In the poem itself Miss Gee isn’t really focused on and therefore you’re left asking the question, “If the poem isn’t focused on Miss Gee herself but her lifestyle, is it her lifestyle that is tragic or not?”
You don’t really hear about the death, the poet, Auden, focuses mainly on before she died and after she died, which suggests that Miss Gee’s status in society was irrelevant. She was just an old lady with cancer. She is nothing special to the world, she wasn’t “well known” or famous around her village that she lived in. She was just an ordinary old lady living in a village. When Miss Gee found out she had cancer she is already dead. By this I mean that although you could see her, she is emotionally and spiritually dead. This shows that her death itself isn’t a tragedy because it is irrelevant.

In the first stanza it starts off with “Let me tell you a little story,” which is equivalent to “once upon a time.” This shows the reader that perhaps it is not a fairy tale or that there is not going to a happily ever after, it is just a normal story. This poem is not a fairy tale, there is not a happy ending, unless you calling being cut up by Oxford pathology students in a pathology lab a happy ending.
In the structure of the poem, the poem is meant to be sung, like an old blues song this is because it written in the old blues standard form. This poem is a ballad that follows the quatrain rhyming ABAB. This basically means that the rhyme scheme has been produced through the stresses of certain beats rather than being produced on certain syllables.

The element of irony that runs throughout this poem is that she is more used to people dead (examining her body) than when she was alive. This shows that Miss gee was noticed more even if it is a bunch of pathology students. This is basically saying she had no one who paid attention to her. Also the use of satire