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Hi, I’m in 8th grade doing an English assignment on the theme of “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden. This is the poem:

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
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.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
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)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
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.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard

From Shmoop Poetry on The Unknown Citizen

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.

Themes include:
Identity
Manipulation
Patriotism
Passivity

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