Richard Cory
Essay title: Richard Cory
In his poem “Richard Cory,” Edwin Arlington Robinson suggests that happiness is
mistakenly associated with wealth and prestige. He does this by depicting the admired
Richard Cory who to the ordinary townspeople, “we people on the pavement” (line2),
seems to have everything. In fact, to the townsfolk, Cory is like a god of sorts because the speaker says that Cory “was always human when he talked” (line 4), as if he were some
immortal. The first two stanzas of the poem show how special Cory seems: he is “a
gentleman from sole to crown” (line3), he is “imperially slim” (line4), and he excites the
ordinary people, “flutter[ing] pulses” (line7) when he talked to them. We also learn that
he was “richer than a king”(line9) and that he was educated and classy, “schooled in
every grace”(line 1 0). Most importantly, we learn that the ordinary people wished to be
just like him and their envy made them unhappy with their seemingly hum-drum lives:
they “cursed the bread”(line