a group of left-leaning writers that included Stephen Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice. His poetry of that decade engaged directly with politics. In 1937 he went to Spain during the Civil War, and in 1938 he travelled to China with Christopher Isherwood to report on the war with Japan. In 1939 he moved to the United States, where he later became a citizen (1946). "The Unknown Citizen" was written in 1939, shortly after the move. It was first published in The New Yorker on 6 January 1940 and then collected in Another Time (1940), the volume that also contains "Musée des Beaux Arts".
During the 1930s, information about ordinary people was collected as never before. In the United States, the Social Security Act of 1935 led to millions of workers being issued an official number, and in the same year George Gallup founded the American Institute of Public Opinion to measure what people thought. In Britain, the Mass-Observation project began recording everyday life in 1937. Employers kept personnel files, insurers kept policies, and market researchers studied consumers. Auden's poem imagines where this trend leads: a State that knows its citizen entirely through reports, from its Bureau of Statistics, his union, social psychologists, the press, insurance policies, a health card, consumer research and opinion researchers.
Factory assembly lines, especially in the motor industry, made goods cheaper, and buying on the instalment plan (paying in small regular amounts) allowed ordinary families to own cars, radios, gramophones and refrigerators. Advertising grew into a powerful industry that shaped desires. In the poem the citizen works in a factory for a firm called Fudge Motors Inc., a name many readers take as a dig at the great American car makers such as Ford; to "fudge" also means to fake or blur the truth. His consumer goods are listed as proof that he was a model "Modern Man".
The 1930s were the decade of Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mussolini's Italy, states that controlled the press, punished dissent and treated citizens as tools of the nation. Auden's satire is set in an apparently comfortable consumer society, not a dictatorship, but it shows similar pressures working quietly: the citizen's views always match what the moment requires: he backs peace in peacetime and marches off to fight when war comes. The poem warns that a democracy, too, can value obedience above freedom.
The State's "Eugenist" in the poem refers to eugenics, a now-discredited movement, popular in Britain, the United States and elsewhere in the early twentieth century, which claimed that the state should manage human breeding. In Nazi Germany it led to a forced sterilisation law in 1933. When an official approves the citizen's five children as exactly the family size his generation should have, the poem shows the State reaching into the most private part of human life.
After the First World War, millions of soldiers had died whose bodies could not be identified. On 11 November 1920 Britain buried one unidentified soldier, the Unknown Warrior, in Westminster Abbey, and France buried another beneath the Arc de Triomphe; the United States followed at Arlington in 1921. These tombs honour all the nameless dead. Auden's title and dedication parody them: a marble monument erected by the State to a man identified only by a code of letters and numbers. The irony is bitter. The soldier is unknown because his body could not be identified; the citizen is unknown although the State recorded every detail of his life, because it never knew him as a person.
The poem borrows the language of official documents and memorial inscriptions. It is a mock epitaph, a solemn tribute spoken by a bureaucratic "we", and its flat, rhyming lines sound like a citation read out at a ceremony. Recognising this borrowed voice is essential: the speaker praises the citizen sincerely, but Auden is satirising both the speaker and the society it represents.
Today governments and companies hold far more data about individuals than Auden imagined: identity numbers, credit scores, health records, purchase histories and online profiles. The poem's central question, what all this information misses about a human being, may be more urgent now than it was in 1939.