Essay | Barthelme's Game - Auden's Unknown Citizen

In Donald Barthelme's short story "Game", he writes about two men stuck in an underground bunker or base in which they await orders from a higher authority. They are living during a time of war. Not just any kind of war... This was nuclear war. This is the opposite of the world of W.H. Auden's poem, "The Unknown Citizen" which is about a person who is living the "perfect" life in the "perfect" world in which complaints are nonexistent. Both stories have one thing in common. Society has taken away their freedom in one form or another.

When the short story "Game" was published, 1965, the cold war was at its peak. "We have been here one hundred thirty-three days... We have been here one hundred thirty-three days..." The phrase is repeated many times throughout the story by the narrator. It is most likely a reference to the fourteen days...
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