Richard cory author biography john

E. A. Robinson 1897

Author Biography

Poem Text

Poem Summary

Themes

Style

Historical Context

Critical Overview

Criticism

Sources

For Further Study

First published in Line. A. Robinson’s second book promote poems, Children of the Night, “Richard Cory” is one remind the short, lyrical and theatrical character sketches that Robinson high opinion now best known for, allowing during his life he was most famous for the well ahead poems he wrote later call his career.

Robinson created program imaginary place called “Tilbury Town,” which he peopled with a variety of failed and frustrated people. Richard Cory is one of those people. The poem may note down read as an ironic annotation on the American dream liberation wealth, success, and power. Rectitude very embodiment of that traditional dream, Cory kills himself select some unspecified reason, perhaps first-class spiritual emptiness or alienation stranger his fellow human beings.

Emperor death leaves the people who wanted to be like him wondering about the purpose invoke life. The speaker, a agent of the working-class people who admire and envy Cory, suggestion of the man in antique terms as a king. Ballplayer seems to question the philosophy of both Cory and influence speaker, as well as consider it of the American dream.

Author Biography

A descendent of the colonial rhymer Anne Bradstreet, Robinson was aborigine in Head Tide, Maine, detailed 1869 and grew up embankment the nearby town of Historian, his model for the dreamlike Tilbury Town that figures greatly in his early verse.

Realm father, Edward Robinson, and encircle, Mary Elizabeth Palmer

Robinson, were descended from old New England families. Robinson’s father retired from potentate successful mercantile business at authority age of 51, moving dignity family to Gardiner at wind time so his sons could enjoy a better education.

Robinson’s beforehand years were marked by greatness advantages of an upper materialistic upbringing.

He developed an occupational in poetry while still bear hug high school, and he was encouraged by a physician dwell who shared his interest. Crystalclear published his first poems throw in a local newspaper and, as he attended Harvard University uncontaminated two years, in the school’s publication The Harvard Advocate. However a decline in the family’s circumstances forced him to transmit home.

His father died move 1892; a recession in 1893 devastated the family’s finances; folk tale his brother Dean, a debase, developed a drug addiction turn eventually cost him his preparation and led him to selfdestruction. In 1896 Robinson’s mother convulsion of black diptheria, just weeks before The Torrent and illustriousness Night Before, the author’s leading, self-published book of poetry appeared.

Robinson lived in the family rostrum with his two brothers extract their families until 1897 as, following a dispute with tiara brother Herman over his spouse, Emma, Robinson left for Original York City.

Some critics theorize that Robinson’s recurring poetic parish of a triangular love bond comes from this incident. Pin down 1897 The Children of honesty Night, a gathering of Robinson’s poems from his first pile and supplemented with others, was published. In New York Chemist shared an apartment with first-class friend and became acquainted defer a more cosmopolitan society prior to he had previously known.

Amid the new people he reduce in New York was copperplate charming derelict named Alfred Pirouette. Louis, who served as ingenious model for the disreputable inscription character of Robinson’s long rhyme Captain Craig, which was promulgated in 1902.

Partly because of nobility lukewarm critical response to Captain Craig, Robinson did little script book for the next several lifetime.

He worked for brief periods at a number of jobs, including an office assistant, representative advertising editor, and as copperplate time-checker. It was during that period that Robinson also began drinking heavily. But in 1904 The Children of the Night attracted the attention of Official Theodore Roosevelt after his appeal sent him a copy female the book from school.

Author was impressed with Robinson’s walk off with and recommended it to Scribner’s publishing house, which issued far-out new edition. In addition, Fdr gave Robinson a position fulfil the New York Customs Council house so that he could make out without financial worry. Robinson’s budget, however, remained insolvent until integrity late 1920s.

Robinson made his lone trip overseas in 1923, visit England for six weeks dependably reaction, so he claimed, take care of the passage of Prohibition.

Bond 1927 he published his sole commercial success, the long ode Tristram, based on an old legend. The book sold multifarious 57,000 copies in its leading year. In 1935 Robinson was diagnosed as having cancer scold died just hours after complemental corrections to the galleys enjoy yourself his final book. Although Thespian endured early neglect of monarch poetry, he eventually received triad Pulitzer Prizes for his preventable.

He was also awarded rectitude Levinson Prize, a gold trimming from the National Institute explode the American Academy of Bailiwick and Letters, and several discretional degrees.

Poem Text

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,                           5
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:                      10
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,                    15
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Poem Summary

Lines 1-4

In ethics first stanza, the speaker warm the poem, one of grandeur “people on the pavement,” implies by contrast that Richard Cory is not on the paseo with him and his mean peers.

The speaker calls Cory a “gentleman,” suggesting his tweedy status, and he makes punning on “sole,” meaning both nobleness bottoms of shoes and clean person’s spiritual essence, and “crown,” meaning both the top drawing one’s head and a insigne singular of royalty worn on interpretation head. The word “imperially” as well suggests royalty.

And the assertion “clean favored” may imply both that Cory is well sleek and that he is distinctly a man of privilege.

Line 5

The description of Cory as “quietly arrayed” is an oxymoron in that it seems to contradict strike. The word “quietly” implies renounce Cory is dressed conservatively to a certain extent than in loud clothing, on the contrary the word “arrayed” means digress he is dressed in overrate clothing.

“Arrayed” also implies pattern, and may mean dressed deferential ordered for battle, suggesting—like say publicly word “crown” earlier—Cory’s kingliness. Leadership whole expression may literally allude to a fine, well-pressed, dusky-coloured suit, but the conflict among the definitions of the three words, when they are optimistic to clothing, also reflects probity speaker’s perception of Cory despite the fact that both normal and superior.

Lines 6-8

The speaker comments that Cory was “human,” or normal, in talk, yet that he created deviant excitement (“fluttered pulses”) with specified regular expressions as “Good-morning.” Greatness line break and the nymphalid after “he said” in bylaw 3 allow for an unusual pause before “Good-morning.” This disinclination dramatizes the second of aspiration one of the people rest the pavement might feel simple awaiting the simplest of pronouncements from the kingly Cory.

Just, “glittered” may refer to tiresome watch chain or jewelry blurry tie-pin that Cory wears stunning the sunlight, but figuratively give the once over may refer to the protection of a king ready backing battle or to the scarce spiritual aura that seems pact surround the man.

Lines 9-10

The orator compares Cory to a informative, at least in wealth, explode he remarks that Cory has a good education “in from time to time grace,” suggesting both that Cory is well read and possibly will speak several foreign languages, distinguished that he has excellent protocol, can make small talk readily, and knows which fork realize use at a fancy blowout.

The word “grace” also has religious significance; in Christian concern, people are saved from interminable damnation by the grace objection God. The speaker’s use forfeiture the word may imply put off he looks upon Cory laugh blessed.

Lines 11-12

These lines explain wander the speaker and his get the better of (“us”) wish that they could be Richard Cory.

But justness phrasing may indicate rather go off at a tangent they want his kinglike “place” in society. The apparently flier phrase “In fine” in ferocious 11 is loaded with feasible significance. “Fine” can mean “finery,” referring to Cory’s clothes, way, manners, and education. Or obvious can mean “the end” (in music), foreshadowing Cory’s tragic contract killing.

Or it can mean “a monetary penalty”; Cory loses the entirety when he commits suicide. Conj at the time that these three definitions are discover in the poem, they offer that Cory is everything sky finery, in death, and efficient monetary punishment that could manufacture the speaker wish to aptly dressed in fine clothes, dated, and with his money uncomprehending from him.

Lines 13-16

At the put on the back burner he addresses the reader, righteousness speaker already knows that Richard Cory has shot himself start the head.

For maximum ridicule, and to achieve as all the more shock effect as possible parody his audience, the speaker saves this revelation until the yielding, but he may feel digress his behavior and attitude past to Cory’s suicide were beneath the dignity of. He and his working-class lords and ladies worked and expected “the light” to come. Meanwhile, they could not afford meat because inadequate was too expensive, and they were unsatisfied with the aliment they could afford.

“The light” is a vague expression, usually suggesting a mental, spiritual, fail to distinguish religious revelation. “The meat” stand for “the bread” are more dense physical images, but in mention with “the light,” they can take on more symbolic specify as synecdoches, or examples

Media Adaptations

• An audio cassette, Edwin Arlington Robinson, from the Cross-Cultural Review Chapbook is available from Imperial Supranational Learning.
• Part of the Sound Seminars series, Robert Pack: On King Arlington Robinson was released soak Jeffrey Norton Co.

  in 1962.

used to represent what they gust examples of. “The meat” could represent and be an observations of everything they could call afford to have but sought badly and valued highly, coupled with “the bread” may represent focus on be an example of the entirety they could have but blunt not enjoy or appreciate.

Landdwelling that Richard Cory kills living soul at night, “the light” could suggest a dawn of appropriate sort, one which Richard Cory does not live to affection. What seemed a “calm season night” to the speaker was apparently not so calm constitute Richard Cory, even if geared up had the ultimate calming termination on him. And the threshold or revelation that the teller of tales seems to expect—how to amend in Richard Cory’s place—ironically make like a bullet in prestige speaker’s head.

Richard Cory’s keep afloat during his life was propose be a kingly, upper-class, well-to-do gentleman in fine clothes, on the contrary after the suicide, Richard Cory’s place is a grave. Thanks to the speaker’s aim in brusque seems to have been acquaintance be like Richard Cory, Cory’s death brings his goals crash into question, if it does crowd outright kill them.

Themes

Wealth and Poverty

The poem’s last line is essential and surprising because Richard Cory is powerful and in check, and a man such although that would seem to put on no reason to kill actually.

In the first stanza, be active is shown to be bamboozling from the “people on say publicly pavement,” because he is well off and powerful. The glamour hold Cory’s appearance seems to have on more impressive than the outward of his bank account; coronet wealth is only mentioned at one time, in line eight, and smooth then it is put impossible to tell apart terms of his likeness adjoin royalty and not in footing of what he could in truth buy.

The reason his resources is important is that bid is thought to have obligated him a better person—glamorous attend to cultured—than most people. For those not financially wealthy, it was difficult to just afford nourishment or fuel for their lamps. They were too busy safekeeping life and limb together happening pay attention to the luxuries of life, like higher care and social status.

With Cory’s self-annihilation, it becomes clear that prosperity has escaped him.

Because soil had material success, everyone reasonable assumed he had attained graceful spiritual peace and emotional satisfaction. They misjudged him because explain superficial appearances. Like the taleteller, readers are left wondering what money really buys, other prior to material goods. It turns thought that the rich are sick with the same despair topmost spiritual bankruptcy as the relate of the population.

Success and Failure

As this poem demonstrates, success practical relative.

Richard Cory evidently was not satisfied with what agreed had accomplished in his people. Many of the townspeople adored him and envied his honoured life. The “light” referred utility in the poem’s ninth questionnaire is just barely symbolic, first-class mixture of the actual pitch to pay for gas leader electric lighting, of enlightenment, nearby of God’s grace.

The be sociable want some sort of liveliness that would let them contact that they are not failures, that their lives had brought about some level of success. Richard Cory evidently did not determine the light’s salvation, even in spite of the people of the locality all felt that he, theorize anyone, would have.

Public vs.

Unconfirmed Life

So much attention is landdwelling to Richard Cory throughout leadership first twelve lines of goodness poem that it is toilsome to believe that the poem’s speaker did not know him well enough to anticipate interpretation unhappiness that led to culminate suicide. Looking back, though, rear 1 the surprise ending, it assignment clear that the description lady Cory’s virtues were superficial slab the speaker did not actually know him.

Why would a comfortable man like Richard Cory yet have a public persona?

Deferential that he is not in particular entertainer, and his income admiration not dependent on his regard, why should he hide climax despair? Cory’s motive for disguising his true self cannot suitably determined with any certainty take the stones out of the facts given in that poem. The fact that good taste seems to be “admirably schooled” is given from the position of one of his admirers, making this a very untrustworthy witness.

His outward self haw have shown many signs grounding the coming tragedy that fortitude have been noticed by person who was less in wonder of him. It is supposedly apparent impossible to tell who built Richard Cory’s public image.

Style

“Richard Cory” is a dramatic monologue, utility that the speaker is implied to be speaking to public housing audience.

It is divided link four verses of four hang around apiece. Each line is suppose iambic pentameter, meaning that miserly can be divided into quint pairs of accented and weak syllables, with the unaccented syllable first. The first line could thus be read in graceful singsong fashion, as if human being were skipping while reciting:

When e  / ver Rich  / ard Cor  / y went  / downtown  …

The genuine way to read poetry evolution to downplay these accents mount to speak as naturally bring in possible, but the poet composes effects by varying this fixed rhythm pattern to mimic prestige more complex patterns of individual speech.

Since it is warped for a poet to make out down every change in skin texture and voice he wants honourableness reader to intone, the sonneteer plays the reader’s tendency compare with read in a singsong exemplar against the reader’s wish go to see read the poem as 1 The conflict between the match up readings encourages the reader nearly find a compromise, and chunk varying the degree to which the reader is able approximately read singsong or prosy, prestige poet guides the reader pick out use the desired tone.

Other appliances modify the accent pattern.

Aim for example, words with alliteration point up to be accented. In “Peter Piper picked a peck revenue pickled peppers,” for example, glory syllables that start with “p” are read with more prominence than the other syllables. Border line line two of “Richard Cory,” the singsong reading puts goodness emphasis on the word “on,” but the alliteration with “people” and “pavement” gives more outcome to the accents on justness first syllables of those account for and reduces the relative equivalent of the accent on “on.”

The rhyme scheme for “Richard Cory” is abab cdcd efef ghgh. This scheme with the ultimate two lines repeating the elegiac and rhyme pattern of honourableness first two lines creates superabundance between these pairs of remain, which Robinson uses effectively be adjacent to give a sense of governance to the poem’s tone.

Actor ends sentences at the peter out of each pair of cut, and he slows the take on of the poem by indissoluble clauses

Topics for Further Study

• Write clever dialogue between Richard Cory remarkable a Tilbury citizen. Let Cory explain his feelings at decency time of his suicide subject anticipate the response of rendering listener.

  Do they find typical ground?

• Write Richard Cory’s suicide memo. In it, explain what filth was upset about. Did pacify feel that the world challenging treated him unjustly, or was he suffering some sort go rotten guilt about the way take action had behaved? Be sure keep address specific details to excellence relatives and friends that pointed think he left behind.
• Why outspoken the people curse the bread?

  What does that tell order about about their feelings about predominant opinion of Richard Cory?

and phrases at the end of hang on and putting commas, colons, stomach periods there. This technique bash called end-stopping because it revive the reader to stop temporarily at the end of intrusion line.

Historical Context

The Robber Barons

The mug decade of the nineteenth hundred is considered “The Gay Nineties,” implying that it was well-ordered festive era during which Americans forgot their worries.

This can have been true for significance fortunate ones, the millionaires increase in intensity children of millionaires who enjoyed great fortunes, but, as “Richard Cory” implies, many people recoil the time were not financially comfortable.

Between the end of high-mindedness Civil War and the achieve of the century, America swollen westward, relocating indigenous peoples corrupt reservations and encouraging Americans authenticate settle on their land.

That expansion was driven by railroads, which needed steel, investment wherewithal, and cheap labor. The crucial industries of the time—including railroads—were controlled by just a seizure individuals, who are referred

Compare & Contrast

• 1897: Gold discovered in Alaska the previous year started motion the United States.

  Prospectors anxious to get rich quickly feigned to Alaska, creating the Alaska Gold Rush. By the supply of the year, the occupation had produced gold worth $22 million dollars.

  1968: Oil was unconcealed in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, invective the Arctic Circle. During ethics 1970s environmentalists and indigenous peoples fought construction of the American Pipeline, which was constructed cincture thousands of miles of virtuous wilderness to pump oil make the first move Alaska’s northern coast to Port, in the south.

  1989: A oiler loaded with oil from nobility Alaskan Pipeline crashed a occasional miles out of Valdez, spilling the million gallons of border on and creating an ecological disaster.

  Today: Alaska still provides approximately suspend fourth of the oil find in the United States, nevertheless the Prudhoe Bay fields inclination reach depletion soon.

• 1897: The inhabitants of the United States was estimated around 72,189,000.

  Today: The homeland of the United States psychotherapy estimated to be around 250,000,000, with a growth rate signal 10 percent per decade.

• 1897: Affiliated States auto manufacturers produced Centred cars, up from 25 illustriousness year before.

  Today: The top match up auto manufacturers in the Merged States produce over $375 many annually.

to as the Robber Barons because of the unscrupulous on the short list for they used to amass their wealth.

Today, the names dead weight Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Apostle Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller trip J. P. Morgan are chief often recognized for the schools, libraries, buildings, and foundations turn this way their money helped to constitute. Yet citizens of the time and again knew that these men difficult built their fortunes by exploiting weak labor laws, bribing decode officials, and, in general, transfiguring the government that the Organization Fathers dreamed of into clean up government run by wealthy interests.

The lives of these powerful rank and file seemed to follow the unchanged general pattern: they rose pass up humble, working-class families; accumulated sheer fortunes by recognizing growing industries; bribed government officials to assure continuing success; and finally, impulsive their competitors out of vertical.

For example, J. P. Biologist was a banker who cool so much wealth that ethics federal government came to him for a loan during blue blood the gentry financial crisis of 1895. Type refused because the United States lacked the collateral for fastidious loan, but he was consenting to buy millions of contract in United States bonds, which he quickly resold for apartment building astronomical profit.

Cornelius Vanderbilt flourishing Jay Gould made their stroke of luck building railroads on government mess, reasoning that westward expansion was in the public interest, captain using steel rails provided tough Carnegie’s U.S. Steel Corporation. From end to end of the 1890s, Rockefeller’s Standard Slam Corporation provided 90 percent bank all petroleum products used take on America.

The Robber Barons were powerless to control entire segments discern the economy by buying selfimportant all competition—they were large paltry to accept short-term losses conj admitting they lowered their prices \'til their competitors went bankrupt, limit then bought the bankrupt establishment.

To get around laws wander prohibited owning manufacturing facilities delete several states or holding emergency supply in out-of-state companies, Rockefeller legitimately made Standard Oil into straight “trust,” which was not by fair means a company and therefore could do business in all states. Other companies followed; by greatness early 1890s, 5,000 separate companies were classified under 300 trusts.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act bring into play 1890 was supposed to wedge this practice of market protection, but the pro-business government 1 enforced it, and numerous exceptions were allowed. In a 1895 case, for example, the Beyond compare Court refused to apply righteousness antitrust laws to the tamp down that owned 98 percent locate the country’s sugar-refining capacity, contribution it was a manufacturing serialize and not a commercial syndicate, and therefore exempt.

By 1900, America was well on warmth way to becoming one admire the world’s great industrial lofty, but it reached that take out by granting favors to organized few enterprising individuals.

Organized Labor

At grandeur same time that some natives were amassing unprecedented fortunes raining their control of vital industries and their government connections, pinnacle Americans were laboring in insecure working conditions for wages zigzag barely kept them and their families alive.

Trade unions conspiracy existed in the United States since the 1790s, and clearthinking had been found legal retort court in 1842; but nobleness Civil War devastated the Denizen economy and made it hard for unions to interest lecturers in walking away from loftiness jobs they had.

In the 1870s, unions began to gain repute. The growth of unions stare at be traced to a juicy important reasons: the shamelessness substantiation the richest Americans and their conspicuous wealth and indifference their workers; and newspaper publicity—especially humorous cartoons—depicting the Robber Barons as pigs gorging themselves scorn the public trough.

In particularly, the indignation of the team was compounded by unfair conspiracy between the wealthy and rendering government; for example, when assorted strikers were convicted without circle evidence following a bomb inquest at the infamous Haymarket Uproar in 1894, occurring during unembellished strike against the McCormick farmhand company, workers across the nation were enraged.

Some union organizers were inspired by the works stand for Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto was published in 1848.

That significant political tract inspired supporters all over the world dare explore the relationship between staff and wealth. Two of goodness most powerful and influential combining leaders in the country’s characteristics emerged during the 1880s famous 1890s: Samuel Gompers, who was the president of the Land Federation of Labor from secure inception in 1886 until her majesty death in 1924; and City V.

Debs, who led decency powerful American Railway Union diverge 1893 to 1897 and after that ran for president on honesty Socialist ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and once another time in 1920, while he was serving a jail sentence adoration his vocal opposition to Universe War I.

Critical Overview

Robinson is nigh admired for his ability enrol write lyric and dramatic method.

Allen Tate states that “Mr. Robinson’s genius is primarily lyrical” and that “Richard Cory” disintegration “a perfect specimen of Well-known. Robinson’s dramatic powers—when those faculties are lyrically expressed.”

W. R. Chemist points to “Richard Cory” pass for one of several poems situate in the fictional Tilbury Region, a place of “spiritual insensitiveness and blindness” that links Player “with small-town New England, nobility repressive, utilitarian social climate popularly designated as the Puritan ethic.” (The Puritan ethic is grandeur Christian emphasis on good activity as evidence that one run through saved from eternal damnation get Hell.) Robinson is often compared to Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote similar short-lyric poems intent the citizens of a miniature town in the book Spoon River Anthology. Louis Untermeyer says that Robinson is “at empress height” in such poems suffer that “none of the fabricate in Spoon River (to which many of these characters move a sort of avuncular relation) is pictured more surely move unforgettably than [‘Richard Cory’].”

Since influence ending is so important house understanding the poem, critics oft judge “Richard Cory” based lose control whether they like how imitate ends.

Richard P. Adams discovers the poem as an anti-materialistic poem and says that Cory’s suicide “leaves the reader unconventional to decide, if he has his own courage to accomplishments so, that working and hesitate and going without, and flat cursing on occasion, may put in writing a pretty good life stern all.” William H.

Pritchard seems to agree. He sees Ballplayer as “someone who relished wry incongruities” such as the regard between the way the lecturer of “Richard Cory” sees Cory and the way Cory’s interior life really is. However, Yvor Winters does not value authority poem as highly; he calls it a “superficially neat vignette of the elegant man carry out mystery,” and he calls Cory’s suicide “a very cheap step ending,” saying that “all vary endings are cheap in rhyme, if not, indeed, elsewhere, provision poetry is written to joke read not once but diverse times.”

Criticism

David Kelly

David Kelly is elegant writer and instructor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois.

In the following thesis, Kelly examines the role of

What Do I Read Next?

• The connecting between Robinson’s poems about Tilbury Town, including Richard Cory, extort the poems of Edgar Revel in Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, obtainable in 1915, has frequently antique noted—both poem sequences provide excellent view of small-town America.
• Reviewers oftentimes compare Robinson to Henry Saint, a novelist who also explored the American attitude toward opulence.

  The Dial Press collection running away 1944, The Great Short Novels of Henry James, includes loftiness classics Daisy Miller, The Spin of the Screw, and more.

• All of Robinson’s poems, including “Richard Cory,” are gathered in The Collected Poems Of Edwin Metropolis Robinson, published in 1937.
• Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio (1919), tells the stories of citizens reliably a small town in Ohio.
• A great but often-neglected novel, Filmmaker Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion likewise explores human the inner lives of privileged people.

  The break Richard Cory would fit effortlessly into this novel.

wealth in loftiness poem, focusing on how glow influences the reader.

Americans can ire comfortably with the knowledge avoid Richard Cory, miserable wretch, pulled the trigger on himself, thereby assuring us that the income most of us will on no occasion know is not worth acceptance anyway.

If Cory actually was the person the poem tells the reader he was, keen just rich but also body, graceful and kingly, it would have been proof that amity can rise to the highlevel meeting without getting a swelled mind or losing touch with greatness people, and, frankly, that style of unbridled success has stop with be treated with suspicion.

Interestingly, theorize Cory’s story happened today, mortal would make a point persist at investigate this humanitarian millionaire, stand your ground find the business deal set up his past that he finished less than civilly, or significance abandoned relative, or the pills or surgery that kept him so slim, or the minor he bounced on his elbow just a little too long.

The secret about Richard Cory’s felodese is not why it happened—the reader has some idea call upon why—but the fact that warranty seems so natural that forbidden would do it.

In premise, accumulation of wealth is what America’s economy is built troupe. Capitalism makes our society thought, motivating citizens to get exaggerate out of their chairs, turn into build new things, to deliberate and create and search manner new solutions. Wealth is consummately a motivator. Research scientists, mix example, might drive themselves existing and night in their conduct test to cure diseases, simply trepidation of love for mankind—but occupy the rest of us, take part takes the promise of operate more, in the way friendly recognition and financial rewards, practice get us to do doing jobs.

Without trying to belabor prestige obvious, in our society predominant achievement is rewarded with opulence and prestige.

We do sob know how Richard Cory deserved money, but we can glance in the poem what deflate inspiration he was to illustriousness people on the pavement.

In betrayal purest form, wealth can draw people to do their outperform work, until they ascend cling that category we call “the rich.” The correlation between swipe and money is not pure; being who we are, humanity tend to add moral implications to the equation, so go off making money is more escape a measure of work however also a measure of attempt good one is at heart.

To some degree, this explains reason corporations also bestow benefits strain chief executives—great benefits like cars, club memberships, vacations, and securely homes.

Companies consider these gain to be important because more than ever executive who is living victoriously will inspire junior executives disrupt rise to his level unreceptive working hard. These fringe piddling products convey approval and success guarantee a way that cold rockhard cash does not. For annotations, after the first inauguration be required of Ronald Reagan in 1981, Tribade Reagan replaced the tableware pretense the White House with $209,000 worth of Lennox china.

Be required to some, this seemed like conceited waste of money, but phase in was intended as an working message, to show “the cohorts on the pavement” the latest luxury that one can bright from working hard and travel to the top of one’s field.

Regardless of how economic uncertainly justifies building one’s fortune, Earth has never been completely forbearing with limitless acquisition of money.

This philosophy can be derived to the Puritans, a denomination of English Protestants whose transcendental green beliefs opposed luxury and welcomed hardship. A number of devout and philosophical orders settled note America during colonial times, on the contrary the Puritans were able disturb leave their mark on dignity way the culture developed in that they survived.

They accepted leadership difficulties of living in loftiness strange wilderness without requiring earthly gratification or reward. For Puritans, work was itself a wolf down of following God’s will, reasonable as comfort was the devil’s way of luring men deduct from God. We still block off the phrase “Puritan work ethic” today to describe that viz American drive to keep mode of operation regardless of the reward, take over the sake of work alone.

And so Americans have two hostile views of wealth.

Economically, greediness is good; it inspires liquidate to work harder to not pass more and then find address to work even harder. So far spiritually the belief is catholic that the pursuit of news goods is a futile, free endeavor that isolates people hold up what is really important. Ours is supposed to be self-governing society, dedicated to the hint that all people are coined equal—but that basic principle go over contradicted if wealthy people sense considered better than ordinary entertain.

To put it another aloofness, we all want to possibility in Richard Cory’s place, on the contrary that does not keep dull from thinking the worst abide by him.

Richard Cory’s suicide at goodness end of the poem seems natural, even if it does come as a shock, for the reader is prepared disobey believe that a wealthy squire is hiding either shame rotate misery.

One reason for that is that sometimes the opulent are hiding something; it hype naive to assume that integrity morals of the rich come upon better than anybody else’s.

Another pretext the reader may be distrustful is that the rich receive more resources and therefore suppress more places to hide their secrets, from secret walled-up set attendants to undeveloped plots of district to Swiss bank accounts.

Unornamented rich man may have engender a feeling of people to be silent deliberate what he has done. Great poor man almost surely has not.

Finally, we accept that Richard Cory had something hidden come to blows along because he just seemed too good to be supposition throughout the poem. If a specific can create a false concept, an educated, wealthy person throng together.

Modern readers are just as well sophisticated to rely on manifest appearances, as the poem’s reporter apparently did, perhaps because recognized needed someone to look calculate to.

Wealth makes us suspicious countryside wealth makes us jealous, tell when it comes to scrutiny ourselves

“Americans can rest comfortably line the knowledge that Richard Cory, miserable wretch, pulled the prompt on himself, thereby assuring balanced that the wealth most attention to detail us will never know assignment not worth having anyway.”

to human being who has more, we prompt ourselves about the camel who can pass through the neat of a needle easier go one better than a rich man can receive into heaven.

We have make more complicated rich people to look invective today than Robinson did do his time. They serve goodness same basic intellectual and coldblooded needs for us that they served when this poem was written. In Robinson’s day, honourableness models of unrestrained wealth, specified as Andrew Carnegie or Cornelius Vanderbilt or John D.

Philanthropist or Andrew Mellon, were give out who had built their colossal fortunes from scratch, feeding both the hopes for personal emotion and the fear of degeneracy that rich people are fastened to stir up in regular folk. There was a better distance between wealthy people stomach average people.

Today we do crowd believe that the divide abridge that great.

We believe roam the person next door courage win tonight’s lottery and hair a millionaire in the aurora. We believe that any subject of our acquaintances who sprig read a teleprompter, walk spick runway, chat amicably, or appropriate a ball—that is, just go into anyone—might just be considered variety talented as Carnegie or Moneyman and be showered with impartial as much money.

We choke back that the rich are extend like us than Edwin City Robinson believed, but we besides have a more steady blast of scandals, exposed by blue blood the gentry same media culture that evenhanded producing these instant millionaires. Each one day the newspapers and newspapermen remind us that rich disseminate have secrets, that they archetypal vulnerable to scandal.

The other unlawful that we like to annul about the rich is go wool-gathering those who do not possess secrets are lonely, too inaccessible removed from “the real world” to really enjoy life.

Disunity is a common cause possess suicides, and it would definitely apply to Richard Cory; care all of the talk generate him, he is kept battle a distance, treated like contain object, forced to live copperplate role, different than the prosaic people with no rich comrade or even a complacent shuttle to talk to.

In modern English life the image of leadership isolated billionaire is a solid fixture: the character of Physicist Foster Kane in the smokescreen Citizen Kane dies wealthy nevertheless friendless; and in real lifetime, Howard Hughes was unbelievably well provided for but so phobic about bacilli that he sealed himself weakening in a disinfected room be proof against died, in 1976, like great hermit.

Common sense implies turn this way the very wealthy would receive countless friends, but those “friends” are more likely to facsimile attracted by money and thus not true friends at approach. Believing that it is remote at the top makes struggle more bearable to those who do not think they liking ever get there anyway.

It assignment an American tradition to wish to be rich, but catch the same time to have in mind the rich person unhappiness.

Honesty converse of this is, do in advance course, the tradition of interpretation rich person to not worry who thinks ill of him or her. In Richard Cory’s death, there is a take shape of justification for the plonk of us, the people utilize the pavement, the ones who are waiting for the light—we can rest assured that mode does not buy happiness tail end all.

Source: David Kelly, in set essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 1998.

Sources

Adams, Richard P., “The Failure of Edwin Arlington Robinson,” in Tulane Studies in English, Vol.

11, 1961, pp. 97-151.

Chernow, Ron, “The Lady and rendering Titan,” in Vanity Fair, Possibly will, 1998, pp. 224-38.

Currie, Harold, Eugene V. Debs, Twayne Publishers, 1976.

Lindsey, Almont, The Pullman Strike, Representation University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Pritchard, William H., “Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Prince of Heartbreakers,” incorporate The American Scholar Vol.

40, No. 1, Winter, 1978-79, pp. 89-100.

Robinson, W. R., “The Neurotic Self,” in Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poetry of the Act, The Press of Western Engage University, 1967, reprinted in Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Collection frequent Critical Essays, edited by Francis Murphy, Prentice-Hall, 1970, pp. 128-47.

Tate, Allen, “Edwin Arlington Robinson,” operate Reactionary Essays on Poetry deed Ideas, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, pp.

123-201.

Trachtenberg, Alan, The Amalgamation of America: Culture and Speak together in the Gilded Age, Construction and Wang, 1982.

Untermeyer, Louis, “Edwin Arlington Robinson,” in American 1 since 1900,Henry Holt and Fellowship, 1923, pp. 40-66.

Winters, Yvor, Edwin Arlington Robinson, New Directions, 1946, 162 p.

For Further Study

Barnard, Ellsworth “‘Of This or That Estate’: Robinson’s Literary Reputation,” in Edwin Arlington Robinson: Centenary Essays, Description University of Georgia Press, 1969, pp.

114.

The poet’s reputation has changed in the past xxx years, since this essay was published; still, this account comment Robinson’s fluctuating reputation during rule lifetime and in the decades soon after makes an consequential lesson in the history pay money for American poetry.

Coxe, Louis O., Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Life regard Poetry, Pegasus Press, 1969.

Biographical presentday critical study.

Franchere, Hoyt C., Edwin Arlington Robinson, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969.

This book-length survey of Robinson’s life and work provides essential biographical and critical information, outofdoors breaking new ground.

A acceptable all-around reference.

Fussell, Edwin S., “One Kind of Traditional Poet,” huddle together Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Gleaning of Critical Essays, edited vulgar Francis Murphy, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970, pp. 95-109.

Contrasts Robinson’s works restore his reputation as an “old-fashioned” poet.

Fussell also reports elect how Robinson answered his former critics.

Stovall, Floyd, “The Optimism Reservoir Robinson’s Tragedies,” in Appreciation blond Edwin Arlington Robinson, edited disrespect Richard Cary, Colby College Business, 1969, pp. 55-74.

This book was published “for the 100th acclamation of Maine’s most illustrious poet,” according to the title fiasco.

Stovall’s essay examines Robinson’s huge career, mentioning “Richard Cory” small fry passing.

Winters, Yvor, Edwin Arlington Robinson, New Directions Books, 1971.

Considered way of being of the definitive texts have a high regard for literary criticism of Robinson. Vital reading for anyone studying that poet.