...With reference to at least three poems, analyse and interpret the strengths of W.H Auden. Loi Ianari Without question Auden is thought of as one of them most influential poets in the twentieth century. Through his words he was able to convey ideas, theories and comments on various controversial topics that affect our daily lives. The tone and content of his poems ranged from pop-song clichés to complex philosophical meditations and commentaries on the evolution of society. This assertion is clearly expressed through ‘Refugee Blues’, ‘The Unknown Citizen’ and ‘The More Loving One’. Auden’s main strength is his reporting technique and his portrayal of real events in an artistic way. ‘Refugee Blues’ was written contemporary to the action and as a result he was able to witness and describe the devastating effects of the second world war. The poem dramatizes the condition of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, especially the indifference and antagonism they faced when seeking asylum in the democracies of the period. Through the form and language Auden was able to convey his feelings and judgement about the situation. The poem takes the the form of the Blues tradition, which developed through the black people of the United States and has its origins in slave songs. In this poem Auden takes a single theme; abuse of human rights, and makes variations on it, leading to a particularly powerful finale. The language used is common, modern, colloquial and informal ‘went to a committee;...
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...A. Write about the way Auden tells the story in ‘Miss Gee’ Auden tells the story of the poem mainly by using the characterisation of Miss Gee. He establishes Miss Gee throughout the poem by using clear descriptions of her appearance, her place in society and her own feelings and emotions that develop throughout her life and the poem. Auden starts by introducing ‘Miss Gee’ in the title, where we can already see she is a spinster. The use of ‘Miss Gee’ is also impersonal and distances the reader from her. The use of a phonetic for the letter ‘G’ reinforces the lack of individuality Miss Gee has. We can clearly see, as readers, that there is a persona in the poem by the use of ‘me’ in the first line, this could be interpreted as Auden becoming the narrator and so we can see his views reflected in the poem. This is the only moment in the poem where Auden speaks to the reader directly. Auden describes miss Gee in detail and establishes why she is a spinster, ‘she had no bust at all’, this proposes she is very unattractive, especially to men as the bust is involved in sexual attraction. Miss Gee helps with the church a lot; ‘She did a lot of knitting, Knitting for that church bazaar’, this implies that Miss Gee hasn’t got a family to knit for so the church provides her life with meaning. It also gives us the impression that Miss Gee is a pillar of the community and has good morals. Miss Gee feels insignificant to the world; ‘Does anyone care That I live in Clevedon Terrace On one...
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...Carel Bou Maroun Friday, September 25, 2015 Reading Response #1 The Unknown Citizen – W.H. Auden (Pages 106-107) The satiric poem “The Unknown Citizen” caught my attention because W.H. Auden denounces our modern society. First of all, the title of the poem reminds us of Unknown Soldiers’ monuments that exist in many countries. Soldiers are usually remembered for their brave actions but their names are often forgotten and fade away. So, Auden ironically suggests that the “unknown” citizen also deserves a monument because he conforms to government’s rules, and only his actions will persist in archives “This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State”. Auden is satiric against modern governments who only want citizens to obey their norms. Secondly, the unknown citizen is only given a number “To JS/07M378”. The institutions see citizens as numbers in modern society; no citizen has a name in the eye of governments. Moreover, the unknown citizen has no longer his own personality. He lost it by being a slave to the government’s criteria. He sacrifices his own personality by conforming to the government and its norms “For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.” Thirdly, by saying “When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went”, Auden suggests that the unknown citizen has no opinion. His ideas are those that conform to accepted ideas. He doesn’t stand for himself and doesn’t say what he thinks. He goes along with the flow and isn’t different...
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...In Musée des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden covers the overlooked struggles of life, and how simultaneously, the simplicities of the common day are still occurring. Auden puts into words the thoughts and feeling that people always have but never know how to say. As always, Auden creates another meditation that rings true for all, and will be thought of as accurate throughout eternity. Auden validates the natural suffering of life in the first five lines of Musée des Beaux Arts, and how it can go so easily unnoticed. Auden writes, “About suffering they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position; how it takes place/ While someone else is eating or opening a window or just/ walking dully along;”. Here Auden illustrates...
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...The clocks seem to speak for time, but in fact they represent the human marking of time. Time exists as a continuum, but clocks take the concept of time and force a structure on it. In this way, the clocks speak for time far less than they speak for society’s rules and conventions.The formatting of the poem reinforces this notion. The rhyme scheme is an abcb defe pattern that demonstrates the dichotomy between the constant flow of time and the structure forced upon it by society. The unrhymed lines are constantly changing, flowing throughout the piece. The rhymed lines represent the forced structure – the conventions embodied in the clocks. This image of the clocks within the layout of the poem is further enhanced in that the stanzas are consistent throughout the piece, giving it a segmented feel, like minutes counting down. Similarly, the lyrical rhythm of the lines swings back and forth like a pendulum. The structure is flowing and consistent but is unobtrusive, almost to the point of being ignorable. We can read the poem without noticing the formatting, much like we go about our lives ignoring time because society has made it controllable through structure. The poem also makes use of unconventional capitalization. In the speech of the clocks, “Time” and “Justice” are treated as names, personifying the concepts as in the line “And Time will have his fancy” (31). This personification reinforces the idea of the keeping of time as a human convention, placing the two concepts...
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...“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden artistically orchestrates to his audience some unfortunate realities of everyday people. In the poem “Musee des Beaux Arts” the audience can grasp imagery of how people proceed through their “busy” life and ignore fellow people who suffer. Although the painting of Icarus falling into the sea was a past artwork that “Musee des Beaux Arts” was based off of, Auden universalized the truth that this poem was presenting. The truth that tragedy and suffering occur in life and life moves forward. The tone of Auden in the poem matches the description of the subject or point in time Auden is referring to. An example of Auden’s tone articulately changing to match the mood of a subject is his statements are: “While...
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...Memory of Elena,” and Emily Dickinson’s “The last Night that She lived” are all poems which share death as their subject matter, but differ in the fact that they discuss death in a unique style with a variety of literary devices to make them more effective. Upon reading these poems, I could relate to each strongly on a personal level. Each poem expresses a different view of death and the different stages of acceptance and grieving. When I was younger, my grandmother passed away. I was quite fond of my grandmother and she and I had a close relationship. When she passed away, I was devastated and went through a series of phases and emotions, much like those described by the three poets in their works. In “Funeral Blues,” W. H. Auden writes, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone/Prevent...
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...http://poetry.rapgenius.com/W-h-auden-refugee-blues-annotated#note-2273427 Text Analysis As the title suggest, this is a poem about political refuges and is in the form of a blues song. Its subject is the Jews who in 1939 had to flee from Germany to the U.S. and other European country, because of Nazi persecution. Auden uses the blues tradition, which developed among the black people of the United States and has its origins in slave songs. Though composed under improvisation, the blues has a rigid pattern concerning the use of repetitions and a simple rhyme scheme. The poem is divided into tercet whose first two lines rhyme while the third present a repetition. Through the whole song there is a refrain as the author always repeat the words “My dear”. Almost every stanza starts with a verb and this device helps to convey in the text the idea of improvisation and common speech. The structure of the text is carried on through the use of contrasting images: the mansions and the holes, expressing the gap between normal rich people and Jews, the Jews' condition, hanging between legal death and biological death, the treatment of the Jews, who can't partecipate anymore to social life. The language used is common, colloquial, informal, while the tone is sad, resigned and melanchonic. .The hypotetical speaker, a German Jew, is concerned about Jews' conditions, reguarding in particular homeless people, burocracy, social differences and emargination. There's an analogy of the...
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...There are two ways that The Fall Of Icarus is portrayed. The poem Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden and the painting Landscape with the fall of icarus by Pieter Breughel both use the greek myth about the fall of Icarus as their subject however, both works treat the subject quite differently. Some details that Auden uses in his poem to describe the fall of icarus are a large splash, in lines 15 and 16 “The ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry” Also uses details such as “The sun shone as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water” and states that the ploughman turned his head in disinterest because it was not a concern of his. Auden mentions how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster, supporting the idea of it being human nature for people not to care about other’s misery unless it were to be happening to them or effecting their life in some way. In Landscape with the fall of icarus many details differ from Auden’s poem. For example there is no horse in the painting as there is in lines 12-13 “The torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree” Also in Auden’s poem there are dogs going on with their doggy life but in the painting there are no dogs. In Auden’s poem he states “ there always must be children who did not specially want it to happen, skating on a pond at the edge of the wood” In the painting there isn’t a pond for the children to skate on nor are there any children. Overall the central idea...
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...MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE (c. 1900 to 1950) READING LIST Please note that there are two lists below. The first is the full list with the core readings in bold; the second is the core list separated out. You are responsible for all core readings and may incorporate readings from the full list into your tailored list. Unless otherwise noted, selections separated by commas indicate all works students should know. A. FICTION Beckett, Samuel. One of the following: Murphy, Watt, Molloy Bennett, Arnold. Clayhanger Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh Chesterton, G.K. The Man Who Was Thursday Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness AND one of: Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier Forster, E. M. Howards End, A Passage to India (plus the essays “What I Believe” and “The Challenge of Our Times” in Two Cheers for Democracy) Galsworthy, John. The Man of Property Greene, Graham. One of: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Joyce, James. Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses Kipling, Rudyard. Kim Lawrence, D. H. Two of: Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Rainbow, The Plumed Serpent Lewis, Wyndham. Tarr, manifestos in BLAST 1 Mansfield, Katherine. “Prelude,” “At the Bay,” “The Garden Party,” “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” (in Collected Stories) Orwell, George. 1984 (or Aldous Huxley, Brave New World) Wells, H. G. One of the...
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...Irish McCarthy Dr. Gomez English 1120 4 March 2015 The Many Tones of W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” Written in the first person, the speaker of “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden tells the story of deep grief over the death of a loved one. Although it is not clear if the speaker is male or female, to avoid confusion we are going to assume the speaker is a male. Auden’s use of tone, imagery, and metaphors make it is clear that the speaker wants others to feel the same grief, pain and hopelessness he feels. The tone of the first two stanzas is direct and forceful combined with sound and visual imagery the poem starts off pretty strong demanding the world to be silenced “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dogs from barking.” He also demanded that the pianos be silenced and the drums muffled. It almost feels like he wants everyone to pay attention and show more respect to what he is going through, everyone needs to feel his pain. The telephone being cut off represents the loss of communication with his beloved. Visual imagery takes over throughout the second stanza starting with planes writing a message in the sky the reads “He Is Dead” leading to the imagery of doves wearing bows and traffic police wearing “black cotton gloves” eludes to the idea that someone very important just died and the public needs to acknowledge it. The third stanza the tone changes from demanding to reflective in the first line “He was my North, my South, my East and West” expressing...
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...“The Unknown Citizen” written by W.H Auden is a poem where the speaker, a representative of the state or government, directs a speech to the audience about a monument being erected for a citizen. Written in free verse, although using many couplets, this poem describes the life of a certain person through his records and documents. Based on his status the government describes him as a “saint” and people’s role model. Even though he did things right the author questions, is he happy? is he free? The poem “unknown citizen” is spoken by a bureaucrat who works for the government. We know this because at the beginning of the poem it says “He was found by the Bureau of Statistic to be One against whom there was no official complaint, / and all the report on his conduct agree That, the modern sense of an old-fashion world, /he was a saint” (1-4). Based on the quote stated it also shows us that he doesn’t just speak for himself but he also represents the entire apparatus. Therefore, he has an advantage by his high position in office to find out the unknown citizen personal life. Given information about the citizen he’ll then determine if this citizen is a saint. He also uses the word “Our “to represent a larger group of people that are speaking throughout the poem. The bureaucrat finds that the unknown citizen “served the Greater Community” (5). The bureaucrat states that the social psychology workers found him to be “popular with his mates and liked a drink” (13) and that the researcher...
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...After reading The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden I was a little confused about the context of the poem. After rereading it a few times I began to think it was about establishing the American Dream after the War because of the description the speaker gave of the citizen. The speaker says “ But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.”, I knew that this was an allusion to Ford Motors which had been a huge factory job, which had been what most men did. Later when the speaker says, “And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, a phonograph, radio, a car and a frigidaire.”, it really helped back up my theory because he was working hard to acquire the nicest things which was huge after the war due to having to scrape and save everything. Overall, I enjoyed the poem. The slight satire caught my interest and enticed me the entire poem. Part Two: After our discussion After our class discussion I found out my theory was completely off. The poem was actually satirical about the “Big Brother” and the mold society tries to push everyone into. We discussed how the speaker capitalizes “the Bureau of Statistics” and how that was the first hint of the satire. The speaker used this to show how the government keeps track of everything. As the poem went on, more fake government organizations came up to show how simple and ordinary the citizen was. The last line “Was he happy? Was he free? The questions is absurd; had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”, emphasized that...
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...1002-13 26 February 2013 Funeral Blues “A METEOR FROM the universe of Wystan Hugh Auden flashed into the atmosphere of American culture in 1994 when "Funeral Blues," a poem written in 1936, was recited in a eulogy scene in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral.” (Johnson) Many people have wondered what it is like to lose someone they love; if one does not know the feeling they are very fortunate. Some people think that without that certain someone, their life will cease to exist. In W. H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues,” a woman loses her lover and cannot even imagine how she is going to get on with her life; she puts her deceased companion on a God-like pedestal; and she loves him so much that she believes that he is her whole world. In “Funeral Blues,” Auden makes the bitter attitude of the speaker toward the subject of death apparent to the readers through the use of symbols, imagery, and metaphor. In the first verse, the speaker states “stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone…” (Auden Line 1). The clock being stopped may signify the fact the man who died has run out of time, or possibly to ask those who knew him to stop what they are doing and grieve. With the idea of the telephone being cut off, she wants to show the deceased the respect he deserves by honoring him with a moment of silence. In the second verse the speaker states, “let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead” (Auden 5). She uses this metaphor to reveal the pointlessness of her life. What is the point...
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...Savanah Saunders ENGL102 Jason Sebacher March 5, 2014 Essentially I feel that each poem in its own “Funeral Blues” (W. H. Auden), “Death, be not proud” (John Donne), and “Because I could not stop for Death” (Emily Dickinson) are unique in their own way however, I feel that two poems in particular may show more similarity in each other versus all three being compared at once although, I will be comparing and contrasting all three poems towards the end of this essay. For example, When reading “Funeral Blues” (W. H. Auden), I felt a greater sense of similarity to “Because I could not stop for death” (Emily Dickinson) versus “Death, be not proud” (John Donne) so I will begin to discuss those poems first. When comparing each poem I will list the related styles between the two and the same for contrasting each when discussing the distinctive differences. In “Funeral Blues”; a poem about the mourning of a dear loved one, Auden used a great sense of imagery when writing to assist the audience in creating a mental picture. Each line used a great amount of detail for example, when Auden wrote “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling in the sky the message he is dead.” It was easy for me to actually picture this statement mentally due to his choice of words. Also, he uses a rhyme scheme that is successful in expressing the deep mourning and sorrow that he feels. The same feelings expressed in “Funeral Blues” can also be felt in “Because I could not stop for death”...
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