analyze in detail Auden's poem the unknown citizen as a satirical poem

One of Auden's most famous poems, The Unknown Citizen, is often studied because of its use of irony and satire as it complains about the stupifying and homogenous monotony of bureaucratic Western governments. It should be noted that the Unknown Citizen sounds eerily like the 'Unknown Soldier' memorial, representing those soldiers that fought and died and whose names are lost to time.

In Line 2 some irony shines through as the poem praises the fact that the citizen memorialized had no official complaints. And, again, in line 20 it is evident that the government officials who errected the monument were trying to 'sell' the community on it as they use typical advertising phrases like "everything necessary to the Modern Man".

If this poem has a sort of Orwellian feel to it, it should. The 'big brother' aspect is rampant from the beginning, showing how this man had every aspect of his life scrutinized and observed. The entire point and message of the poem comes in the last lines when it asks the simple questions of this model citizen: “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” But, of course, no we wouldn't have heard.