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

Analysis of Audens The Age of fretfulnessIn Audens elongated poem, The Age of fear, he follows the actions and thoughts of four characters who happen to meet in a bar duringa war. Their interactions with one another lead them on an imaginary questin their minds in which they attempt, without success, to discoverthemselves. 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 earthly concern of his era, a world of depression, Fascism, andwar. His works adopt a prose of a clinical diagrostician sicanatomizing society and pick up social and spiritual acts as failures ofcommunication (Magill 74). They also put frontward a diagnosis of theindustrial English society among economic and honourable decay in the 1930s(Magill 72). Conflicts common in his works a re those in the midst of war and peace,corruption of modern society, and the dichotomy between the rich and the sad (Barrows 317). The Age of Anxiety is, in general, a quest poem. Unlike the pattern quest, however, this quest accomplishes nothing. The characterssearch for the meaning of self and, in essence, the meaning of life, thatbecause their search is triggered by intoxication due to alchohol, thequest is doomed from the start. passim 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 nail downwhich denies possibility but refuses to call it impossible (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 homophile(prenominal) widower who findsrefuge in the mirror because it offers him the easiest way of facinghimself (Nelson 117 -118). Malin, the near dominant character overall, is a medicalintelligence officer on leave from the Canadian Air Force. His backgroundlabels him as the would-be impact 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 at bottom him (Nelson118). Rosetta, the most human of the characters, is a department storebuyer, and comes closer to self-actualization than any(prenominal) of the othercharacters in the poem. Emble is a young sailor and would-be prince whose