Critical Analysis Of Refugee Blues

Human suffering is a popular theme for poets and writers, there are many examples of human suffering in the world, such as famine, political and religious conflict. “Disabled” and “Refugee Blues” reflect human suffering as they are both set during World War 1 and World War 2. The writer of “Disabled”, Wilfred Owen, is arguably the greatest war poet in the world as he wanted to advocate the truth about the horrors of war. Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, another important war poet, during his stay at Craiglockhart War Hospital. They inspired each other and eventually they produced many poems that showed the reality of war. “Refugee Blues” by W. H. Auden, is another great poem showing how refugees were treated inhumanly during wars. The poem

For example, “we cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now” This shows that the refugees got no home to go even it shows on the atlas. He uses the sentence “It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die’” to show that Hitler was everywhere and this is a very effective metaphor, also he uses a kind of pathetic fallacy to emphasise how helpless the refugees are. Auden writes the line “if we let them in, they will steal our daily bread” to show that even the religious people are unwilling to help the refugees. This can emphasise that how helpless they are as even the most helpful people were unwilling to help them. Contrasts are used effectively throughout the poem for example in second line, Auden compares the rich and the poor through the description of what kind of place they are living, and then he highlights that even the poor had a home but not them. He uses contrasts between animals and the refugees, in line 22 and 23 “saw a poodle in a jacket… a cat let in” He shows how animals are treated even better than the refugees and they are dehumanised. He also makes a contrast with fishes in the quay to show that they want to be free like those fishes. He feels envious and jealous of the fishes, but the other way he feels powerless as he describes that freedom is only ten feet away and he cannot reach it,

In the first stanza, Auden shows that there are actually a lot of people who get a home, but they don’t even spare one space for the refugees- “yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us”. Also, when the consul says “if you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”, from that we can sense that the consul treats them harshly. In the last line of stanza 4 “but we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive”, it shows that the refugees are experiencing human suffering. Also in the second last stanza, Auden writes that the refugee dreamt and saw a building with thousand floors, windows and doors but there were no one helping them, and this can make a contrast between the refugees and the mount of people who don’t have to seek