Themes in Auden's poems include suffering and the dehumanization of modern life. A poem that explores the theme of suffering is "Musee des Beaux Arts" while “The Shield of Achilles" focuses on dehumanization. Both poems are ekphrastic, meaning that they use description of a work of art to express their themes.

Suffering comes up frequently as a theme in Auden, especially as he witnessed such mid-century horrors as World War II. In "Musee des Beaux Arts," however, he focuses on the universal aspect of indifference to suffering. He believed that art—in this case, Brueghel's painting depicting Icarus falling into the sea—reveals hidden truth. Here, the artist places Icarus into a corner of his painting almost as an afterthought—Icarus's failed attempt to soar close to the sun is put in the context of people going on with their ordinary lives, oblivious to the tragedies other suffer in plain sight.

In "The Shield of Achilles," Auden shows the mechanized and dehumanizing quality of modern warfare, especially as practiced by fascists with their focus on reducing individuals to a mass:

unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line

He highlights the horror of the modern age by contrasting it to scenes from the shield of Achilles. In a famous passage in the Iliad, Homer describes the new shield Achilles has made. This work of art displays all that the soldiers are fighting to defend in the Trojan war—the peaceful villages and tilled fields of ancient Greece, as well as the joyous Greek festivals. Auden contrasts this to the blank ugliness of the society the fascist soldiers are fighting to expand, bringing up the question of what modern warfare means if it is supporting barbed wire and barren landscapes rather than defending a generous and humane way of life.