English Essay

How does Auden explore Human conditions throughout his

poems ?

Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet who is

considered as one of the best writers of the 20th century.
Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation
and explored different aspects of the human conditions
throughout his poem such as suffering or loneliness.

For instance, the poem The Unknown Citizen is supposed to be

about the memorial of the death of a remarkable who seems to
have clearly succeeded in the life of society. However, we do
not know about the protagonists state of mind.
l.28-29 Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
The poem ends on a final rhyming couplet that could
completely change the readers point of view
The narrator ironically considers these questions as absurd as
it would be obvious that this man have had a perfect life.
In the final line, the narrator explains why the question is
absurd: if things had been going badly for the unknown citizen,
the State ("we") would have known about it, seeing as they are
supposed to know everything.
The speakers confidence in this line "we certainly should have"
is downright chilling. But, of course, the big joke here is that
the speaker defines happiness in the negative, as things not
going wrong, instead of as things going right.
We may suppose from this poem that Auden wanted to
demonstrate that it is in the human nature to build up a

character from the outside whereas they often keep their true
feelings or resentments inside them.

Miss Gee is a fictional biographical poem of a lonely woman.

Even the title Miss suggests that she doesnt seem to have
many relationships. Even though this woman has a slight
squint in her left eye,[ ] narrow sloping shoulders and no bust
at all , shes struggling to become faithful woman to God
l.20: Knitting for the Church Bazaar
and she also tries to be a pure woman
l.40: With her clothes buttoned up to her neck
She walks alone in the streets while she fights her illness until
finally she dies from cancer. As we can see her life, we also see
how no one notices her. And when her body is turned over to
students for educational purposes, you see how little they too
think of her as anything but a tool for their education. But
Auden's poem is not so much about the poor woman's life, as it
is about the lack of respect so many people have for other
people. No one, except for the doctor, seems to care at all
about Miss Gee, and most seem to feel contempt towards her,
even blaming her for her own death from cancer.
We can thus say that this poem is a statement of the Human
Condition.

Auden is thus a revolutionary poet who questions many aspect

of the Human condition such as suffering.