Critical Appreciation

A critical appreciation judges how well a poem works: what it says, how it says it and how it affects the reader. This lesson builds one for 'Refugee Blues' step by step, covering context, theme, language, technique, tone and lasting relevance, and ends with a model answer you can learn from.

A critical appreciation is not a summary. It is an informed judgment supported by evidence from the poem. For 'Refugee Blues' it examines the 1939 context, the theme of statelessness and the world's refusal of shelter, the blues-like form with its self-echoing closing line, the plain language and ironic tone, the symbols and contrasts that carry the argument, and the poem's lasting power. A balanced answer also weighs the poem's limits, such as its tidy rhymes and its lack of individual detail, before reaching a final judgment.

What a critical appreciation is

A summary tells you what happens in a poem and an explanation tells you what it means. A critical appreciation goes further: it judges how well the poem does its work. It asks what the poem is about, how the poet has shaped language and form to express it, what feelings it arouses and whether it succeeds. The word critical here means careful and reasoned, not fault-finding. Every claim must be supported by evidence from the text. Here the poem itself is not reproduced, so we point to stanza numbers and describe the images in our own words; in an examination you would add short quotations from your textbook copy.

A framework: C.R.I.T.I.C.

Plan your answer in six steps. Context: the poet, the date and the circumstances. Reading: the theme and central message. Imagery and language: the diction and the pictures it creates. Technique: the form, the structure and the devices. Impression: the tone, the mood and the effect on the reader. Conclusion: your evaluation of strengths and limits and the poem's relevance. Write one short paragraph for each step.

Context

'Refugee Blues' was written in 1939 by W. H. Auden, who had just moved from Britain to the United States. It belongs with the songs and ballads he wrote in the later 1930s in popular forms such as the blues. Its subject is the plight of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the months before the Second World War, and its target is the persecution and also the indifference and hostility the refugees faced in the democracies.

Reading: theme and message

The central idea is that a person can be erased by paper, refused by polite offices, hated by crowds and hunted by a regime. The themes are statelessness and loss of identity, bureaucratic indifference, prejudice and scapegoating, persecution and fear, the bitter comparison with the freedom of creatures, and the love that survives. The message is a moral accusation: the suffering of the refugees is made by human rules and choices, and a world that could have helped chose not to.

Imagery and language

The language is plain, conversational and made of short everyday words. The images are concrete and varied: a vast city, a tree in spring, a consul's office, a committee room, a rally, a harbour, a wood, an enormous building and a snowy plain. Large numbers appear at the start, in the dream and in the closing picture, which magnify the world against the couple. The plainness makes the speaker credible, and it allows the horror to emerge from what is reported and not from rhetoric.

Technique: form, structure and devices

The poem has twelve tercets rhymed AAB. The closing line of each stanza states a thought, turns tenderly to the companion and repeats the thought, echoing the blues and showing the speaker's weariness. The stanzas move from loss of home and papers, through rejection by an official, a committee and a crowd, to the threat of Hitler, three comparisons with creatures, a dream and a hunt, and the poem ends without rescue. Irony, contrast and symbolism do the arguing. A metaphor makes Hitler's voice into thunder, and the figure of speech bread stands for livelihood.

Impression: tone and mood

The tone is restrained, ironic, weary and tender, and sometimes bitter. The mood darkens from homelessness to fear. The chief effect comes from a tension: a gentle, song-like form carries an appalling subject, and the reader feels both the beat and the weight at once. The result is pity and anger, and also a sense of moral discomfort, because the poem implies that we, like the offices and crowds in it, may be among those who say no.

Conclusion: evaluation and relevance

The poem's greatest strengths are its restraint, its unity of form and theme, its human voice and its universality, since it names no country or city and gives the two speakers no names. Its limits can also be named. Some readers may find the rhymes too tidy for such a subject, and the poem tells us little about the couple as individuals. These criticisms can be answered: the regular pattern imitates the sameness of a refugee's days, and the namelessness is deliberate. The poem has a lasting relevance, because every age has its own refugees and its own polite offices. Read after 1945, with knowledge of what followed, its fears seem painfully prophetic.

A model critical appreciation

W. H. Auden's 'Refugee Blues', written in 1939, gives a voice to a Jewish refugee couple in the months before the Second World War. In twelve three-line stanzas the speaker tells his companion what they have met: a city with no home for them, a lost country, lapsed passports, a consul who treats them as non-existent, a committee that delays, a rally that blames them, Hitler's threat, and finally soldiers hunting them across a snowy plain. The central theme is statelessness and the cruelty of a world that refuses to shelter the persecuted, and the poem accuses the democracies as well as the Nazis.

The form is that of a blues. Each stanza has two rhyming lines followed by a longer closing line that states a thought, turns tenderly to the companion and repeats the thought. This pattern echoes the sorrowful repetition of the blues, shows the speaker's weariness and gives the poem the intimacy of a private conversation. Its simple rhymes and gentle beat sit uneasily against the horror of the subject, and that uneasiness is the poem's chief effect.

The language is plain and the tone restrained. Instead of exclaiming, the speaker reports, and the reader supplies the emotion. Irony does the arguing: living people are declared non-existent by a consul, a committee's courtesy hides a refusal, a pampered pet is welcomed where refugees are not, and fish and birds enjoy freedoms denied to people. Symbols such as the passport, the harbour, the building of endless doors and the snowy plain give the abstractions of law and exile a physical shape. A metaphor turns Hitler's voice into thunder, and large numbers magnify the world's size against the couple's smallness.

The poem is not flawless. Its rhymes may seem too tidy, and it tells us little about the couple as individuals. Yet the regularity can be defended as an imitation of the sameness of a refugee's days. The poem ends without rescue, leaving the reader uneasy, as it should. Its power lies in restraint, and its relevance is lasting, since every age has its own refugees and its own polite offices.

Common mistakes

Do not retell the story without judging it. Do not list devices without explaining their effect. Do not copy out long stretches of the poem; refer to stanzas by number, describe the image and add a short quotation from your textbook where it helps. Do not forget tone and mood. Do not finish without a personal, reasoned judgment.