W.H.Auden- Refugee Blues

W.H. Auden is an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His 1939 poem entited 'Refugee Blues' is an imaginative depiction of the life-threatening plight of German Jews escaping from Nazi Germany, many of whom saw what was to come after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1930. The political message of Refugee Blues is typical of Auden's poetry which often revloves around politics, citizenship, religion and morals.

Refugee Blues is split into 12 stanzas, each with 3 lines. The poem is written from the first person narrative of a Jewish refugee describing the trouble they are having trying to find a new home having fled Nazi Germany. The narrator often says "my dear" as if he is speaking to someone else: "We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now." Auden does this because it personalises the inhumanity of what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. People often look at figures for the amount of German Jews killed by the Nazis and fail to understand the inhumanity of it all. Auden's peom helps us do this.

The peom's structure is simple; a rhyming couplet and a single line in each stanza. The simplicity of the poem makes it more effective at making a serious political statement: the traditional structure emphasises the powerful imagery. For example, in the 9th stanza it says "went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay, saw the fish swimming as if they were free." The fish are free and untroubled, unlike the poems characters who are homeless and endangered. Auden's symbolism of nature in Refugee Blues emphasises the distinction between the Nazis inhumane political system and the beauty of nature which is often taken for granted. Freedom and human rights are something that the majority of us, including Auden, who grew up as an upper class Englishmen, take for granted: Refugee Blues' message is that this shouldn't be taken for granted because others are not so fortunate.