Richard Cory Poem Analysis Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We

Richard Cory Poem Analysis Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We

people on the pavement looked at him:

Richard Cory Poem Analysis

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -

And admirably schooled in every grace;

In fine we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Poetry has been an important part of the English language for many

centuries. This art is so diverse and complete that some people spend

their life studying it and many still have a lot to learn from it,

even when approaching their death. Although the immensity of poetry

content, this text will treat of only one great poem written in 1897

by Edwin Arlington Robinson; Richard Cory. This sixteen lines short

story tells a lot about human irony. Richard Cory, a wealthy man,

admired and envied by those who consider themselves less fortunate

than he, unexpectedly commits suicide. The most intriguing 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 erected a

communication barrier that later pushed Richard to commit suicide.

We know Richard Cory only through the way that “We people on the

pavement” see his exterior personality. Richard’s inner being, other

than when he committed suicide, is never explicitly evealed. In the

first fourteen lines of the poem all we learn about Richard Cory are

the images that ordinary people (us) have from such a man who is

almost seen as a king or a living god. First of all, in line two, the

villagers demonstrate that they feel inferior to Cory when they name

themselves the “people on the pavement”. This might have a connotation

with homeless people or beggars; in their opinion, Richard is seen as

a King “sole to crown” and them as his admiring subjects. Even his

name, Richard Cory, evokes the name of the king “Richard Coeur de

Lion”. Then, they describe him as a true gentleman, who was “always