The themes and ideas in Auden's _The Age of Anxiety_ reflect his belief that man's quest for self actualization is in vain.
2. Diagnosis of the industrial society
1. Characters' search for self-actualization
2. Characters' inevitable failure in the quest
B. Characters' views on the general situation
1. Their belief to be in Purgatory when they are allegorically in Hell
2. Their disbelief in impossibility
III. _The Age of Anxiety_ character analysis
C. Characters think aloud to reveal their nature
1. Quant views himself with false admiration
2. Malin examines the theoretical nature of man
3. Rosetta endeavors to create an imaginary and happy past
4. Emble passes his youthful judgment on the others' follies
V. First act of Part II, "The Seven Ages"
2. Controls the characters through his introduction of each age
B. Others support Malin's theories by drawing from past, present, and potential future experiences
a. Malin asks the reader to "Behold the infant"
b. Child is "helpless in cradle and Righteous still" but already has a "Dread in his dreams"
b. Age at which man realizes "his life-bet with a lying self"
c. Naive belief in self and place in life is boundless
d. It is the age of belief in the possibility of a future
b. Distinction between dream and reality
c. Discovery that love, as it was thought to be, is a sharp contrast to love in the bounds of reality
a. Presents circus imagery "as a form of art too close to life to have any purgative effect on the audience"
b. Rosetta's definition of life and the world
a. Conveys the image of man as "an astonished victor"
b. Man believes he has made peace with the meaning of life
c. Anxiety declines as "He [man] learns to speak Softer and slower, not to seem so eager"
d. Man is no longer confined to a prison of prismatic color, but is free in the dull, bland place that is the world
e. Emble's opposition of the ...