The Unknown Citizen

The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden remains a favourite poem.

I ran into it recently after quite a while and felt like sharing.

Auden wrote it as an ode to a nameless, faceless man who fits the exact centre of the most normal of distributions, who carries his way at the apex of the most common of bell curves.

He was a perfect man because he was a perfect societal product:

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. Text of the poem from here.

Themes I really like here:

a) How, from a bureaucratic viewpoint, exceptions are actually expensive. Creativity is expensive in the short term.

b) How, quite often, the idea of a comfortable life makes us fairly lemming-like and anodyne.

c) How most of us will have done not much at the very end except go through the motions of the day to day, from breakfast to lunch to that glass of wine to sleep to work again in the morning – without really doing very much. Scary thought.

d) Auden is just cool

e) That the abstract idea of ‘freedom’ can’t really be taken for granted. Freedom is not just the choice of undertaking some action, but also having the capacity (financial, educational, etc) to actually make that choice. Which, for many, is no choice as at all. Freedom doesn’t operate without constraints. So even in individualistic America, the cost of taking action different from the norm means that freedom is an empty term. The Unknown Citizen could have taken up stunt flying – he was theoretically free to – but did not have the financial and intellectual ability. He was constrained. By himself. By society.

f) Refer to d).

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