Hills like White Elephants

THE EXPECTATION THAT SOCIETY HAS PLACED ON PEOPLE CREATES A FEELING OF ALIENATION AND IS EXHIBITED IN THE POEMS “THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN,” “ELEANOR RIGBY,” “DOLOR,” “RICHARD CORY.”

Our peers in society has created an unspoken standard that people are judged by and expected to follow and for the people who can not live within those standards they have a hard time associating with friends, family, co-workers, and themselves.

In A.H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” the audience finds a man who is considered an ideal citizen, co-worker, and husband. The poem states, “That in the modern sense of an old fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community” (4,5). Sadly the only way the people can remember this man is through government documentations, union dues, number of children, and his job. It is shown through documentation that he was an upstanding citizen. As the title reveals people knew nothing about him and what actually made him happy or unhappy. The reader is left wondering how someone that was involved in the community and popular could go through life without someone knowing his problems or what made happy or unhappy.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney reveal what a person’s life can be like when a person does not fit into with society in their poem “Eleanor Rigby.” The focus is on two people who have become alienated from the outside world. The poem reveals that Eleanor “Lives in a dream, Waits at the window wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” (5,6,7). The reader is left with the impression that Eleanor has no friends and longs for companionship. The other person, Father McKenize, should have many friends, but the poem suggests he does not. “Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near” (14,15). After reading this poem the reader is left with many unanswered question such as, “What prevented Eleanor and Father McKenize from becoming friends.

Theodore Roethke gives a different perspective about the office environment in his poem “Dolor.” The tone of the poem suggests that working in an office can become very boring. Although there are people coming and going all day, there is still “Desolation in immaculate public places” (4). Roethke uses personification to describe the feelings of different supplies and equipment in the office. “All the misery of manila folders and mucilage” (3). He gives the reader the impression that there are “Lonely reception