Paper 2 Module C – Trial Essay for Spain 1937 & The Unknown Citizen 1939

Resource Description

Composer’s political motivations inevitably manifest within their compositions in order to manipulate and manoeuvre audiences’ attitudes about people and politics. The contentious nature of politics allows composers to represent the world from certain political perspectives and construct texts to privilege certain views whilst suppressing others. This representation resonates through W.H Auden’s poems, Spain (1937), which condemns the fascist uprising of the Spanish Civil War, and The Unknown Citizen (1939), an elegy for the loss of identity arising from capitalist bureaucracy. Conversely, John F Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural speech presents the supremacy of capitalism whilst highlighting the importance of peace during the Cold War. 

Through manipulation of Spain’s poetic form to exhibit a glorified past, bleak conflict ridden present and ambiguous future, Auden critiques the fascist rebellion of the Spanish Civil War. Spain is portrayed ‘yesterday’ as a cosmopolitan world through the enumeration of milestones, ‘invention of cartwheels and clocks’  and ‘bustling world of the navigators’ to invoke a sense of multifaceted technological and economic progress. This didactically juxtaposes Spain ‘today’ where Auden’s grim metaphor of the military as ‘nocturnal terror’ constructs a tense atmosphere and diacope of ‘our day is our loss’ reflects the nihilistic ramifications of fascist uprising pervading society. Auden further diminishes this conflict-ridden world by repetition of truncated sentences concluding each stanza, ‘But to-day the struggle’, drawing awareness to the oppression and brutalities of political conflict. Auden’s personification of society, ‘I am whatever you do…your humorous story’ represents the submissive voice of civilians, whose lack of influence and general disinterest in conflict aligns with Auden’s aversion to the fascist uprising. To initiate whether fascism would result in a future at all, Auden utilises ambiguous language,‘Tomorrow, perhaps the future’ in combination with an austere allegory of ‘the stars are dead. The animals won’t look’ to assert the bleak prospects of fascism. Thus, separation of the poetic form into three distinct time phases allow Auden to dramatise fascist brutalities and manoeuvre audiences towards the Republican cause. 

Through the construction of a diminished and anonymous persona in The Unknown Citizen, Auden manipulates expectations of the epitaph form to critique the loss of individuality arising from extreme capitalism and industrialisation. Influenced by his migration to America, Auden breaks down the idealistic American society by hyperbolising the inhumane nature of capitalism through the epigraph, ‘To JS/07 M378’, which dehumanises the citizen and paints individuals as commoditised. Auden satirises the apathy of a capitalist government towards the citizen through personal pronouns such as, ‘He worked in a factory’ and ‘He was married’, despite the speaker’s inability to acknowledge the individual, beyond the government’s bureaucratic data. Furthermore, Auden emphasises its inability to understand an individual’s emotions through closing rhetorical questions, ‘Was he free? Was he happy?’, ultimately conveying the apathetic nature of capitalism. Thus, Auden renders the ideal citizen as one whose usefulness is judged by their economic contribution, ‘everything he did he served the Greater Community’, highlighting a left-wing criticism of capitalist exploitation in the materialistic society of America’s depression. By manipulation of the epitaph form, Auden manoeuvres audiences’ attitudes against capitalism and bureaucracy by representing a loss of identity.