is about a man who appears fortunate in
every way but who ends the poem by killing himself. Since his suicide occurs only in the last
line, there is no commentary on it, and we have to look back in the poem for clues as to why he
might have wanted to end his life.
When we read back over the poem in the
light of Corys suicide, there is a clear sense of his isolation from the group of nameless
people on the pavement who looked at him but apparently did not talk to him. The most
revealing lines are in the penultimate stanza:
In fine, we
thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
The torturedhere shows us that even the people on the pavement did
not envy Richard Cory. They thought that he was everything that would make them envy someone.
Even with all his wealth, taste, dignity, and humanity, Richard Cory lacks something. He is
always alone.
Numerous messages are obviously applicable: money cannot buy
happiness, loneliness and isolation can make even the most apparently perfect life unbearable,
and the wealthy and privileged have the leisure to understand the true emptiness of life. It
seems to me, however, that these messages are less powerful as something to take away from the
poem than the image Robinson creates of a solitary gilded youth on a calm summer night, driven
to despair.
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