In Auden's lengthy poem, The Age of Anxiety_, he follows the actions and
             thoughts of four characters who happen to meet in a bar during a war.
             Their interactions with one another lead them on an imaginary quest in
             their minds in which they attempt, without success, to discover
             themselves. The themes and ideas that Auden's The Age of Anxiety
             conveys reflect his belief that man's quest for self-actualization is in
             W. H. Auden was born in York, England, in 1907, the third and
             youngest son of Constance and George Auden (Magill 72). His poetry in
             the 1930's reflected the world of his era, a world of depression,
             Fascism, and war. His works adopt a prose of a "clinical diagrostician
             [sic] anatomizing society" and interpret social and spiritual acts as
             failures of communication (Magill 74). They also put forth a diagnosis
             of the industrial English society among economic and moral decay in the
             1930's (Magill 72). Conflicts common in his works are those between war
             and peace, corruption of modern society, and the "dichotomy between the
             The Age of Anxiety is, in general, a quest poem. Unlike the
             ideal quest, however, this quest accomplishes nothing. The characters
             search for the meaning of self and, in essence, the meaning of life, but
             because their search is triggered by intoxication due to alchohol, the
             quest is doomed from the start. Throughout the quest, the characters
             believe themselves to be in a form of Purgatory when they are
             allegorically in Hell. They fail to realize this due to "the modern
             human condition which denies possibility but refuses to call it
             In The Age of Anxiety, there are four characters of
             significance. Quant, the first to be introduced, addresses himself in a
             mirror, an action typical to a drunken man. He is an aging homosexual
             widower who finds refuge in the mirror because it offers him the easiest
             way o...