Loading the lesson
Loading the lesson
Search AllRounder.ai
Search the courses, subjects, tracks, games and features, or jump straight to a page.
Search the courses, subjects, tracks, games and features, or jump straight to a page.
5 cards from this section. Quick, good the night before a test.
What does the dedication of "The Unknown Citizen" tell us about the citizen and the occasion of the poem?
Look at who put up the monument and how the man is identified.
Name the citizen's employer and state what the poem tells us about his work.
The employer's name sounds like a car company.
Which word best describes the State's attitude to the citizen?
The State put up a monument to him.
Why does the State consider the final questions absurd?
Silence, to the State, means satisfaction.
Answer the following with reference to the final couplet, in which the poem asks whether the citizen was free and happy. (a) Who asks these questions, and how are they answered? (b) Why is the answer ironic? (c) How does the couplet change the reader's view of the rest of the poem? (d) What is the effect of ending with questions?
Separate what the State says from what the reader understands.
Compare "The Unknown Citizen" with "Musée des Beaux-Arts" as poems about the place of the individual in an indifferent world.
Compare the kind of indifference in each poem (personal or institutional) and the tone in which Auden presents it.
6 more questions in this section. Enroll free to practise them all.
Enroll free