Richard Cory: Reaction Paper

The poem "Richard Cory" was first published in Edwin Arlington Robinson's
collection The Children of the Night, published in 1897. "Richard Cory" tells the story of
a wealthy man who often strolls the streets of a poor town whose inhabitants all envy
his apparent glory in four brisk stanzas. The poem's themes of prosperity, hardship, and
the elusive essence of happiness are profoundly rooted in the poem's historical context:
a series of economic depressions that hit the United States in the 1890s.

Richard Cory would often draw the attention of the common people on the streets
whenever he came to town. Cory was a well-groomed, upper-class gentleman from
head to foot, often appearing slim and well-kept. Cory never wore something flashy, and
when he talked, he still seemed to be a normal guy. Even so, people were enthralled by
his morning greetings. Wherever he went, he exuded a peculiar radiance. Cory was
exceptionally well-off, refined, and well-mannered. Basically, we assumed Cory had all
of the characteristics we wished we had. We all aspired to be like Cory. So we kept
working, hoping that things would improve. Even though we weren't happy about eating
so cheaply, we gave up fancy, filling food. Richard Cory went home one peaceful
summer night and shot himself in the head.

No one completely understands Richard Cory's psychology or humanity, no

matter how much time the narrator and his audience have spent watching, idolizing, and
envying him. The truth about what drives Cory to suicide is left unspoken and hidden in
the poem, but readers don't need to know the details to understand what the poem is
trying to say—namely, that no matter how well-off an individual appears (and no matter
how happy a person “should” be), people can't be easily understood based on
appearances alone. Richard Cory is depicted in the poem as a well-known figure who is
often seen, heard, and revered by the narrator's culture. Richard Cory is depicted
throughout the poem by the narrator (who speaks on behalf of the group, “we people on
the pavement”) as a man who appears to have it all: wealth, good looks, gentility, and
social connections. Meanwhile, the group must work hard and give up luxuries in order
to survive, so Cory's seemingly ideal life stands in stark contrast to the hardships of the
other characters. The narrator and the narrator's group strive to be and live like Richard
Cory, but as the poem's conclusion demonstrates, these other people have no idea
what Cory's life is like in fact. “Richard Cory” serves as a reminder — and possibly a
cautionary tale — about the secret depths of people whose entire selves are
supposedly known and understood. The silent truth of Cory's unhappiness remained an
invisible secret underneath the trappings of wealth and prosperity.

The rich and the poor are starkly contrasted in "Richard Cory." The economic
crisis in the United States had widened this divide significantly at the time of the poem's
composition. The poem's focus on Cory's riches in contrast to the narrator's
community's relative poverty—a community that survives the poem but not Cory—
emphasizes one of the poem's potential morals: money does not guarantee happiness.
The narrator draws an even sharper distinction between Cory and the narrator's culture
in the final stanza. The narrator's culture is forced to forego luxuries and delicacies
(“went without meat”) in favor of bland, boring meals (“curse the bread”). They work
hard for their money (perhaps, as the poem implies in depicting Cory's downtown
sojourn, Cory doesn't need to work at all) and depend solely on "the sun," some
external source that will alleviate their financial need. Despite suffering ostensibly more
than Cory, the narrator's community continues to exist as Cory dies. By default, Cory's
wealth did not protect him from suffering and misfortune.

Poverty has afflicted the speaker's culture. The speaker explains the
community's daily toil and struggle as they wait for a better chance to present itself: “So
on we worked, and waited for the light, and went without the meat, and cursed the
bread”. The contrast between meat—an expensive food regarded as a delicacy—and
bread—simple, unappealing sustenance—symbolizes the gap between the people's
ideal lifestyle and the one they actually live. A table laden with meat is the lifestyle of a
Richard Cory, which is currently out of reach for the speaker's party. Instead, these
people live lives that they consider to be like bread: sufficient to survive but insufficient
to prosper and be content.

Most of the alliteration in "Richard Cory" revolves around the first /w/ tone, which
is typically associated with an exhalation of awe or wonder—the kind of reaction people
would have if they saw Cory in motion. This is particularly evident in line 12, where the
expression "wish that we were" appears. These /w/ sounds pervade the poem when
paired with wider consonance, and seem to intensify into the final stanza: in lines 13
and 14, five words feature the initial /w/ tone, each used to represent the speaker's
community's collective toil ("we worked," "waited," "went without"). Other sounds are
also alliterative. For example, the hard /g/ of Cory's "good-morning," the poem's only
actual spoken line, finds a match in the equally explosive start of "glittered," like little
bursts of magnificence as Cory passes by, in line 8. The gentle alliteration of the /w/
tone, the poem's final image of the speaker's suffering but unified community, and the
fragile, hard sounds that follow Cory through the final two lines create a powerful
contrast.

The poem "Richard Cory" is divided into four heroic quatrains, which are four-line
stanzas with an ABAB rhyme scheme. The intended meter of heroic stanzas varies by
language; for example, in English, the corresponding meter is iambic pentameter, as
seen in "Richard Cory." Each stanza is punctuated in such a way that each stanza is a
full sentence that ends with a period. This creates a sense of urgency in the poem,
hastening it to its surprising conclusion: it's as if the speaker expresses these ideas in
four huge gulps of thought, and the final two sentences, which are part of a larger
sentence, catch the reader off guard.

Each of the four quatrains in "Richard Cory" follows a strict ABAB rhyme scheme.
The end-rhymes are all full, perfect rhymes that fall on the line's final stressed syllable.

In "Richard Cory," the speaker seems to be a member of the deprived downtown

neighborhood that is envious of and admiring of Richard Cory. In a few lines (lines 2,
11-12, and 13-14), the speaker uses the first person plural ("we" or "us"), but never the
first person singular. This gives the speaker a singularly communal personality. To put it
another way, the speaker does not exist as a separate entity from the speaker's party.
The group is defined by the speaker as people who are indistinguishable from one
another. When Cory walks into the room, he is the only one who stands out.