Analysis of Audens The Age of Anxiety :: Auden The Age of Anxiety Essays

Analysis of Audens The Age of AnxietyIn Audens lengthy poem, The Age of Anxiety, he follows the actions and thoughts of quaternary characters who happen to meet in a bar duringa warfare. Their interactions with one anformer(a) lead them on an imaginary questin their minds in which they attempt, without success, to attendthemselves. The themes and ideas that Audens The Age of Anxiety conveysreflect his belief that mans quest for self-actualization is in vain. W. H. Auden was born in York, England, in 1907, the third andyoungest son of Constance and George Auden (Magill 72). His poetry in the1930s reflected the world of his era, a world of depression, Fascism, andwar. His works adopt a prose of a clinical diagrostician sicanatomizing society and interpret social and spiritual acts as failures ofcommunication (Magill 74). They also put forwards a diagnosis of theindustrial English society among economic and moral decay in the 1930s(Magill 72). Conflicts common in his works are those between war and peace,corruption of modern society, and the dichotomy between the rich and thepoor (Barrows 317). The Age of Anxiety is, in general, a quest poem. Unlike theideal quest, however, this quest accomplishes nothing. The characters chase for the meaning of self and, in essence, the meaning of life, butbecause their search is triggered by intoxication due to alchohol, thequest is doomed from the start. Throughout the quest, the charactersbelieve themselves to be in a form of Purgatory when they are allegoricallyin Hell. They fail to realize this due to the modern human conditionwhich denies possibility but refuses to call it unattainable (Nelson 117). In The Age of Anxiety, there are four characters of significance.Quant, the first to be introduced, addresses himself in a mirror, an actiontypical to a drunken man. He is an aging homosexual widower who findsrefuge in the mirror because it offers him the easiest way of facinghimself (Nelson 117-118). Malin, the most dominan t character overall, is a medicalintelligence military officer on leave from the Canadian Air Force. His backgroundlabels him as the would-be doctor and leader in the world of The Age ofAnxiety. His name is reminiscent, in relation to the war, of a malingerer,and the composition of his personality hints at the evil within him (Nelson118). Rosetta, the most human of the characters, is a department storebuyer, and comes closer to self-actualization than any of the othercharacters in the poem. Emble is a young sailor and would-be prince whose