Analysis of "The Unknown Citizen"

Thesis: W. H. Auden used his poem "The Unknown Citizen" to criticize the shift of American ideals away from individualism, towards normality and standardization.

• The title of the poem, "The Unknown Citizen," is indicative of how the person's normality caused him to lose his distinction from everybody else.
• The source of all the information about this man was the "Bureau of Statistics" (1).
• This shows how people cease to be people when they are entirely typical; instead, they are simply another "statistic": if everyone is normal, no one sticks out.
• He is unknown because he is statistically normal, and so his lack of individuality, of self-expression, was ultimately, in the eyes of Auden, his downfall.
•  Auden contrasts that the person is "unknown" with how excellent he was a a citizen in order to criticize not only the viewpoint that conformism is good, but to criticize society for holding this viewpoint.
• About him, there was "no official complaint"; indeed, "he was a saint" (2, 4).
• This shows the ideals of the time: all of his viewpoints are perfect for what everyone believes is right.
• Therefore, when Auden criticizes the viewpoint of conformism, he is attacking the societal ideal of his time.
• Auden concludes his poem with a strongly ironic statement that punctuates his point.
• He ends with that "had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard" (29).
• The irony is the contrast of this with the title: if the person is "unknown" then the collective speaker would never have heard that anything was wrong because they never would have heard of him.
• Here Auden is stating that it if one is unsatisfied with conforming, one cannot complain and still be considered a conformist, because to complain would be to resist the ideal off conformism and thereby display a nonconformist viewpoint.