The Richard Cory Theme

Richard Cory’s American Dream and American Greed
Nearly seventy years after Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote his most popular piece of poetry in 1897, a narrative poem titled “Richard Cory”, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song of the same title in 1966. The two “Richard Cory” poems parallel in more ways than one, though there themes are different, possibly because of the different worlds the authors lived in while writing their poems. Analyzing the speakers of the poems, the symbols used in the poems, and the tone of the poems, it can be determined which used poetic conventions more effectively. Both the poem and the song are about the same man, Richard Cory, and have almost the same meaning. However, Paul Simon takes liberties with tone and time period to transform Robinson’s emotionally evocative poem into a stirring social commentary and satirical metaphor.
Robinson’s “Richard Cory” is spoken only in pluralities, in the voice of a collective
"we", made up of unspecified lower social class townspeople. The speaker talks of Richard Cory with admiration. In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem, one of the "people on the pavement," implies by contrast that Richard Cory is not on the pavement with him and his lower class peers. The speaker calls Cory a "gentleman," suggesting his upper class status, and he makes puns on "sole," meaning both the bottoms of shoes and a person's spiritual essence, and "crown," meaning both the top of one's head and a symbol of royalty worn on the head. The speaker goes on to explain “In fine, we thought that he was everything/ To make us wish that we were in his place.” (11-12). These lines suggest that the “we” wishes that they could be Richard Cory. But what the “we” probably means is ...

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...as anyone else. Ultimately, Robinson is suggesting that not only does money not buy people happiness, he also is trying to convey that in most cases, things are not always as they appear. So while the wealthy may appear to be living a much fuller and richer life than their lower-class neighbor, they may actually be lacking in areas that hold more significance in the end. Paul Simon’s song of the same name suggests a different idea.
The speaker in Simon’s “Richard Cory” is modernized version of the one present in Robinson’s poem. In this poem, however, the speaker addresses himself as “I”. The speaker seems to admire Richard Cory, the presumed CEO at the factory he works, and does not hide the fact that he wishes to switch places with him:
But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory (5-11)