In a play on the notion of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
W. H. Auden proposes a monument to the perfectly average and therefore entirely
forgettable man. His poem “The Unknown Citizen” describes a monument built to
honour “one against whom there was no official complaint”, who “satisfied his
employers”, “was popular with his mates” and reacted to advertisements normally
in every way. He purchased on the
“Installment Plan… everything necessary to the Modern Man.”
He did absolutely everything that was expected of him,
nothing more, and nothing less. The statue honours him for being perfectly
ordinary. Yet he has no known name, and as Auden points out we don’t know the
two most important things about him “Was he free? Was he happy?”
Ironically, although Auden suggests his averageness makes
him anonymous because he has no name in the poem, he is the subject of
sustained research efforts by the government Bureau of Statistics, Social
Psychology workers, and Producers Research. This imagery ordinary man is
conjured up in memory by Auden’s poem just as the unknown solders are
remembered by their anonymous tombs to stand in for all the people who lived
and died without making any particular mark on the world.
“Be a true Heart, not a follower.”
My title is a quote from a Sarah Dessen book called The
Truth about Forever
And my concluding quote is from Ed Sheeran
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