MeSauce
Armchair Philosopher
- Jun 1, 2023
- 140
Richard Cory
By Edwin Arlington Robinson
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.
"Richard Cory" is about the gulf between how a life looks and how it feels: Cory appears to have everything—wealth, grace, status, the admiration of everyone around him—while the townspeople struggle and assume his life must therefore be enviable. His suicide at the end violently overturns that assumption, revealing that external success tells us almost nothing about someone's private suffering. The cruelest contrast is that the poor townspeople continue "waiting for the light," while the man they imagined already possessed that light apparently couldn't see it himself.
-ChatGPT
By Edwin Arlington Robinson
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.
"Richard Cory" is about the gulf between how a life looks and how it feels: Cory appears to have everything—wealth, grace, status, the admiration of everyone around him—while the townspeople struggle and assume his life must therefore be enviable. His suicide at the end violently overturns that assumption, revealing that external success tells us almost nothing about someone's private suffering. The cruelest contrast is that the poor townspeople continue "waiting for the light," while the man they imagined already possessed that light apparently couldn't see it himself.
-ChatGPT
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