Richard Cory | Poem Explanation | Edwin Arlington Robinson

About Edwin Arlington

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) an American poet, was influenced by the Puritan tradition and the transcendental romanticism of his environment in New England. The youngest child of his parents' mid-years. Robinson had two older brothers whom he saw moving from success to failure, lawlessness and death through drink and addiction. He saw his own family ruined at the hands of the whims of fortune or fate. His experience of the world led him to doubt the completeness and efficiency of a lone individual placed in an unsympathetic environment. Many of his poems depict the psychological depths of a person who lives with dignity in the presence of failure as the world understands failure. The titles of his first two volumes of poems, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896) and The Children of the Night (1897) (from which 'Richard Cory' is taken) are suggestive of the sense of darkness prevalent in his poetry. As a reaction to the comment that his poems were too dark Robinson said, 'The world is not a prison-house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "god" with the wrong blocks'.

'Richard Cory' is a psychological pen-portrait of an individual who seems to have all the earthly qualities to make him the most fortunate, the happiest man in the world. But in the end 'Richard Cory' leaves us with a sense of shock and the bitter realisation of the unhappy. incomplete and insufficient, lonely individual. The poem depicts the universal aspects of an individual's conflict primarily with himself and then with the set views about success and happiness in society. It also exposes the hollowness of the concept of success in the 'American Dream'.

'Richard Cory' Poem

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,
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.

Glossary

Line 4. Clean favored having special advantages

Line 4. imperially like a king, royally

Line 5. arrayed dressed

Line 7. fluttered pulses created or caused excitement

Line 8. glittered shone, sparkled

Line 10. schooled trained

Explanatory Notes

Lines 1-4. Richard Cory is distinguished from the common man when the narrator calls himself one of the many onlookers on the pavement. Richard Cory's looks and dress, his regal appearance and bearing single him out.

Lines 5-8. Richard Cory was as good as he appeared. Notice the use of the adjective 'human' which certainly makes provision/allowance for him to be inhuman, haughty, proud and stiff. On the contrary he greeted everyone he met and the commoners were thrilled and missed a heart- beat when they received and returned his greetings.

Lines 9-12. Mark the use of the positive and comparative degrees 'rich, richer'. The description reaches a point of climax when the narrator confesses that they admired and envied Richard Cory so much that they would readily have exchanged places with him. The good qualities of Richard Cory are enhanced by kingly ones.

Lines 13-16. The stage is well set for a dramatic anti-climax. While the common people hated what they had and aspired for what they did not, Richard Cory was also unhappy with his condition. His suicide comes as a shocking realisation of the universal disappointment and sense of insufficiency in human life. The only moment when Richard Cory seems to be 'at home' is when he puts 'a bullet through his head'.

The poem explores the psychological reality of an individual as contrasted with his social reality. It also leaves the reader thinking about what happiness really means and whether it eternally evades people.