Richard Cory Essay Questions

What effect does the poem's point of view have on the text as a whole?

The poem's central character is Richard Cory, but it is told from the perspective of a speaker representing a collective "we." This first-person plural point of view helps emphasize the poem's tension between public image and private life. Richard Cory doesn't speak beyond a quick "good morning," nor do readers know much about him beyond how he appeared to others. This perspective ultimately helps underscore the poem's condemnation of assuming that an outward appearance reflects an inward state.

The perspective also emphasizes the class difference between Cory and the townspeople. The speaker describes the community as "We people on the pavement"; Cory is considered outside and above this community (Line 2). Later on in the poem, the townspeople have to work, wait for the light, eschew meat, and eat unappetizing bread. These are all problems that Cory does not face. Nevertheless, it is Cory who dies in the end.

The speaker's voice represents the collective, which gives a sense of the gossip that went on about Cory. The townspeople's interactions with him are brief and surface-level. Their primary sense of "knowing" Richard Cory comes from their observations and gossip. This is the reason that scholars have placed this poem in Robinson's Tilbury Town cycle, which explores the repressive and utilitarian atmosphere of small-town New England.

How does the poem's form contribute to its meaning?

"Richard Cory" is composed of sixteen lines broken into four stanzas of four lines each, or quatrains. Each stanza follows regular iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAB. This structure offers the poem a sense of balance, organization, and predictability, lulling the reader into its patterns only to completely upend the poem's central narrative at the end. That the shocking final lines do not depart structurally from the rest of the poem suggests the continued mystery behind Richard Cory's death, as the community fails to try to understand him beyond his public image. The disparity between the shocking revelation of Cory's suicide and the continued rhythm, meter, and rhyme highlight the poem's overall argument that appearance and outward image do not always correlate with private nuance or complexity.

Who, if anyone, is the poem criticizing? How do you know?

While the poem is not explicit about its targets, the disparity between the first three stanzas and the final stanza suggests that "Richard Cory" is a condemnation of myths like the American Dream. Without criticizing anyone in particular, the poem passes judgment on the way that people's investment in outward appearance is ultimately damaging and unrealistic. Richard Cory becomes, in this context, a casualty of other people's assumptions and aspirations.