The Unknown Citizen

“The Unknown Citizen” is written in the style of an elegy, a poem with the intent to memorialize the dead. It begins with a three-line epitaph to the titular citizen known only as “JS/07 M 378,” who is later identified as male. An epitaph is a text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, and the unknown citizen’s “monument / is erected by the State,” whose words about the dead man are mainly a catalog of generic attributes, showing nothing of his specific character or his passions. The quality of his welfare is assessed only by the government’s criteria of what might make a man “free […] [or] happy” (Line 28). To them, his ability to not stand out in any exceptional way is worthy of praise. To the governmental body known as the State, the unknown citizen is merely an identification number, his individuality completely obliterated. The rhetorical questions at the end of the poem, along with the response, are intended to be ironic. The poem can be read as having a sinister tone, with the lock-step ideas of the government in the poem equating to the fascist movements and totalitarian regimes evident in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany at the time in the