In the depiction of this unknown face in modern society, the speaker of the poem deliberately and carefully inflates his words to heighten the sense of irony. The citizen had a job and had never been fired. He was a due-paying union member. He was popular with his drinking buddies. He subscribed to a daily newspaper. He was law-abiding and owned a “phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.” Despite all that and more, nobody knows his name. He is not an individual, a free thinker, but a mere number in some bureaucratic government paperwork: “JS/07/M/378/.”
The speaker of the poem reinforces the irony through further dehumanization. An outsider looking at bureaucratic records or reports, possibly a federal agent who keeps the records of this unknown man, renders all the descriptions about the citizen. In fact, he was defined “by the Bureau of Statistics” and not by his family or his friends. The use of a passive voice further accentuates the automaton-like feature of this man. The speaker then obscures the individuality of this unknown man by calling him not by his name but by “One,” an impersonal pronoun, a John Doe whom nobody knows.
Even the correct capitalization in “Fudge Motors Inc.,” sounds, well, “fudge.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines fudge as an “inarticulate expression of indignant disgust.” By deliberately capitalizing words that do not need to be capitalized, the speaker of the poem deflates the true meaning of these words, making them sound hollow, meaningless, and ironic: “Social Psychology,” “Producers Research,” “High Grade Living,” “Public Opinion” and “Eugenist.” By deliberately capitalizing these ordinary words, the speaker buffoons the seriousness of their meaning as if to say, “What a joke they are!” hence reinforcing the overall irony of the poem.
On the surface, the speaker sounds as though he is memorializing this faceless, nameless figure in the crowd. Like a government-programmed robot, the unknown citizen has never complained against anything: In fact, “. . . he held the proper opinions for the time of year,” and he produced the expected number of children for that time. The ironic tone here is patronizing, if not condescending: All his actions were sanctioned by the government. The speaker then deepens the irony further through sarcastic rhetorical questions: “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” The adverb “certainly” in the last line brings the patronizing tone to its climax. You can sense the piercing sarcasm here in the tone, heightening the biting irony.