The poem immediately depersonalizes the unknown citizen by identifying him as JS/07 M 378. Though the reader is informed from the title that the citizen is “unknown”, his letter/number combination given to him emphasizes his ambiguity. The fact that a monument was erected in his honor is heavily ironic because a monument’s purpose is to make someone known; Auden’s unknown citizen is being made known by how unknown he truly is. The first line of the poem mentions that the unknown citizen was “found by the Bureau of Statistics to be one against whom there was no official complaint”. The reality of this time period reveals that an actual “Bureau of Statistics” did not exist. Auden is referring to general institutions of government and economy that are keeping track of inconsistency. The unknown citizen has no complaint against him. Not only did the unknown citizen do nothing wrong for the “Bureau” to notice him, but he also did nothing outstandingly right for him to be noticed either. When the speaker calls the unknown citizen a “saint”, it is clearly explained that the speaker means this not in the old-fashioned way.
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