The poem opens with a flurry of questions, which indicate that the monologue is a transcript of a rather unconventional interview. The speaker establishes the purpose of the interview—to determine if the applicant is their “sort of a person”—before going on to list various factors that speak to the applicant's eligibility for some unspecified role. The vague collective “our” that the speaker invokes suggests that the interviewer is acting on behalf of a larger organization, or possibly should be interpreted as a satirical stand-in for society itself.
Almost all readers will have interviewed for a position at one point or another, allowing them to fill in the details of this nondescript setting and empathize with the applicant’s position. The use of apostrophe allows the speaker to address readers directly, encouraging them to experience the poem’s events from the applicant’s perspective.
The speaker’s first question comes across as direct and assertive, especially because it is neatly contained in a short line. It also contains a high concentration of stressed syllables, a technique that will persist throughout the rest of the poem, putting force behind the speaker’s statements:
First, are you our sort of a person?
As readers well know, the purpose of an interview is to vet candidates and decide who most closely matches the profile the interviewers are looking for. Indeed, the stresses on “our sort” emphasize that the speaker’s singular task is to prove his worthiness on the speaker's terms.
However, this question immediately raises doubt, or employs aporia, to suggest that the speaker is skeptical of the applicant’s suitability. This skepticism builds a power dynamic at the poem’s outset, wherein the applicant is at the mercy of a rigorous interviewer.
The speaker goes on to list various prosthetics and other assistive devices, asking the applicant if he relies on any of them. The speaker frames these devices as evidence that “something’s missing” and uses them to determine if the applicant is truly “in need” of a wife. Because the speaker callously suggests that people who rely on prosthetics are incomplete and thus needy, these devices can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of people’s perceived shortcomings in a male-dominated, consumer-driven society.
The list of these devices employs polysyndeton, an abundance of conjunctions (in this case, "or"). This abundance extends the speaker's question, which sprawls out across 5 lines and spans the poem’s first stanza break. Line 6 is relatively long and syntactically complex. It also employs sibilance, or repeating /s/ sounds ("Stitches to show something's missing"). All of these factors slow the reader down, making the speaker’s subsequent statements appear exceedingly curt.
Throughout this initial passage, repetition in the form of polysyndeton ("or") and diacope (“Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch”) contribute to a barrage of /r/ sounds, which suggest a growling sound and give the speaker’s tone a harsh edge.
Furthermore, repetition creates metrical patterns that repeat briefly, helping to build momentum and draw the reader into the poem’s rhythms. More specifically, polysyndeton results in a repeating unstressed-unstressed-stressed pattern (anapests), while diacope results in a repeating stressed-unstressed-stressed pattern, with the two overlapping in line 5:
... or a crutch,
A brace, or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch.
These interlocking patterns capture the forcefulness of the speaker's monologue.