Gillaspie, Burley, Preston, Battle, Lovelace 1

Joshua Gillaspie
Tyler Burley
CJ Preston
Leshay Battle
Brittany Lovelace
Lit 2000
Thursday, 6:30 - 9:45
Nov. 29
th
2012

An Analysis of Edwin Arlington Robinsons Poem Richard Cory

The poem Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson illustrates how
someone who seems to have everything in the eyes of others may be missing the
simplest pleasures in life. Even in todays society, people wish they could take the
place of actors, athletes, or musicians, without knowing what problems those
people might be facing. As Jonathan Freedman argues, We cannot capture
happiness and then sit still and hope to maintain. We change, the world changes,
and our requirements for happiness change all the time (Ben-ZeEv).
The narrative is from the perspective of one of the towns people, and he is of
the poor working class citizens; he tells the reader this when he says, We people
on the pavement (line 2), and Went without meat, and cursed the bread (4).
Robinson uses words like imperially slim (4) crown (3) king (9) and grace
(10) to describe Richard Cory. These words suggest that Cory has many great
kingly (10) qualities, fame, fortune, and a wonderful personality. The people
depicted in the poem all envy Cory for the qualities he possesses, and the narrator
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lets the reader know this in stanza three: In fine, we thought he was everything
(11) and in the very next line he adds, To make us wish that we were in his place
(12).
The sad thing is that with all the qualities that Cory has he is still missing
something in his life, and the poor working narrator finally realizes this when he
says, And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet
through his head(15-16). Amy Lowell interprets this in her book Tendencies in
Modern American Poetry: In four words, ["one calm summer night"], is set a
background for the tragedy which brings the bullet shot crashing across our ear-
drums with the shock of an earthquake ["Went home and put a bullet through his
head"]. They appear simple, these poems; and they are really so immensely
difficult (Lowell).
Robinson doesnt tell the reader why Cory kills himself at the end, thus
allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. The critic Franchere points out
to Corys private, inner problem: What private sense of failure, what personal
recognition of his own inadequacy, or what secret unfulfilled longing drove Cory
to suicide Robinson does not say, the reader is left with a sharp sense of
emptiness, of a life wasted, of failure-and of Corys hidden agony(?). The theme
revealed from the dramatic ending is that wealth and fame cant buy you
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happiness. Richard Cory is missing something in his life; it might be happiness,
but we will never really know.


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Works Cited
Lowell, Amy. Tendencies in Modern American Poetry. New York: Macmillan
Company, 1917.