Poem Analysis: Richard Cory By Edwin Robinson

Have you ever wonder how people survive and thrive in Antarctica? In the excerpt from the story Alone by Richard E. Byrd the narrator explains how a man lives in Antarctica for 5 months during the winter alone in -83°F weather. Being alone changes a person’s attitude and state of mind. When you are alone people tend to start to become more negative and have a gloomy mindset.

The speaker of the poem recounts that Richard Cory was a “gentleman from sole to crown, clean favored, and imperially slim” and that he was “richer than a king”. The words “crown”, “imperially”, and “king” hints that people viewed Richard Cory as a man of high status and royalty. Even though he was a man who was unlike any other, “he was always human when

In “Richard Cory” People look at him with awe and envy. His very presence turns people’s heads and they are happy to see him. He gave off an aura that is almost intimidating to those around him, “he glittered when he walked” (Robinson “Richard Cory” line 8) not scary intimidating but it made them scared to talk to him. Richard has all that he needs but he still isolates himself from everyone. It is unknown what made him so unhappy other that just isolation from everyone. Because of all of this, one night he “went home and put a bullet through his head” (Robinson “Richard Cory” line 12). In the poem “Not Waving but Drowning”, he is a man amongst people. Who is a happy guy who “always loves larking” (Smith line 5). He seems to always be happy but not a person paid very close attention to him. He has a false happiness about him. He is really all alone and we do not notice that he is “Not Waving but Drowning”. Both Richard and the “dead man” (Smith line 1) are examples of imposed isolation. They are bot chosen by isolation and it costs them both their lives.

Richard Cory written by Edwin Robinson was taken from the point of view of the townspeople around him. They make him out to be this rich, happy, and admirable man. “In fine, we thought that he was everything. To make us wish that we were in his place.” To everyone in the town, he seemed like a great guy; someone everyone wanted to be. They distanced themselves from him though, put him on a pedestal. The town says

In the novel Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning there contains a thesis in which the novel is centered around. This thesis is the theory that these ordinary people could commit these atrocities in the Holocaust because of the pressure from their peers and country that were participating in these appalling acts of violence and massacres of innocent people.

The purpose of history is to understand the past so that we can take wisdom from those experiences and improve the present and the future. The events that occurred during the Final Solution are so horrendous that often it is viewed as so repugnant that we label the people involved as purely evil, they are dehumanized. This is dangerous, as it doesn’t allow us to obtain wisdom, perspective, and empathy for those involved. Ordinary Men allows an opportunity to see these events from the eyes of the perpetrators and their journey that led to what seems to people today as ruthless, unscrupulous murder. When in fact these people were literally ordinary men who were introduced to unordinary circumstances which caused them to abandon their humanity. If we discredit these people as inhuman we fail to learn the lessons of human nature so we can avoid them in the future. Winston Churchill embodies the lessons learned from Ordinary Men as he said “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

In “Cross” the narrator of the poem is a young mulatto. He expresses his frustration at being both black and white but never fully belonging to either of the two races. He is not accepted by blacks because he is half white and he is rejected by whites because he is half black. Thus, he is left in a state of confusion, suffering an identity crisis. He has nobody with which he can identify. In “Richard Cory” the poem begins by introducing the readers to him. He is a gentleman, good-looking, slim, and admired by all the people around him. In other words, he glitters as he makes his way down the street and people love to see him. But then, the unthinkable happens. He goes home one day and shoots himself in the head.

While reading the poems “Richard Cory” and “Ezra Farmer”, it is almost immediately evident which poem is an original and which is a parody. Both poems are clearly about men that are popular among those he meets, but once the reader looks beneath the surface, they notice how the diction plays an important role in relaying the theme to the audience it is presented to. In the poem “Richard Cory” written by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the theme being portrayed is that people are not always as how they seem.

Richard Cory poems are a traditional type of poetry found all throughout different time periods. The poems range from the original to song variations, all contributing their own perspectives on what Richard Cory symbolized, and each takes their own distinct form. Richard Cory poetry usual contains the distinct ending of Richard Cory taking his own life, but each poem adds its own variations to this repetitive theme. Throughout the poems, there are also many similar themes, which portray a consistent theme of the American Dream and how it transforms. Many symbolic issues that deal with this dream are related to wealth, which is the most prominent reoccurring theme in the two poems. Whereas Robinson's "Richard Cory" focuses on symbolic

The poem “Richard Cory” is a description and story of a man named Richard Cory, of course. The speaker of the poem is an impoverished, blue-collar

Ever since the 1600s when William Shakespeare described the whole world as “a stage” and “all the men and women merely players”, the idea of people wearing masks and hiding their true feelings has been present in literature in one way or another. In the late 1800s, Paul Laurence Dunbar publishes “We wear the mask”, a poem that focuses on people hiding their true feelings from others and everyone can relate. Unlike Dunbar who talks about different kinds of emotional masks people use, Edwin Arlington Robinson uses his “Richard Cory” to draw attention to a mask of money and success, which makes the average people (“we people”) admire and idealize the successful person (Richard Cory) only because we do not know and do not even try to see what is hidden behind the mask. With ABAB rhyme scheme, in just 4 stanzas and 16 lines, Edwin Arlington Robinson tells a meaningful and timeless story about misfortune of Richard Cory, a person behind the mask of money and success who seemingly has everything anyone could wish for.

In Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poems, “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy” the main characters are portrayed as outcasts. Both are shunned from society neither having any real friends. Though these characters have some similarities, the way in which Robinson portrays them is very different. Richard Cory is admired by his peers, where as, Miniver Cheevy is opposite; people look down on him. One man appearing to have everything takes his own life, while the other appearing to have nothing accepts his misery.

Robinson uses metaphor through the poem to paint a picture of Richard Cory. In the poem it mentions “And he glittered when he walked.” This shows how people in town viewed Richard Cory as different and above them. Later in the poem Robinson

     The poem “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson is a poem written about the town aristocrat named Richard Cory. It is written with four quatrain stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, for each stanza. The poet’s use of hyperboles and regal comparisons when describing Richard Cory help to elevate him above the townspeople, and his nonchalant mentioning of Cory’s suicide leaves the reader in a state of shock.