Dramatic irony is at the center of the story as the narrator guides the reader to understand more about Nilson than he understands about himself. The style of narration is suited to this, as the reader has access to Nilson’s thoughts and feelings but is able to understand them in ways that go beyond Nilson’s awareness. When Nilson and Tandram meet, for example, the narrator describes Tandram in precisely the same way as Nilson had been described. The reader senses immediately that each man is a mirror reflection of the other, but Nilson seems unaware of the resemblance.

Verbal irony is also woven throughout the descriptions of Nilson’s thoughts and actions. For example, the word “meditations” is ironically applied to material wealth in Paragraph 2. This word is normally used in a spiritual sense, and its unexpected deployment in the context of stock prices is jarring. Similarly, the rather innocuous word “unaccountably,” used in the final paragraph to describe Nilson’s troubled mood, ironically implies a connection to accounting and finance.