Does Auden Express His Personal Views in His Poetry?

796 Words4 Pages
"Auden uses his poetry to express is views on life", to what extent do you agree with this statement? Throughout W. H. Auden's poetry it is clear through analysis that his poetry has been used to express his beliefs, his views range from philosophically moral, "If I Could Tell You", to political, " O What Is That Sound?". The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature. Auden's poems written in the late 1920's to mid1930's established him as a left wing poet. Auden's collection, On This Island, earlier published as "Look, Stranger!" culminate his style and content, including love poems, comic songs, political odes and intense verse, among the poems were "O What Is That Sound" and "1st September 1939". To fully understand Auden's views we should delve deeper into his poetry, in "O What Is That Sound" Auden has used a simple AbAb rhyming structure to create a strong resemblance of marching, with the structure of the poem resembling a nursery rhyme, which could be a weakly linked to the child like dependency we have on our state. Using two speakers, the first, consoling and calm, the second childlike and seeking comfort, Auden has created a conversation between two characters illustrating betrayal, in which the first speaker is afraid the soldiers are after him and the second speaker constantly reassures the first speaker it is no such thing, until the last moment in which the soldiers are breaking down the gate to his home, "were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?", put into context, it could be further analysed as the state betraying the "common man". The language that Auden has used could link to totalitarianism, in which the state/government uses propaganda to control the people, Auden's overuse of the repeated "dear"
Open Document