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Two literary devices by richard cory
Happiness in success essay
Happiness in success essay
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Money and Happiness
Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote a poem called “Richard Cory” about a man who has everything, or so it seems (McMahan). Richard Cory is said to have a very desirable life and that everyone wants to be like him. When you look at him it is implied that you are filled with envy and interest. Everything he does is doused on the front page and he appears to be a very happy man. However, the poem ends with a sad, tragic twist where Richard Cory commits suicide. In the story everyone looks at Richard Cory as having the ultimate happiness because he has money, good looks and success. This is a common misconception that comes with having large amounts of any kind of currency.
In the poem the bystanders all assume that Richard Cory is happy because he has money. Why wouldn’t he be happy when he has all that wealth? This is a stigma that we allow to affect our perceptions on the world and its inhabitants today. Stop for a moment and think about it. When was the last time you looked at a person who is famous, or someone who stepped out of a nice car, and thought about how your life would be easier if you were them? Odds are it was fairly recently. We allow money to block us from noticing the things that really matter. Sonja Lyumbomirsky wrote an article for PsychologyToday. She discusses many myths of happiness including the one about how we need money to achieve it. Lyumbomirsky says “They do not realize that the key to buying happiness is not in how successful we are, but perhaps what we do with our success; it’s not how high our income is, but how we allocate it” (How of Happiness). It seems that we are so worried about getting rich that we lose sight of what success could truly do.
Much like the characters in the p...
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.... If we were not blinded by the stigmas that money equals happiness, perfectly displayed in Richard Cory, we would be able to reach out and help the people who are considerably unhappy.
Works Cited
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003. Print.
Ingram, David. "How Brand Awareness Affects Perception." n.d. smallbusiness.chron.com. Web. 10 March 2014.
Lyumbomirsky, Sonja. "How of Happiness." 9 March 2013. Psychology Today. Print. 13 March 2014.
McMahan, Elizabeth, et al. "Literature and the Writing Process." Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Richard Cory. n.d. 674. Print.
Sethi, Ramit. "What do you NOT care about spending money on?" 28 July 2009. I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Web. 10 March 2014.
Thompson, Derek. "How America Spends Money: 100 Years in the Life of the Family Budget." 5 April 2012. the atlantic. Print. 12 March 2014.
In “The Real Truth about Money” (2005), Gregg Easterbrook discusses the effects of money on the people’s happiness. He presents his article with statistics of the generation immediately after the World War II and the current generation. He has experienced both generations as he has lived in both and is very familiar with the difference of people’s lives now and back then. Easterbrook is a highly reputed journalist, he is an authorized writer, editor, and professor. He worked with many professional magazines and newspapers; accordingly, he has enough knowledge to write about the people’s happiness in terms of money. Easterbrook has well convinced the readers with psychological facts from university researches and credible
“The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed.
He further shows us that the people of today are richer than their grandparents but are not happier in their lives (from National Statistics of social pathology). Even with these facts, people in the United States still believe if they had more money all of their problems would be solved, but once they reach that next income bracket they are not satisfied and try to reach the next one. Myers et al tells us, "even if being rich and famous is rewarding, no one ever claimed material success alone makes us happy. Other conditions like - family- friends- free time - have been shown to increase happiness" (Csikszentmihaly 145). therefore we must find balance in our own lives, and not just focus on making money. Instead we need friends, family and even free time, as aforementioned doing an activity you enjoy such as listening to music or
The first example of the belief that money can buy his happiness is when Nick Carraway describes the West Egg, where he lives. The houses are very luxurious but there is a distinction
Aldrich, Nelson W., Jr. Old Money: The Mythology of America’s Upper Class. New York: Vintage, 1989.
Not all people can be rich. According to the article “The Treadmill of Consumption”, Robert says that “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score”. That is what some people think about real life, and that is wrong, because real life isn’t a game. It is a world where you need to work and earn your money to buy things you need. Not everyone can have a big house and many cars. Everyone is different and have different jobs and salaries. Somebody is born rich, and they easily get money from their parents, but others work hard to get the place where they are now and the money that they are earning. People never know who works hard and get it easy, but in any way they want to be like them. Moreover, people forget what they have, and they just want more. In the article “All That Glitters Is Not Gold”, it says that everyone should be equal. It is true that being equal would be an easy solution for people. Most of the people earn enough money to live good and simple lives, but that is not enough for them. They look at rich people and forget about themselves. Maybe, the money that they have is plenty for them, and they don’t need to be
According to Rider “Despite increasing material wealth, Americans are not happier” (Rider). Happiness does not come from fortune, and many people make the mistake of perceiving it that way. True happiness comes from one’s self and their outlook on life. In the “The Lorax” Dr. Seuss not only spread an important message about taking care of the planet, but also helped his readers become aware that wealth does not lead to happiness.
...f money could bring happiness, then more money could bring him more happiness. Again, when money is the highest value used in determining happiness at work, other values become over shadowed or ignored. Unsatisfied values eventually reveal themselves when the money value is met. Without being content in all values, happiness at work cannot be attained. Richard Cory probably did not know how to satisfy those once hidden values and found his life very unhappy. Thinking that hard work will lead to financial success and happiness is not wrong as a value, but as Richard Cory finds out, happiness based on only money is not possible unless that value is your only value.
Happiness is a feeling adults experience when they receive a gift, win something, and various other reasons, but does money buy this happiness everyone experiences? Don Peck and Ross Douthat claim money does buy happiness, but only to a point in their article which originally appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (252). Throughout their article, reasons on why money can sometimes buy happiness are explained. While some of the reasons given are effective, not all are satisfying answers for adults working diligently to make a living. Money is a part of everyone’s life, yet it is not always the cause of happiness.
A penny saved may be a penny earned, just as a penny spent may begin to better the world. Andrew Carnegie, a man known for his wealth, certainly knew the value of a dollar. His successful business ventures in the railroad industry, steel business, and in communications earned him his multimillion-dollar fortune. Much the opposite of greedy, Carnegie made sure he had what he needed to live a comfortable life, and put what remained of his fortune toward assistance for the general public and the betterment of their communities. He stressed the idea that generosity is superior to arrogance. Carnegie believes that for the wealthy to be generous to their community, rather than live an ostentatious lifestyle proves that they are truly rich in wealth and in heart. He also emphasized that money is most powerful in the hands of the earner, and not anyone else. In his retirement, Carnegie not only spent a great deal of time enriching his life by giving back; but also often wrote about business, money, and his stance on the importance of world peace. His essay “Wealth” presents what he believes are three common ways in which the wealthy typically distribute their money throughout their life and after death. Throughout his essay “Wealth”, Andrew Carnegie appeals to logos as he defines “rich” as having a great deal of wealth not only in materialistic terms, but also in leading an active philanthropic lifestyle. He solidifies this definition in his appeals to ethos and pathos with an emphasis on the rewards of philanthropy to the mind and body.
In Michael R. Hagerty’s and Ruut Veenhoven’s article “Wealth and Happiness Revisited – Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness” they talk about the effect wealth has on your emotions...
Richard Cory was written in 1897 by Edwin Arlington Robinson. This sixteen line poem tells a lot about human irony. Richard Cory, a very wealthy man, admired and envied by those who consider themselves less fortunate than he, unexpectedly commits suicide. The most fascinating part of this poem is the reason why he shot himself when he had everything? Through their own mental prejudices and exaggerations of reality, the people, by putting Cory on a higher level than them, also created a communication barrier that later pushed Richard to commit suicide.
“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” (unknown). All families are not perfect, they all have problems that they struggle with daily, they all go through tough times that cause unhappiness, but the thought that these factors have no affect on rich people is completely untrue. In Judith Guest’s Ordinary People and Jo Goodwin Parker’s “What is Poverty” both address how two families relationships, happiness and daily struggles are affected by the amount of money they have, which shows that the more money a person has does not necessarily make that person happier.
What exactly is happiness anyway? Happiness is when you feel complete and satisfied. It is when you’re content with where you are and what you have. It is the joy of doing something you love, or spending time with someone you love. It is an emotion and the best one yet. Money can easily make a person temporarily happy with the possessions it can buy, but true happiness is more than that. People can have everything material wise and still not be happy. Sure it can buy you many things, but the happiness from it is only temporary and limited. There’s only so much happiness you can buy with money. Money can easily buy you food, a clock, a house, education, make-up or medication; however it can’t buy you nutrition, time, a home, knowledge, beauty or health. It can buy you infatuation, but not love, acquaintances but not friendship and hierarchy but not respect. People spend their entire lives trying to make more and more money thinking that it means success. They neglect family and friends, don’t care about who they take down to reach their ...
Some people believe that happiness has to do with and an emotional state of being or with a mental state of richness or ownership. While people believe happiness is an end of an achievement others say that it is a start of a great future. Happiness can be categorized in several ways but the three common are in the state of well-being, ownership/richness, or accomplishment. Sam Wren Lewis mentions in his article, “ How Successfully Can We Measure Well-Being through Measuring Happiness?”, that there are two types of happiness for well being, a short term and a long term to defining it. Another author, Dwight R. Lee, states that money does indeed by happiness but to an extent in his “ Who Says Money Cannot Buy Happiness?”. Then