His works include the collections and poems Look Stranger! Refugee Blues by W. Auden deals with one aspect of the plight of the Jews, that is to say the misery of the refugees. The Jews were the people in World War II left with no choices — their fate was in the hands of a maniac.
If they fled, their fate was in the hands of the countries in which they arrived. Auden vividly shows through simple examples and language, how this lack of choice and lack of identity left Jews in desperate and depressing situations.
Blues are melancholic songs which sing of sadness and misery. Their choices were not great. By early ,Hitler had murdered 5,, Jews from all over Europe.
The poem begins by introducing a city with 10 million people in it. The poem shows how they are exiled from their own country and cannot return. They can see it on a map, can look at it in an atlas — but cannot return. However, this is contrasted with man-made documents that, once lost, can never be recovered. They then go to three places where they need help.
The speaker and his beloved have no place to go and they have no freedom. The poem ends by saying a dream of the speaker, he dreamed of a building with thousand floors, windows and doors but actually, they are standing on the great plain in the falling snow, where ten thousands of soldiers marched to and fro looking for the couple. Refugee Blues is a poem by W. The poem dramatizes the condition of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the years before World War II, especially the indifference and antagonism they faced when seeking asylum in the democracies of the period.
Obviously, as a refugee, the couple has lost their home, their country and their identity. The melancholy feeling comes through strongly in the blues — a sad song. This poem is set in Germany in the s when the Jewish people were being persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Later, Blues became part of the development of popular song and jazz. Each stanza has two rhyming lines that relate in some way to the plight of Jewish European refugees during the Second World War such as lack of housing, shelter, expired and nonrenewable paperwork, unhelpful bureaucrats etc.
The refrain of each stanza is essentially the German refugee personalizing these woes. The tone of each stanza hints at the desperation of the refugees as all doors are closed to them and all their rights gradually removed. The images of a vast building with seemingly many rooms, doors and windows imply a place that could shelter many people yet has no space for the refugees. It is also a metaphor for the other countries of the world that had room to take in refugees yet restricted their entry citing lack of room and resources.
The noise generated by these warplanes and their bombs would have resembled a severe thunderstorm. The poet has used two lines that end with a rhyme followed by a refrain. This refrain personalizes each stanza to the plight of the refugee, almost a realization of their eventual fate.
Auden is a poem about the harsh realities of war; including themes such as: loss, suffering, and change. What is the setting of the poem Refugee Blues? This poem was written in Brilliant in a tragic way. Trystan - It's a great poem. A beautiful poem that contrasts so much with the cold mechanisation of the impersonal modern state. The poet has told the fate of jewish refugee's very well and its really a pain to understand. This poem really made me much emotional.
It is sad to think that it one only on sect targeted at and this poem truly brings out the inner turmoil faced by such people. The comparision to the cat was most touching because it shows that we cannot care for our own species as much as we do for others.
It is a very revolting but eye- opening idea. I would recommend it to everyone. This poem has the power to change as it has definitely changed my attitude torwards war and such things.
The author laments of travels in efforts to stave of from those bent on their destruction and those in fear of being over run in taking them in. This well versed piece has described the lost lonely worries of nowhere to run.
And mankind's reluctance in harboring of them. No compassion could be found,nor commonality. Very sad. And a dated era classic. As mermaid7 stated- genocide is seen in this poem- it has shown some of my fellow students what power one could have to do something as unmentionable as that.
It must have been awful that being an incredible understatement in those times and to write something as meaningful as that just leaves me fascinated. I personally love writing poetry myself and I think we should have poems like this to look back on to reflect just how beautiful poetry can be. More schools should be looking at poetry like this- how extreme cases can be.
No matter how cruel this poem seems- it does open your eyes at how peaceful life is at present despite war, but genocide is just the worst thing, which many dont realise currently Yew trees growing in graveyards can bloom again every spring, but once we relinquished our passports and fled our homeland, we did so for good.
I went to a committee to get a position, and they told me to sit down, but they turned me down for the job and said to come back next year. But how are we going to eat in the meantime? I look around and see European dogs and cats, which have been allowed into America to live; but German Jews like us are not allowed to come here. Even the fish nearby in the harbour seem to be freer than us, and the birds singing in the trees.
I stood in the snow and saw ten thousand soldiers marching around, looking for illegal refugees like us. If this brief analysis does nothing more, perhaps it will encourage one or two new readers to seek it out. Auden later distanced himself from this experimental false start, describing The Orators as the kind of work produced by someone who would later either become a fascist or go mad. He died in in Austria, where he had a holiday home.
The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University.
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