Auden’s Portrayal of the Modern Wasteland in “The Shield of Achilles” and “Musée des Beaux Arts”

This study intends to show W.H. Auden’s unique portrayal of the Modern Wasteland by using two of his famous poems, "The Shield of Achilles" and "Musée des Beaux Arts". Whereas the wasteland is a center of spiritual hollowness and cultural dryness for T.S. Eliot, Auden views it as a man-made construct and a site of social, moral and psychological decay. By using a qualitative approach and detailed textual analysis, the study shows that Auden’s wasteland operates in two different ways. In "The Shield of Achilles”, the wasteland is shown as a landscape that is harsh, bureaucratic and militaristic, where individuals are stripped of their identities and violence is normalized by faceless authority figures. On the contrary, in “Musée des Beaux Arts", the wasteland is shown as a part and parcel of everyday life where ordinary citizens are accustomed to comfort and routine and remain indifferent to others’ sufferings. The study concludes that the modern wasteland is not merely a physical place but exists in each and every modern human being’s mind.