Story Telling and Survival in Unknown Citizen
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Stories are told in order that they can enhance people’s survival. Storytelling should aim at passing important information to society. When an individual purports to possess life or death information, they may desire to share the same through storytelling. Even for literary works where the information is not straightforward, there has to be a lesson with survival value concealed and requiring a critical mind to decipher. The preceding discussion talks about storytelling and survival at length.
In the poem, The Unknown Citizen, the way stories can enhance people’s survival is seen. Here, words have been inscribed on a monument. The monument is dedicated impersonally to a person only identified with a number that looks like the social security number assigned all United States residents. For example, apart from the number, JS/07 M 378, the only other detail included in the epigraph is the erector of the monument, the state. The name of the person is not known. Not much is told about him, but from what the poem insinuates, he could have been a soldier who died when fighting for his country. By telling about a dedicated soldier whose name the state does not even know, a story as this is told for survival to warn would-be victims.
A lesson with a survival value can be learnt from the story. The tomb on which the monument is erected represents thousands of others scattered across the country of loyal soldiers who lost their lives fighting for the country. The state is so unfair to them because the only reward it gives them is giving them a ceremonious burial and erecting the kind of monument described in the poem. Such form of reference to a person who died anonymously while fighting for his country is not only cold but also impersonal. Currently, government departments in the United States use these codes to identify its citizens rather than their names. A person willing to dedicate all of his or her life to the state should be warned by this story. By putting up the marble monument, the state was pretending to be celebrating an honored official. By referring to the authority that erected the monument as the ‘state,’ there is a lot of ambiguity. One is unable to tell the exact government that erected the monument, whether it is that or George Bush or the one for Clinton. Marble is known to be very expensive; in fact, it is only the government that can afford such a commodity for use as a monument. For example, the reader may be wondering why the state undertakes to use all that money on a statute on which incomprehensible things are written. The poet can be thought of as just having fun when he came up with those letters.
The aspect of survival in the poem is that people will not commit their time to the state at the expense of improving their lives. A question lingers about this man, although he is fallen already. The concern is on whether he lived a free live or he was happy. At the end of the poem, this question has not been answered. It is deliberately skipped and the space on which it could have been written taken up by words that do not convey any meaning to fellow citizens. The survival lesson is that the government uses people and has them commit to serve it all their lives. In return, there is nothing appreciable to show for it. Only unnecessary recognitions are granted, and it is the only state that knows the importance of such recognitions. To the common United State national, there are nothing but empty bureaucratizing acknowledgements that are not helpful at all (Auden, 2007). There was no official complaint raised against the unknown citizen. The Bureau of Statistics believes he was a very admirable person, which is the reason it heaps praises of all kinds on him. Such impersonal treatment of citizens by the authorities has permeated all spheres of live.
To sum up, Ingram’s statement is highly applicable that stories are told for survival. For example, having read the story of The Unknown Citizen, no person will wait for meaningful reward from the authorities, regardless of the capacity in which he or she served.