Values 67 - Analysis

A satire that trains you not to see

The poem’s central claim is blunt: modern public “values” are built by teaching citizens to look away. The opening order—Pass by citizen, don't look left or right—sounds like advice for crossing a street, but quickly becomes a moral instruction: keep your vision narrow, your attention disciplined, your feelings dried out into drip dry eyes. Milligan isn’t describing one bad person so much as a whole social posture, a kind of civic obedience where safety, tidiness, and convenience are treated as virtues even when they require ugliness and cruelty.

Nature reframed as threat: the tree and the lightning excuse

The poem’s first vivid example is a tree, which should be an emblem of life, shade, and time. Instead, it’s treated as a hazard to be removed: A tree? Chop it down, because it’s a danger to lightning! The logic is absurdly protective—cut the tree to protect yourself from weather—yet that absurdity is the point. The poem suggests a society that uses “safety” as a pretext to flatten whatever is living, unpredictable, or unprofitable. The exclamation mark after lightning! mimics the overeager certainty of official reasoning: it’s not that the speaker thinks; the speaker asserts. Underneath that, there’s a darker irony: lightning is natural, but the tree becomes the scapegoat. The citizen is trained to fear the world rather than understand it.

Thirsty pansies, “labour saving” roses, and the cruelty of cleanliness

The most uncomfortable turn is how the poem moves from plants to people without pausing. Pansies calling for water should trigger care, but the command is Let 'em die, followed by the slur queer bastards. The poem isn’t endorsing that violence; it’s exposing how easily a culture that prefers plastic over living things also prefers contempt over compassion. The pansies are simultaneously literal flowers and a target of social hatred, making neglect feel like a moral habit rather than an accident.

Against the dying pansies, the poem offers a substitute that’s grotesquely proud of itself: the scarlet, labour saving plastic rose, described as Fresh but scented with detergent—fragrance of Daz. The contradiction is sharp: “freshness” is no longer the smell of soil or water; it’s the smell of a product. The plastic rose is comfort precisely because it asks nothing of you: no watering, no patience, no response to another living thing. The poem’s value-system is “careless care”—keep surfaces bright while allowing life to wither.

Sunday worship redirected to a “Four wheeled God”

The poem’s satire sharpens when it borrows religious language: Sunday! Pray citizen; but the prayer is not for mercy, justice, or even gratitude. It’s for the protection of appearances: Pray no rain will fall on the newly polished car, the Four wheeled God. This is the poem’s clearest statement of what has replaced older forms of reverence. Rain, which should be a blessing (especially after calling for water), becomes a threat because it might ruin shine. The citizen who refused water to pansies now fears water for himself—an ugly little moral equation the poem makes painfully visible.

The envoi: “Beauty” as a medical problem

The final couplet lands like a slap. After the social orders and consumer fragrances, the poem quotes a familiar saying—Beauty is in the eye—only to twist it into a prescription: Get it out with Optrex. The joke is dark: if beauty depends on the eye, then remove beauty by medicating the eye. In other words, the culture’s solution to discomfort is not to change the world but to numb perception. Optrex (an eye-wash) becomes a symbol of a wider hygiene-obsession that treats sight itself like something to disinfect.

A harder implication: the citizen as accomplice

The poem keeps saying citizen, not “driver,” not “consumer,” not “homeowner.” That word implies rights and shared responsibility, yet everything the citizen is told to do shrinks responsibility down to private polish and private disgust. If you obey—eyes ahead, tree down, pansies dead, plastic rose, no rain—then you don’t just inherit ugly values; you help enforce them. The poem’s sting is that this ugliness doesn’t need a villain. It only needs a citizen who agrees not to look.