The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden

The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden: Summary and Analysis

        The Unknown Citizen, first published in the Listener on August 1939, and later included in the Collected Shorter Poems, 1950, is a satire, not on the citizen, but on the way in which the average man in the street is controlled by the conventions of bureaucracy and the Welfare State which ignore the need for a man to be free and happy.

        In this poem Auden shows that poverty and totalitarian regimes are not the only enemies of freedom. Human freedom is restricted in subtle ways in the so-called free capitalist states as well. The average modern man in a mercantile society is ridden heavily by the more of technocratic, bureaucratic and other regimented establishments.

        The Unknown Citizen, has no name; he has only a number, to whom the monument has been built and has been found to be without any fault. He was a saint not because he searched for God but because he served the government perfectly. He did not get dismissed from his job. He was a member of the Union and paid all his dues to the union. A report by the Union shows that it was a balance union and did not take extreme views on anything. The social psychology workers found that he was popular among his fellow workers and had a drink with them now and then. He also bought a newspaper every day. He reached to the advertisements normally.

        He had good health and although he went to the hospital once, he came out quite cured. The citizen was sensible about buying things on an installment basis. He had everything a modern man needed at home. Moreover, this ideal citizen was found to be sensible in his view. When there was peace, he supported it. But when there was war, he was ready to fight. He didn’t hold his personal views on anything. He had the right number of children and he did not quarrel with the education they got.

        Many European governments of that time resorted to dictatorship of some kind or another and the individualism of general citizen was at stake. The average citizen was made absolutely conformist. He had been distorted into a totally dictated harmless mechanism. Everything about him could be understood in some kind of statistical formula put out by the government or its agencies. He had surrendered his individuality and was often identified by a number rather than personality features which were of course common to all citizens. The poet now asks the important questions. Was this man free? Was he happy? No government statistics can ever answer these kinds of questions.

        The Unknown Citizen is a typical Auden’s poem in that it shows the poet’s profound concern for the modern world and its problems. A keen, intelligent observer of the contemporary scene, Auden was one of the first to realize that the totalitarian socialist state would be no Utopia and that man there would be reduced to the position of a cog in the wheel. A citizen will have no scope to develop his initiative or to assert his individuality. He will be made to conform to the State in all things. It is the picture of such a citizen, in a way similar to Eliot’s Hollow Men, which is ironically presented in the poem. Auden dramatizes his theme by showing the glaring disparity between the complete statistical information about the citizen compiled by the State and the sad inadequacy of the judgments made about him. The poet seems to say, statistics cannot sum up an individual and physical facts are inadequate to evaluate human happiness- for man does not live by bread alone.

In the phrase 'The Unknown' the word 'unknown' means ordinary, obscure. So the whole phrase means 'those ordinary, obscure soldiers as citizens of the state who laid down their lives for defending their motherland wanted name and fame, but remained unknown. The title of Auden's poem parodies this. Thus 'The Unknown Citizen' means the ordinary average citizen in the modern industrialized urban society. He has no individuality and identity. He has no desire for self-assertion. He likes to remain unknown.

        At the end of the poem the poet asks two questions. Was he free? Was he happy? No government statistics can ever answer these kinds of questions. By asking these questions, the poet is drawing our attention to the question of freedom and happiness. And ironically, the poet suggests that the modern man is slave to routine and he is incapable of understanding such concepts freedom and happiness. Therefore, such a question in this context would be ‘absurd’. Thus, this poem The Unknown Citizen is a bitter attack on modern society-its indifference towards individuality and identity. The only way for an individual to survive in a regimented society is to conform, obey and live in perpetual mental slavery. Such a creative is this ‘unknown citizen’ who is utterly devoid of any urge for self-assertion. Such a modern man is a slave to the routine, is incapable of understanding such concepts as freedom and happiness.

        

        The sub-title of the poem vividly shows that it is a memorial poem written for the occasion of the erection of a national monument by the state to the ideal citizen. The irony lies in here that this so called ideal citizen is a valueless, colorless entity, nothing more than the mechanical part of a highly mechanized society. He is made a representative of the mass society and had no distinctive qualities by which one could identify him. The poem is written in a clear and simple style and is free from obscure references.

        During the 1920s and 30s, many American writers left the states to become expatriates overseas, particularly in Europe. Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are three famous examples. W.H. Auden, however, did the opposite. He was an Englishman who moved back to "the colonies" (the U.S.) in 1939, at the height of his creative powers. Auden wrote "The Unknown Citizen" while living in New York, and the poem gives evidence of his culture shock when suddenly confronted with American-style chaos and consumerism.

        As a poet, Auden is a chameleon capable of writing in many different forms and styles. He is considered a "modernist" writer, but his work is unlike that of any other poet of the past century. At a time when many poets were experimenting with obscure forms and new ways of using language, much of Auden’s poetry had more popular appeal. He was a master, for example, of the rhyming couplet (AA, BB, etc.), the simplest rhyme scheme in English. "The Unknown Citizen" is so accessible it almost sounds like an elaborate joke.

        The poem is written in the voice of a fictional government bureaucrat – someone who sits at a desk and shuffles papers all day – whose decisions affect the lives of people he has never met. You could consider it a poetic version of George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in that it concerns a Big Brother-like state that knows everything about its citizens except the things that really matter. But the poem doesn’t sound as pessimistic or tortured as either of these novels It uses good old-fashioned humor to protest the numbing effects of modern life. It’s not the most "intellectual" of Auden’s works, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful to read. "The Unknown Citizen" is proof that great poetry doesn’t have to take itself seriously all the time.

The Unknown Citizen Summary

        We learn that the words we are about to read are written on a statue or monument dedicated to "The Unknown Citizen." The poem consists of several different kinds of people and organizations weighing in on the character of our dear "Citizen."

        First, the not-so-friendly-sounding "Bureau of Statistics" says that "no official complaint" was ever made against him. More than that, the guy was a veritable saint, whose good deeds included serving in the army and not getting fired. He belonged to a union and paid his dues, and he liked to have a drink from time to time.

        His list of stirring accomplishments goes on: he bought a newspaper and had normal reactions to advertisements. He went to the hospital once – we don’t know what for – and bought a few expensive appliances. He would go with the flow and held the same opinions as everyone else regarding peace and war. He had five kids, and we’re sure they were just lovely. In fact, the only thing the government doesn’t know about the guy is whether he was "free" and "happy," two utterly insignificant, trivial little details. He couldn’t have been unhappy, though, because otherwise the government would have heard.

Section I (Epigraph)

Epigraph

(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument? Is Erected by the State)

• The epigraph lets us in on a secret: we’re reading a dramatic poem. It’s all an act. The poem is pretending to be an official celebration of a dead person: the Unknown Citizen. The words are inscribed on a "marble monument" that was paid for by the State, or government.
• Which government? We don’t know. But referring to "the State" makes it sound very ominous, like George Orwell’s "Big Brother" from 1984.
• Marble isn't cheap, and most people can’t afford to use it as a building material.
• The government, however, has seemingly infinite financial resources to work with, because it takes money from everyone.
• As for "JS/07 M 378," we think Auden is just having fun by stringing a bunch of letters and numbers together in some incomprehensible way.
• It seems that "JS/07 M 378" is how the Unknown Citizen is identified, and the monument is dedicated "To" him. Referring to people in this way is, obviously, very cold and impersonal, but it can also be convenient, so bureaucrats do it all the time.
• To give a chilling but relevant bit of context, at the time this poem was written, the Nazis were already starting to identify Jewish prisoners with numbered tattoos, though this is not something that Auden would have known. But, in retrospect, this grisly parallel makes the "marble monument" seem that much more sinister.
• By the way, the monument is clearly a parody of the Tomb(s) of the Unknown Soldier, found in many different nations and dedicated to soldiers who died anonymously in battle.
• One of the most famous of such tombs lies underneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which is a marble monument. You can read more about the Unknown Soldier in "What’s Up With the Title?"

Section II (Lines 1-5)

Lines 1-2

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

• The poem begins by describing a person referred to as, simply, "He." We take this to be "The Unknown Citizen," which makes sense, because his name isn’t known. For simplicity’s sake, we’re going to refer to him as "The UC." (UC is impersonal, but slightly less impersonal than JS/07 M 378".)
• The Bureau of Statistics has found that "no official complaint" has been made against our guy, the UC.
• Now, this is a strange way to start a poem of celebration. It’s a total backhanded compliment. It’s like if you asked someone what they thought of your new haircut, and they replied, "Well, it’s not hideous." Um, thanks…?
• But here’s a question: what on earth is the Bureau of Statistics, and why is it investigating the UC? There isn’t any Bureau of Statistics in any country that we know of, but most "bureaus," or government offices, deal with statistics every day.
• The Bureau of Statistics seems to be a parody of such "bureaucracies," which are large, complicated organizations that produce a lot of red tape and official paperwork.
• If the Bureau of Statistics has information about the UC, then it probably has information about everyone, because, in a certain sense, the UC represents everyone. He’s the average Joe.
• The fact that there was no "official" complaint against the UC doesn’t tell us much.
• Were there "unofficial" complaints? We don’t know, and from the poem’s perspective, it doesn’t seem to matter.
• Auden subtly pushes back on the anonymity of the UC in one interesting way, however. The first word of the second line is "One," which produces a minor joke if you stop reading there: The UC was found to be…One, as in he was found to be a single person: an individual. This is funny, because an individual is exactly what the idea of an "Unknown Citizen" is not.

Lines 3-5

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

• Get out your highlighters and reading glasses: we’re still poring through the paperwork of the lovable Bureau of Statistics.
• Now we have in front of us the "reports on his conduct." Let’s see: ah, yes, it appears the man was a saint. But not a saint like St. Francis or Mother Teresa: those are "old-fashioned" saints, who performed miracles and helped feed the hungry and clothe the poor.
• No, the UC is a "modern" saint, which means that he always served the "Greater Community."
• This community could include the poor and the hungry, but somehow we think that’s not what the speaker has in mind. And the words "Greater Community" are capitalized as if it were a proper name, though it’s not.
• As in the first two lines, these lines raise more questions than they answer. Who issued these "reports"? His friends? Lovers? Co-workers? Some guy in an office somewhere? We don’t have an answer.

Section III (Lines 6-11)

Lines 6-7

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

• The UC had one of the most boring jobs in the world: factory work. (We’re assuming he didn’t work in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.)
• Notice how the poem says very few truly nice things about the UC.
• Everything is phrased in the negative. Instead of, "he was great at his job and everybody loved him," we get, "he never got fired." It’s another backhanded compliment.
• We should probably assume that he didn’t work in the factory during the war because he was fighting as a soldier.
• Formally, these lines sound slightly different than what came before, maybe even a little "off." The formal structure of these two lines differs from the two preceding lines in two ways.
• First, the syntax (the order of the words) is weird because line 6 begins with the phrase "except for the war," which we would normally expect to come at the end of a sentence.
• Secondly, the poem unexpectedly shifts from an ABABA rhyme scheme to a rhyming couplet (retired/fired). This is such a simple and obvious rhyme that it makes the UC’s life sound even more awkward and boring.

Lines 8-11

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

• Finally, we get a positive accomplishment. The UC "satisfied his employers."
• Wait a minute, that doesn’t sound so impressive after all. "Satisfied" is a lot more neutral than, say, "thrilled" or "wowed."
• But right after this lukewarm praise, we get more negative praise – for not being something.
• The UC was not a "scab" and he didn’t have unusual opinions around the workplace. (A "scab," by the way, isn’t just the thing your mother told you not to pick off your scraped elbow. It’s also the word used to describe people who would replace workers who were on strike.)
• Unions aren’t nearly as powerful as they used to be, but back in the 1930s, they had the power to cripple major companies through labor strikes – assuming there was no one with whom to replace the workers.
• Although companies were happy to find "scabs," no one really respected the replacements because they were not team players and only looked out for themselves.
• The fact that the UC wasn’t a scab is really just another example of his normalcy.
• He was a good union member and "paid his dues." More importantly, the union itself was normal, or "sound."
• The biggest accusation made about unions during this time was that they were secretly socialist or even communist organizations. The speaker confirms that the UC’s union is neither of those things.
• In this poem, it seems that everyone is investigating everyone else. Behind all the reassuring clichés, there is a lot of suspicion and paranoia on the part of the State.
• Finally, these lines are the first to really suggest a particular nation or culture, and the giveaway is "Fudge Motors, Inc."
• For one thing, most car manufacturers were located in America in the 1930s. For another, the name of the company sounds a whole lot like Detroit-based "Ford Motors, Inc." the first and largest auto company in the world at the time.
• And, yes, "Fudge" is a very silly name, as we’re sure Auden was aware.

Section IV (Lines 12-15)

Lines 12-13

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

• Now the poem shifts from his employment to his social life. But, don’t worry: there are still comically absurd bureaucrats to provide us with unnecessary information.
• Stop the presses! Headline: "Average Joe Enjoys Drinking With Pals."
• Even in his carousing with friends, though, the UC takes things in moderation. He likes "a drink," and the singular form implies that he doesn’t drink too much and isn’t an alcoholic.
• At the time when Auden wrote the poem, "Social Psychology" was still a relatively new field. Social psychologists study the behavior of humans in groups.
• This sounds good in concept, but in practice, a lot of the early work done in this field simply pointed out things that were so obvious they didn’t need to be pointed out.
• (Don’t worry, psychology majors, the field has gotten quite a bit more complicated since then.)
• It’s like when you read about some scientific study that says that unhappy people are more likely to drink a lot, and you wonder why on earth they needed a study to support such an obvious conclusion.
• Nonetheless, we have to think that the UC might have been flattered to be getting so much attention from all these intellectual types. That is, if he were still alive.

Lines 14-15

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

• This is starting to sound like an infomercial you might see for some exercise machine on cable at 3 a.m. There are testimonials galore.
• Now "The Press," or news media, offers its take. Of course, they don’t really care about the UC as a person; they’re just glad he seems to have bought a paper every day.
• Or, rather, they are "convinced" that he did . We’d like to know what convinced them.
• Not only that, but he also had "normal" reactions to the advertisements in a paper. ("Hey! An inflatable kayak! I sure could use one of those…")
• In short, he’s a good American consumer.

Section V (Lines 16-19)

Lines 16-17

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

• We’re starting to suspect that the government must have an entire room full of paperwork on this guy.
• Now we are rifling through his health insurance policy, looking for any evidence that he wasn’t a totally straightedge, middle-of-the-road personality.
• He was "fully insured," which is sensible. This guy wasn’t exactly a risk-taker.
• Even though he had insurance, he only went to the hospital once, which means he wasn’t too much of a burden on the health system. He left the hospital "cured".

Lines 18-19

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

• What are "Producers Research" and "High-Grade Living"?
• They sound like organizations intended to help consumers know what stuff to buy.
• In fact, they sound suspiciously like the existing Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping, both of which were around when Auden wrote the poem.
• Both of these groups test out new products and provide ratings. Good Housekeeping, for example, is known for the famous "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
• So Producers Research and High-Grade Living have done a little research and learned that the UC used "installment plans" to buy expensive things.
• This is when you pay for something in small payments over a period of time. Although we don’t use the term "installment plans" very much anymore, the practice remains extremely common.
• Our love of buying things and paying for them over time is one of the reasons Americans have a larger debt per household than almost any other country.
• Since installment plan advertising didn’t really begin until the 1920s, Auden probably thought it was weird to buy something you couldn’t afford (read more).
• We don’t know about you, but we think these are the funniest lines in the poem. The phrase "fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan" is just hilarious, as if being conscious ("sensible") at all required you to know about the Plan.

Section VI (Lines 20-26)

Lines 20-21

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

• Ever heard the Rolling Stones song, "You Can’t Always Get What You Want." The song says, "You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need."
• The point is that we always think we need more than we really do. This is precisely the idea behind these lines.
• Obviously, a person doesn’t need a phonograph (the 1930s equivalent of an MP3 player), radio, car, and frigidaire (refrigerator) in order to survive.
• But if you want to be a hip, "Modern Man," these things are absolutely "necessary." We get the impression that the UC’s greatest accomplishment, in the opinion of the speaker, was buying things.

Lines 22-24

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.

• The "researchers into Public Opinion" are like the people nowadays who call your house during dinnertime to ask you who you’re voting for and whether your jeans are stone-washed or boot-cut.
• The UC didn’t have any weird or "improper" opinions. He was a conformist, which means that he believed what the people around him seemed to believe. He was like a weather vane, going whichever way the wind blew.
• Indeed, the UC’s beliefs were partly determined by the seasons or "time of year."
• Line 24 is also pretty funny. We imagine a pause for comic suspense after word "war." "When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war…(pause)…he went."
• The line leads us to expect that it will end "he was for war," but we actually get something much more hesitant. Because, really, who could be "for war"?

Line 25-26

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

• You’d think that a person’s marriage and children would be one of their biggest accomplishments.
• But the State doesn’t really care about such intimate concerns, so the bureaucratic speaker only mentions them in passing.
• From the perspective of the State, it’s good that the UC had so many children because a growing population usually helps a nation’s economy and also ensures that there are enough soldiers just in case (cough, cough) a HUGE WORLD WAR comes along (hint: this poem was written in 1939).
• "Eugenics" is a term from history that you may not have heard before. It refers to a social movement that believed that the human species could be improved by engineering changes in its gene pool.
• Eugenics relied on the relatively new fields of genetics and the theory of evolution.
• This new scientific field was all the rage in the beginning of the twentieth century, until a guy named Adolph Hitler starting adopting its ideas.
• Most people now agree that eugenics was a disastrous concept, although most of its followers were not as evil as Hitler.
• The eugenist in this poem thinks he can direct the size of the population by telling people how many kids they should have.

Section VII (Lines 27-29)

Lines 27

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

• This line is somewhat creepy: the speaker implies that the UC was a good parent because he didn’t "interfere" with the education of his kids.
• In other words, their education was left up to the control of the State. (Notice that the speaker calls them "our" teachers and not "their" teachers.)
• But shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Lines 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 takes a big detour from the conventional topics that have occupied the speaker so far.
• Now he asks two questions – "Was he free? Was he happy?" – that really do seem interesting.
• These questions are not interesting to the speaker, though, who calls it "absurd."
• It’s interesting that these two questions are referred to in the singular, as "the question," as if being free and being happy were the same thing.
• In the final line, the speaker explains why the question is absurd: if things had been going badly for the UC, the State ("we") would have known about it, seeing as they know everything.
• The speaker’s 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.
• From the perspective of the State, it is much more important that people are not desperately unhappy – so they don’t rock the boat and stop buying things – than it is that they experience personal fulfillment.

 Wystan Hugh Auden The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden

‘The Unknown Citizen‘ by W.H. Auden is a 32 line poem that utilizes a number of different rhyming patterns. The poem contains examples of both skillfully written rhyming couplets and seemingly patternless portions of verse that are variable in their end rhymes.

It is impossible to escape the lighthearted nature with which intense subject matter is being tackled in the poem. In fact, the surprising rhyming couplets add to the humour that is pervasive in this piece.

Summary of The Unknown Citizen

        “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden describes, through the form of a dystopian report, the life of an unknown man.

        The poem begins with the speaker stating the fact that throughout his life there was never one “complaint” against the citizen. No one thought badly of him, in fact, he was more like a “saint” than anything else.  The next section of the poem tells of the man’s popularity. He was well liked by his friends, social enough to be normal, and dedicated to his work. The man served the “Community” for his entire life. The only lapse in his work for his company was when he went to serve in the “War,” and now, after he has died.

        The speaker also states that the man read the newspapers to a sufficient degree. He went to the hospital once, but left quickly, “cured,” as he should have been. The citizen consumed all the latest technologies, as a “Modern Man” should and owned the proper devices.

        In the final section of the poem the speaker concludes his report. He states that the man was “for” war when he was supposed to be, and for “peace,” when the government told him to be. The last lines prompt the questions a reader might have been wondering the whole time. Was this man happy? Was he free? These are things that speaker sees as “absurd.” He states that, of course the man was happy, the government would have “known” if he wasn’t.

Analysis of The Unknown Citizen

Lines 1-5

        Auden has chosen to craft a speaker for the “Unknown Citizen” who is completely concealed, but strangely familiar. He speaks with a candidness, and emotionless tenor which is hard to connect with. Once the identity of the speaker is a bit clearer though, one might come to recognize the faceless, seemingly lifeless person of a government worker or customer service representative.

The speaker is going about his job, as he would any other day, and is not impacted by the facts he is relaying about the “unknown citizen.”  The speaker’s lack of inflection is made up for by the rhymes which are pervasive in his speech.

        It was Auden’s goal in this piece to present the words of a dystopian narrator, to the tune of a rhyme. This contrast is quite forceful as the reader will discover throughout the poem’s 32 lines.

        The speaker begins by introducing the main subject of the poem, who will never receive a name, or proper identification. The reader will only come to know him through the facts that the “Bureau of Statistics, “the Greater Community,” and other fictional dystopian sounding organizations, have seen fit to share.

        The first thing of note that the speaker mentions is that there are no “complaints” logged against this person. No one stepped forward, during their investigation, to say that he had done some wrong. All of the reports that this speaker has at his disposal tell him that the “unknown citizen” is a “saint.” His record is spotless and pristine.

        This poem certainly reads like a report and it is interesting to consider why these particular facts about this person’s life were chosen. What do these things really tell about someone? It is important to note that there is nothing deeper discussed in these lines. One cannot come to fully know the “unknown citizen” through this report, hence the irony between the title and the goal of the verses.

Lines 6-14

        In the second set of lines the report continues. Throughout the “unknown citizen’s” life, he did a number of things to serve the community. In fact, he spent his whole life “serv[ing] the Greater Community.” Capitalization is utilized throughout the poem to acknowledge bodies, or official groups that exist in the world of the poem. The citizen served the community up until the day he died. The only exception was when he went to fight in the “War.” Which war this is meant to be is not made clear.

The citizen,

…worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

        The man did as he was told, dedicated himself to his work, and was continually in the good graces of his employers. So far this person seems incredibly straightforward. There is not much more revealed besides surface level details that anyone could infer.

        The man did not have any “odd views” and he always paid his “union dues.” He was on time with payments and was not strange in anyway. That is to say, he did not believe in, or participate in anything, that went against the tenants of this dystopian feeling world.

        The man not only did good at work, he was also popular with his friends. The were social, and completely normal. One might at this point be suspicious of the total normalcy that filled this person’s life. Shouldn’t there be more there to see and learn about?

Lines 15-22

        The poem continues and the speaker refers to a number of other organizations that have been keeping an eye on the citizen. The “Press,” presumably a government run news organization, reported to the speaker that the citizen,

…bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

        The man was as susceptible to advertising as he was supposed to be, and committed to the news of the day. Continuing in the theme of this dystopia, it is quite likely his life was consumed with the propaganda produced by these agencies. It is hard to know who this person truly was with these purely surface level details.

        Additionally, the man went to the hospital, but did not stay long. He left “cured” just as he should. He was sufficiently healthy, and sufficiently interested in acquiring all the appliances a “Modern Man “would need. He had,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Lines 23-32

        In the final section of this piece the speaker concludes his report on the “unknown citizen.” The researchers at “Public Opinion,” perhaps the government organization the speaker works for as he uses, “Our,” conclude that the man had all the “proper opinions.” The propaganda was doing its job and the man believed what he was meant to. He was an advocate for what the government told him to be, whether the was “peace” or “war.”

        The man’s personal life consisted of a normal wife, and “five children” that were “added…to the population.” The number was not too many or too few, it was just “right” for a man of his “generation.”

        The final lines of the piece bring greater attention to the absurdity of the poem’s premise. The speaker, as if defending himself, states that the “question” of whether the citizen was “free” or “happy” is absurd. He was certainly happy, otherwise, “we should…have heard.”

On the Move - Thom Gunn

On the Move - Thomas Gunn

This is summary of stanzas of Gunn's on the Move. He describes the contemporary issue of 1950s in this poem. This write up helps you know the details of this poem and as well as one can answer better if he can grasp the meaning of every stanza. This will help university guys who are in their post graduation.

On the Move by Thomas Gunn

Thomas Gunn's 'On the Move' is famous one with five stanzas. He starts it with "On the move man, You gotta go". This is the intended words to describe the lifestyle of motorcycle gangs of 1950s who are by products of altering civilization and inventions spurted in the given period. They are infamous with their behavior in United States and Great Britain. Thomas Gunn in his poem describes the lifestyle of these gangs and provides a message through this attempt. This is the main intention of the poem.

On the move man, You gotta go

First stanza

Thomas Gunn in this stanza compares human beings particularly gangs with the birds. The blue jay which scuffles in the bushes has some hidden need in doing so. The group of birds those are flying across the fields has some intention. The swallows have their nests in trees and low level bushes. Every bird has been guided by instinct or according to their need and purpose. Now he brings these gangs into the poem saying 'One moves with an uncertain violence' which says one is going very speed on ones bike raging violence as it may lead to accidents. The motorist is driving crazy as he is totally confused and the dust is raised and fallen on him itself. Like this first stanza provides contrasting nature of human beings with the birds and the craziness for speed are described.

Second stanza

In this stanza, Thomas Gunn wants to project a picture of long shot to close shot of motorcycle gangs coming from a long and top of the road to nearer. He describes it very well as if he is closely monitoring them. He sees gangs coming. He compares them with flies. When he sees them in a long distance they appear as small creatures like flies in black color as they have worn the black jackets hanging in heat. This is what he assumes when he see gangs in distance. Then the distance throws them to come further, (means as they come near) the distance sound of humming turns into thunder sound with the razing sounds emanated from vehicles. He says they are driving them 'held by calf and thigh'. He is also explaining how the gangs look like. They wear goggles not be disturbed by the dust emanated from their vehicles. He is saying them impersonalities. The shining jackets are turned into dusty and he is saying that the jackets are trophied with the dust. Their sound is unbearable but they can hear meaning in the created noise.

Third stanza

In this stanza, Thomas Gunn is explaining how they are disturbing and the repercussions of the scientific inventions. He says that there is no fatigue to them in their journeys. They do not know where they are going. They do not know where they will stay. The swallows have nests but these motorists do not have shelter at least like them. They travel in the way. They travel in ways where their vehicles can go. They travel without purpose and at the same time they fear the birds which are flying across the fields. These birds follow their instincts and needs but these gangs are against it. Their destination is not known to them. Thomas Gunn is referring scientific inventions especially machines. He says that men made machines as well as their personalities. He says men are using what they cannot use perfectly and they control it imperfectly. They only consider their present, leaving the future to the fate.

Fourth stanza

Thomas Gunn is referring the state of the bike men. He uses the word 'half animal'. He says that they lack the instinct and without any purpose they move on without any destination and target. They only love present going speed. It is violent speed disturbs the flight of birds and the human beings who are with destination. The speed attracts accidents and a loss respectively. He says that no one sleep as he is saying ' one wakes afloat on movement'. One(Motorbike gang) lives in this world without values. There is no need of destination for them. It is always travelling towards.

Fifth stanza

Thomas Gunn is explaining how these bike men travel and where they would leave to. They sit astride and speed up their vehicles to unknown destiny. He used 'self denied' in this stanza to refer the gangs. They travel through towns where there no nests for birds and homes of holiness. It is because saints and birds have purposes. They travel in that direction. But, these speedy motor gangs do not have purpose, Hence they are travelling away from them. They say they should be on the move always. They want to enjoy the speed without any intention. They are marred with dust. These do not bother them. They are at their worst while they are on the move. They are in continuous motion. Thus they are always nearer to the final rest (death).

About the poem

Thom Gunn’s “On the Move” is the opening poem in the collection The Sense of Movement. The poem is said to be “a sociological footnote of the nineteen fifties.” The motorcyclists had become emblematic of reckless vigor and aggressive energy in the East. The subtitle also functions as the epigraph emphasizing the need to keep going on, asserting the hyperactive strain and the kinetic energy that they embodied.

The bird with gay plumage is essentially from the crow family. Its “scuffling movements” exemplify the restless movements as it pursues some hidden purpose. The birds symbolize the motor cyclist–groups owing to their reckless energy and  their proclivityto thrive in communities. They hunt for the instinct that dwells within them or their poise, or rather they seek both. Some exhibit needless or pointless speed. Some put on display their uncontrollable animal instinct.

They arrive in motor-cycles as flies in the heat, their strides across the road appearing smooth. The term the Boy refers to how the motorcycle gang haunted lonely women with their unrestrained attitude, a superlative assertion of their notion of masculinity. The sound of the bikes as they travel in unison bugles to the sound of thunder. The bikes are in supreme control between their calf and thigh. They adorn goggles; therefore it is not easy to distinguish between them –the impersonation is pronounced. The dust on their jackets are like trophies on to display of their ‘dont-care’ attitude. As they no longer communicate coherently, they have replaced meaning with noise.

Their energy has no destination; it is not channelized in the right direction. There is no ‘exact conclusion’ to it. They press forward where the tyres take them, with no objective and intention. They scare the care-free birds in their wild endeavour. Gunn states that the will-power should yield to the natural (instinct).This is perhaps what Martin Dodsworth called Gunn’s ‘voluntary commitment to the irrational.”

                                 Men manufacture both machine and soul,

                                 And use what they imperfectly control

                                 To dare a future from the taken routes.

Men are capable of the objective (machine) and the subjective(soul). They utilize the one they can (atleast)imperfectly control to carve the future according to the ‘taken routes’(conservative, inherited or the routes of experience). It is a partial solution to the existential dilemma. It cannot be considered to be a discord, if one acts according to his instincts. He cannot be damned if he is half-animal. One only lacks direct instinct, because as one wakes consciously in his world ,he is directed by social doctrines and dictums that compel him to move on their lines. One joins the movements; nevertheless the end-point is common for all-Death or Nihilism. The speaker asserts so that (at least) as long as one lives, let him strive forward in the direction he desires because, most significantly, it is his.

                                 A minute holds them, who have come to go:

                                 The self-denied, astride the created will.

                                 They burst away; the towns they travel through

                                 Are home for neither birds nor holiness,

                                 For birds and saints complete their purposes.

                                 At worse, one is in motion; and at best,

                                 Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,

                                 One is always nearer by not keeping still.

Everybody is united together at least for a minute in that they accept the fact that they ‘have come to go’. The ‘self-denied’ and the ‘created will’ are wasted in such a stance; they just burst way. The towns they travel through are ultimately not a home for the bird (signifying striving towards a destination) or ‘holiness’ (religious dictums). Birds and saints do eventually complete their purpose. As the desire of attaining the purpose is satiated, they lose the joy, as there is nothing to look forward to. However, the one in constant motion reaches no absolute (to quench himself).Neither is he static, nor has he reached any goal: the journey itself becomes the destination.

Summary 3

Stanza 1

In stanza one the first four lines describe a natural scene. Birds dart around in an energetic way doing what is instinctive (natural) for them to do. The birds, while undisturbed by humanity, are in harmony with their environment. In line 6 the pronoun ‘One’ is ambiguous and operates on more than one level. It refers to the poet, or people (mankind) or by extension to the bikers. This is usually difficult to explain to a class. I generally leave it at the level of the poet and if a brighter pupil spots the possible alternatives, I let discussion develop as far as they can take it. The point becomes clearer further on in the poem when the poet identifies with the basic feeling of indecision within mankind. In the final lines of the stanza mankind (or the bikers, or the poet) also acts with vigour, like the birds, but it does not know exactly what it is doing nor can mankind express its ideas clearly. In the attempt at articulation, a disturbance is caused – ‘an uncertain violence’. Humans are out of tune with themselves and their surroundings. (See stanza four – humans lack the instinct to direct their actions.) Note the words ‘dust’ and ‘thunder’ foreshadow the appearance of ‘the Boys’ in stanza two. Even the word ‘baffled’ operates on different levels, referring to frustration or an exhaust silencer.

Stanza 2

Stanza two opens with the view of the motorcycle gang in the distance as small and insect-like. They grow larger as they approach and the roar of their engines increases in volume. Soon the riders are seen astride their powerful machines. In their leather uniforms they all look the same (‘donned impersonality’). The distasteful images in line two suggest disapproval and even something alien. The gang’s physical (sexual?) mastery of the machines is suggested by ‘… held by calf and thigh…’. Lines 7 – 8 deal with the uniformity of clothing and behaviour – two aspects of the gang which are purposeful. The uniforms, their collective way of life and their constant movement almost give them a sense of purpose in life which may overcome their doubts about themselves.

Stanza 3

In Stanza three , the Boys’ are trying to prove their manhood, but are uncertain about how tough they really are. They know their origin, but they are not certain of their destination. The bikers disturb the birds and the poet sees this as typical of modern life: nature has now to submit to the will-power and control of man. This control is often unplanned and uncoordinated. Modern man makes ‘both machine and soul’ – he consciously shapes his beliefs and his characters – and he uses both these elements (although he cannot completely control either) to take great risks in unusual or novel enterprises. Men do not move (or are not motivated) by instinct only, as the birds do, but by their own acts of will – men have a measure of free will in their actions.

Stanza 4

Stanza four suggests that attempts by man (or the poet) to shape his future should not be condemned. Because man is only half animal he cannot act by pure instinct only, as the birds do. Man has to make decisions. These decisions are difficult and it helps him if he joins a gang or groundswell of human change (‘movement’: line 5) which will give him moral support and some values with which he can identify, while in that group. The actions of the gang make ‘the Boys’ feel that at least they are getting somewhere, but there is no concept of how or where the journey will end (death being an accepted absolute).

Stanza 5

In the final stanza, ‘the Boys’ do not stop for long. Soon these self-assured(?) young men mount their man-made machines and roar away. Their way of life (the route they travel) has no final goal or resting-place, and does not achieve a natural wholeness, as the lives of birds or saints do. Although they do not gain a feeling of satisfaction or completeness from life, they do at least feel that they are moving somewhere – which is better than sitting doing nothing at all. George McBeth in his book Poetry 1900 to 1975  (Longmans 1985) has this to say concerning the ending of the poem:

‘The last three lines of the poem have immense authority and might stand of Gunn’s central philosophy of life.’

Generally, the attitudes expressed in the poem are similar to the philosophy of existentialism: men have no God-given purpose, but must define themselves (line 34), manufacture their own souls (line 22) and choose their own destinations (line 31), thus creating some sort of value system where none existed before (line 30). (Elsewhere in his book McBeth states that Gunn has a ‘… clearly articulated group of attitudes. These seem to be that man is a creature possessinf free will whose identity lies in his power to choose and pick his future by his own actions. This philosophy derives from the existentialism of Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus.’)

Furthermore, men still have a measure of free will: life is a journey with an uncertain, if not unattainable, destination. Moving fast may give man the illusion of reacting vigorously to the difficulties of life. Man is not sure, however, that what is being moved forward is good or not so good.

It is worthwhile to note the ambivalence of the poet toof clear goals in life. Yet he seems to sympathize with them and to understand them, and he does not wish them to be condemned. He even seems to admire their powerful machines, their group feelings and their attitude that it is better to be doing something active rather than to sit inert.

On the Move - Thom Gunn - Poem Summary

Introduction:

This poem, from Gunn's second collection, is his most famous piece, and among the best-known of all post-war poems. In it, the aimless, but threatening movement of a motorcycle gang becomes a metaphor for modern man's sense of alienation and lack of purpose. In On the Move, Gunn uses a series of connected metaphors, all deriving from the key image of movement.

A Sociological "footnote of the fifties":

The poem is a sociological footnote of the fifties. The young black-jacketed motor cyclists of the west become fitting symbols of restless energy and violent movement. The subtitle of the poem, "Man, you gotta go" denotes the unwillingness and inability to stand still. It is the epigraph to the poem.

In the first stanza, Gunn briefly introduces the general premise of the poem, that is, always to be on the move. The bird of the crow family, the blue jay, with its gay plumage, with its confused movements, is also always on the move, following some hidden purpose.

The aimlessness of the motor-cycle gang:

The depiction of "the boys" in the second stanza seems sympathetic (they are seen very much as they wish to be seen, bikes, goggles, leather jackets) yet Gunn also views them critically. Gunn uses the analogy (parallel) of the actions of the motorcyclists to show how modern man in general (in the poem, referred to as "one") lacks a clear sense of purpose and thus follows others, even if their activity too, is ultimately purposeless. They are unable and unwilling to keep still. They have replaced language with noise, and pursue their hidden purpose forward.

The statement that men "manufacture both machine and soul" is developed in the reference, later, to the "self-defined" and the "created will". It examines the idea that modern man invents or chooses, as a deliberate act of will, definitions of lifestyle and personality, to supply what nature has omitted.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Gunn shows how the bikers' activity, because it is only a "part solution" leaves the central existential problem still open, whether there is a solution or only a "part solution" to man's lack of purpose. Thus, for Gunn, man's life is a struggle in which, through action, kind of victory is won in defeat. The poem can be understood in three ways: as an example for the poet's heroic stance; as a sociological footnote of the fifties, and as a beautifully finished piece of imaginative writing.

The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney

Introduction

I

The Tollund Man lived during the late 5th century BC and/or early 4th century BC, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. Such a find is known as a bog body. He is remarkable for the fact that his body was so well preserved that he seemed to have died only recently.

On 6 May, 1950, the Højgård brothers from the small village of Tollund were cutting peat for their tile stove and kitchen range in the Bjældskovdal peat bog, 10 km west of Silkeborg, Denmark. As the two brothers worked, they suddenly saw in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only suppose that they had stumbled on a recent murder. They immediately notified the police at Silkeborg.

The Tollund Man lay 50 metres away from firm ground, his body arranged in a foetal position, and had been buried under about two metres of peat. He wore a pointed skin cap on his head fastened securely under his chin by a hide thong. There was a smooth hide belt around his waist. Otherwise, he was naked. His hair was cropped so short as to be almost entirely hidden by his cap. He was almost clean-shaven, but there was very short stubble on his chin and upper lip, suggesting that he had not shaved on the day of his death. There was a rope made of two leather thongs twisted together under a small lump of peat beside his head. It was drawn tight around his neck and throat and then coiled like a snake over his shoulder and down his back.

Underneath the body was a thin layer of moss. Scientists know that this moss was formed in Danish peat bogs in the early Iron Age, therefore, the body was suspected to have been placed in the bog approximately 2,000 years ago during the early Iron Age. Subsequent C14 radiocarbon dating of Tollund Man’s hair indicated that he died in approximately 350 BC. The acid in the peat, along with the lack of oxygen underneath the surface, had preserved the soft tissues of his body.

Examinations and X-rays showed that the man’s head was undamaged, and his heart, lungs and liver were well preserved. He was not an old man, though he must have been over 20 years old because his wisdom teeth had grown in. The Silkeborg Museum estimates his age as 40 and height at 161 cm, comparatively short-statured even for his time. It is likely, however, that the body has shrunk in the bog.

He was probably hanged using the rope around his neck. The noose left clear marks on the skin under his chin and at the side of his neck but there was no mark at the back of the neck where the knot was found. Due to skeletal decomposition, it is impossible to tell if the neck had been broken.

The stomach and intestines were examined and tests carried out on their contents. The scientists discovered that the man’s last meal had been a kind of soup made from vegetables and seeds, some cultivated seeds and some wild: barley, linseed, ‘gold of pleasure’, knotweed, bristlegrass, and camomile.

There were no traces of meat in the man’s digestive system, and from the stage of digestion it was obvious that the man had lived for 12 to 24 hours after this last meal. In other words, he had not eaten for a day before his death. Although similar vegetable soups were not unusual for people of this time, two interesting things were noted:

1. The soup contained many different kinds of wild and cultivated seeds. Because these seeds were not readily available, it is likely that some of them were gathered deliberately for a special occasion.

2. The soup was made from seeds only available near the spring where he was found.

At first, Tollund Man was believed to be a rich man who had been ritually sacrificed, but recent analysis suggests that he may simply have been a criminal who was hanged and buried in the peat bog.

The body is currently kept in the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark.

II

Tollund Man’ is the best example of Heaney’s approach in his poetry. It was perhaps his first attempt at conflating (blending) his sense of Glob’s Jutland rituals with his own sense of mythic and modern Irish history. Heaney had read Glob’s book The Bog People’. ‘The ‘Tollund Man’ is one of the recovered bodies featured by Glob in his book. He was a victim sacrificed to Nerthus, in the hope of securing a good crop from the land, and it is in this sense that the speaker describes him, ‘Bridegroom to the goddess’. The speaker imagines the killing of the Tollund Man and his subsequent burial in the bog as a kind of violent love-making between victim and goddess, in which Nerthus, ‘opened her fen’, preserves the victim’s body by immersing it in her sexual ‘dark juices’. When the Tollund Man is dug up, many centuries later, the turf cutters discover,

His last gruel of winter seeds

Caked in his stomach.

As a sacrificial victim to the goddess of germination, he carries the potential of germination (‘gruel of winter seeds’) within himself rather than in the pockets of the young fighters in ‘Requiem for the Croppies’ whose graves sprouted with the barley from seeds in their pockets when they fell.

In the second section of the poem the connection between Jutland and Ireland is made explicit. Both places have had their innocent .victims. Ireland also has killings that have a certain ritualistic dimension to them. In the last stanza the speaker recalls an incident in which bodies of four young Catholics, murdered by Protestant militants, were dragged along a railway line in an act of mutilation:

‘Tell-tale skin and teeth

Flecking the sleepers

Of four young brothers, trailed

For miles along the lines.’

The speaker imagines that, if he addresses a prayer to the Tollund Man (‘risking blasphemy’ as a Christian by aligning himself with pagan rituals), then perhaps the potential for germination and regeneration inherent in the Tollund Man’s sacrifice, and in his very body (‘winter seeds’) might be released, not in the victim’s native Jutland, but in contemporary Ireland. It might ‘make germinate/The scattered, ambushed/ Flesh’ of the sacrificial victims.

In the final section of the poem, the speaker imagines a visit to the Museum in Aarhus where the Tollund Man has been in display. Though the names of the regions he passes through (Tollund, Grabaulle, Nebelgard’) will be alien to him, and the local language unintelligible, he fancies that, as an Irishman burdened with the weight of his country’s history, he will feel a kinship with a landscape that has witnessed similar conflict and killings.

The poem shows that the sacrificial death of the Tollund man is associated with ritual and this seems to be reflected in the dead body’s restful pose, which is a contrast to the terrible maiming and unrest of the victims in contemporary Irish society. The Tollund man’s body has been preserved and is aligned with a saint (saint’s kept body’).

The body is constantly associated with the Earth (‘peat-brown head’, ‘mild pods’) and fertility (‘His last gruel of winter seeds’). The earth is represented as female and sexual: ‘And opened her fen,/Those dark juices working’) and it is this that has preserved and elevated him to a saint.

He is seen as a bridegroom to the bride-goddess Earth, a sacrifice that will bring some good, some alleviation of pain (though of course he has been violently killed), unlike the death of the four young brothers who are killed shamefully, which resulted in only more turmoil and bloodshed.

The last lines reveal the state of mind of the speaker. The terrible paradox of both feeling lost and unhappy while ‘at home’, show the correspondences between Neolithic Jutland and modern Ireland as well as acknowledging the terror and loss that is an everyday occurrence in his world, though there is still resignation but rather a desire for peace that underlies the final lines and the whole poem.

Heaney does not venerate the Tollund Man as king or martyr, but as victim. His vowed journey to Aarhus in Jutland recalls the Catholic custom, of pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine, sometimes featuring the miraculously preserved body of the saint. Heaney’s ‘saint’ has had a brief period of glory, but has been violently killed ‘for the land’. To the poet, he stands for the Irish people killed for their allegiance to Ireland, a suggestion which is symbolically rendered as the embrace of the earth-goddess. The gold ‘tore’ (collar), worn by Celtic royalty, is likened to the arms of the goddess encircling the bridegroom’s neck, but the metaphor reminds us that this embrace is a strangulation, the noose of the victim bridegroom.

Structure

The poem is divided into eleven stanzas, and three parts. The first part has five stanzas, and the second and third three. The first part of the poem is a description of what Heaney will see when he views the body. The second part is the relationship between the religious sacrifice and the dead Irish, and the third Heaney in the country of Denmark. There is little rhyme (although Heaney uses end of line assonance occasionally), but there is a singsong rhythm in the up and down of the vowel sounds, despite Heaney's use of enjambment.

Summary 2

            The Tollund Man is a poem that promises a pilgrimage: "Some day I will go to Aarhus". In the first few stanzas the tone is expectant, determined, yet at the same time the future tense is an indication of the remoteness of the poem from the time it speaks of. While the poem never wanders in conviction, there is an element of foreignness and distance, which is reinforced by the place names ‘Aarhus’, and later ‘Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard’.

            The Tollund Man is unnamed. The pilgrim will go "to see his peat brown head"; he goes to worship, in a way, yet the tone remains impersonal. The Tollund Man is passive, his eye-lids "mild pods". A victim, the action of the poem relates not who he is but what is done to him, and in the end he "reposes" in "sad freedom". The Tollund Man, like the girl in Punishment, is portrayed as a scapegoat for society’s crimes and ignorance.

            The Tollund Man’s own journey begins when "they dug him out", destroyed and elevated at the same time. The meticulous observations of the narrator are again, detached, "his last gruel of winter seeds/caked in his stomach" yet also emphatic, emphasizing vulnerability "naked except for/the cap, noose and girdle" the remains of a ritual death.
The pilgrim makes a respectful promise to "stand a long time", but the action itself is passive, promising not to move.

            The last line of this stanza "bridegroom to the goddess" takes on a more ominous, forceful tone as the bog itself is personified and equated to Ireland, female and overwhelming "she tightened her torc on him". The language indicates the powerlessness of the victim in the face of greater, unfathomable powers, but at the same time metaphorically insists on his quasi-divinity, worked "to a saint’s kept body", bringing in religion and relating it to violence and ritual death. The Tollund Man becomes almost, a surrogate Christ. He is left to chance, "trove of the turf cutters" and finally resurrected until at last "his stained face/Reposes…"

            The poet links religion with the ordering of violence or sacrifice in order to bring peace again in comparing "the old man killing parishes of Jutland" with his own land.

            The second part of the poem suddenly becomes more emphatic after the stillness of the previous line "reposes at Aarhus" as the narrator says "I could risk blasphemy". Again here, religion is directly connected to violence but this time the pilgrim says he could "consecrate the cauldron bog/our holy ground". Religion derives it’s power from the land, as the land demands sacrifice, a 'bridegroom’, to whom the pilgrim will "pray/him to make germinate". Deriving his power from the land which turned him to a saint, the Tollund Man as victim, is linked to the "four young brothers", to whom he is both kin and saint, to "flesh of labourers" and "stockinged corpses". His paradoxical survival and repose should, the poem implies, give him the power to raise others. At this point, the language is both bleak and harsh, and can be interpreted as an impotent longing to obliterate the wrongs of the past, attempting to see this resurrection as redemption from violence, but seeing only the similarities of a ‘ritual’ of death, uncontrolled and meaningless.

            The last part of the poem returns to the quiet beginning, but here, instead of determination and looking forward, there is sorrow and despair, a sense of isolation which is linked to language. The pilgrim insists that the ‘sad freedom’ of the Tollund Man "should come to me…/saying the names" yet showing that ultimately exile means "watching the pointing hands/ of country people/not knowing their tongues" as language is defined as the root of culture, of nationality. Along with religion, and a sense of history and myth, language is central to Heaney’s poetry, and here the idea of isolation is brought sharply to the reader through the idea of being ‘lost’ in a foreign land, yet ultimately the paradoxical nature of exile is realized, the poet realizes that he feels at home in a state of homelessness, and welcomes the feeling of being lost, of not belonging to society, a sort of ‘sad freedom’ he shares with the Tollund Man, no longer tied to religious forces. The poem ends in a statement which describes both the isolation and empowering sense of exile: "I will feel lost/unhappy and at home".