Explication of "Richard Cory"

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Richard Cory Whenever Richard Cory went downtown, We the 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. Money or Happiness Does money really buy happiness? The poem “Richard Cory”, by Edwin Arlington Robinson gives a “grass is greener” opinion with a shocking twist. The speaker in the poem, the lower class townspeople, tells about a wealthy gentleman by the name of Richard Cory; a man who has everything they wish they had. It’s written with four quatrain stanzas with a rhyme pattern of a, b, a, b in each stanza. The speaker uses a variety of poetic devices to convey his theme that even though one may seem to have everything in one sense, they have nothing in another. In the first stanza, the speaker compares Richard Cory to the townspeople. He states, “Whenever Richard Cory went downtown, We the people on the pavement looked at him;” (1.1-2). The first line tells that Richard Cory is a respected guy in town. In the second line, he implies Richard is upper class and the townspeople looking at him from the pavement are lower class. This is also use of symbolism. He uses alliteration in the first two lines with the words “whenever”, “went”, “people”, and “pavement”. The third and fourth lines describe Richard Cory’s appearance and state an idea of him being like a

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