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Richard Cory Summary & Analysis
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Richard Cory Summary & Analysis
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “Richard Cory”

1Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

2We people on the pavement looked at him:

3He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

4Clean favored, and imperially slim.

5And he was always quietly arrayed,

6And he was always human when he talked;

7But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

8"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

9And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

10And admirably schooled in every grace:

11In fine, we thought that he was everything

12To make us wish that we were in his place.

13So on we worked, and waited for the light,

14And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

15And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

16Went home and put a bullet through his head.

  • “Richard Cory” Introduction

    • "Richard Cory" first appeared in the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson's 1897 collection, The Children of the Night. In four brisk stanzas, "Richard Cory" tells the story of a wealthy man who often strolls the streets of a poverty-stricken town whose residents all envy his seeming glory. Yet the poem's final line reveals that, despite seeming to have everything he could want, Cory kills himself. The poem's thematic interests in wealth, poverty, and the elusive nature of happiness are deeply tied to its historical context: a series of economic depressions that struck the U. S. in the 1890s.

  • “Richard Cory” Summary

    • Us lowly people on the streets would always stare at Richard Cory whenever he visited the downtown area. Cory was a refined, upper-class man from head to toe, always looking well-kept and thin.

      Cory never wore attention-grabbing clothes, and he always seemed just like a regular person when he spoke. Even so, people got excited just by hearing his morning greetings. He had a special shine about him wherever he went.

      Cory was extremely wealthy, well-mannered, and sophisticated. Basically, we thought Cory had all the qualities we wished we had. We all wanted to be Cory.

      So we kept working, waiting for things to get better. We gave up fancy, filling food, even though we weren't happy to be eating so cheaply. And one quiet summer night, Richard Cory went home and shot himself in the head.

  • “Richard Cory” Themes

    • Theme Appearances Can Be Deceiving

      Appearances Can Be Deceiving

      As much time as the narrator and the narrator’s community have spent observing, idolizing, and envying Richard Cory, no one fully understands Cory’s psychology or humanity. The poem leaves the truth about whatever drives Cory to suicide unspoken and unknown, but readers don't need to know the exact reason for Cory's ending to get what the poem is trying to say—namely, that no matter how well-off a person may seem (and no matter how happy a person “should” be), people can’t be easily understood based on appearances alone.

      The poem presents Richard Cory as a known entity—he is often seen, heard, and admired by the narrator’s community. Throughout the poem, the narrator (who speaks on behalf of the community, “we people on the pavement”) portrays Richard Cory as a man who, on the surface, seems to have it all: money, good looks, gentility, and connection to others.

      The community, meanwhile, must work hard and give up luxuries in order to survive, so Cory’s perfect-seeming life appears in direct contrast to the other characters’ struggles. The narrator and the narrator’s community aspire to be, and to live like, Richard Cory, but as the end of the poem makes clear, these other people actually have no idea what the reality of Cory’s life is like.

      The poem reveals that the most significant aspects of Cory’s life—whatever drives him, ultimately, to suicide—are beyond the knowledge of the community who assume him to be happy and satisfied. Despite all of Cory’s success, the narrator reveals in the final moments of the poem, Cory kills himself, with no explanation provided. Whatever privilege, power, and success defined Richard Cory for the reader, some unknown other force or factor proves stronger than all the elements of Cory’s life that “should” have made him happy.

      The unchanging, calmly-paced structure throughout makes the final lines all the more jolting. The reader knows what to expect rhythmically from each line, just as the community believes they know what to expect from Richard Cory. Cory’s suicide, then, arrives with no warning. The community believes they know who Cory is, and, therefore, are powerless to recognize his need for their support or intervention before it is too late.

      “Richard Cory” offers a reminder—and perhaps a warning—about the hidden depths of people whose whole selves are supposedly known and understood. Beneath the trappings of wealth and success, the silent truth of Cory’s unhappiness remained an unseen mystery. By elevating Cory to something other than fully human and vulnerable, the community were unable to fathom Cory’s unknown despair—which has been left, by his death, perhaps forever mysterious.

    • Theme Wealth and Happiness

      Wealth and Happiness

      "Richard Cory" presents a sharp contrast between the rich and the poor. At the time of the poem’s composition, this gap had been widened dramatically widened by the economic depression in the United States. The poem's emphasis on Cory’s wealth, in comparison to the relative poverty of the narrator’s community—a community that survives the poem when Cory does not—stresses one of the poem’s possible morals: money does not guarantee happiness.

      The narrator’s community, “we people on the pavement,” appear to be geographically separated from Richard Cory. They seem to be regular residents of these "down town" streets, while Cory only visits this neighborhood. Downtown neighborhoods are usually centers of business and commerce—meaning they are often louder, dirtier, and more crowded than other parts of the city. The fact that Cory does not have to live there, then, immediately suggests that he probably does not have to get his hands dirty with work in the same way as the rest of the speaker's community.

      Indeed, throughout the first three stanzas, the narrator details Cory’s wealth, first through language suggestive of financial prowess (“gentleman,” “glittered”) and then through an explicit, seemingly hyperbolic assessment of his economic prosperity (“and he was rich—yes, richer than a king”). To the narrator, it seems, Cory’s wealth, whatever it actually amounts to, appears infinite and beyond measure.

      In the final stanza the narrator provides an even clearer contrast between Cory and the narrator’s community. The narrator’s community must give up luxuries and delicacies (“went without the meat”), putting up instead with bland, repetitive meals (“cursed the bread”). They work hard for their money (perhaps, the poem suggests in its depicting Cory’s downtown sojourn, Cory does not need to work much at all), and depend entirely on “the light,” some external source that will relieve their financial need. Yet despite ostensibly suffering more than Cory, the narrator’s community continue “on” while Cory ends his life. Cory’s money, by implication, didn’t shield him from pain and misfortune.

      Some context is helpful here. The poem was written in 1897, a year after the Panic of 1893. As in the Great Depression, this panic led to the deaths by suicide of a number of Americans. While the poem does not indicate that Cory’s suicide stems from financial issues, it is possible to interpret his death in that historical context as the result of a sudden change in fortune. In that light, the poem speaks more to the fickle finger of fate than to the power of unhappiness to reach even the most fortunate.

      Whether the poem reminds readers that money isn’t everything or warns readers against coveting cash that won’t bring them happiness (or even condemns Richard Cory for wasting his lavish lifestyle), wealth and the comparison between those who have it and those who do not—remains central to the meaning of the poem.

    • Theme Envy vs. Admiration

      Envy vs. Admiration

      The narrator and the narrator’s community harbor deep envy of Richard Cory, but they admire him too. Throughout the poem, there is the sense that the community feels torn: fundamentally, they want to be Richard Cory, but they also take pleasure in being around him. Both envy and admiration, though, isolate the community from Cory. Neither emotion allows the community to get to know Cory on a human level or to understand his personal pain in a way that might prepare them for Cory’s eventual suicide (or perhaps even grant them a chance to prevent it).

      The narrator’s recounting of the people’s interest in Cory sounds at first as if it may be purely based in admiration. Cory is a constant object of attention (“We people on the pavement looked at him”) and the narrator riddles Cory with compliments: on his face, his weight, his bearing, his clothing. The narrator explicitly references the community’s admiration when it comes to Cory’s manners—they perceive Cory as “admirably schooled in every grace.”

      In the second stanza, the narrator begins to present Cory not just as an object to view but as a person with whom connection is possible. The narrator describes Cory as “always human when he talked,” but there is little evidence of Cory actually forging relationships with the people who watch him—it is only “Good-morning” that the narrator recalls him saying. It is possible, from the narrator’s version of events, that while Cory greets those around him warmly, their admiration for him (and envy, too) prevents them from meaningfully connecting with him.

      The narrator’s suggestion that Cory’s greeting also “fluttered pulses” indicates a level of attraction to Cory, whether merely admiring or romantic, that further sets him apart from the community: while he may seek connection with the people he passes, they experience his greeting as if he was some sort of divinity (“he glittered when he walked”) rather than a fellow human being.

      The penultimate stanza, however, shifts this admiration towards envy. All of this praise and adoration sums to the sense (“In fine”) that Cory is “everything / To make us wish that we were in his place.” Instead of being seen as a neighbor or a potential friend, Cory comes to represent what the community wants for themselves. The boiling of admiration into envy serves to further isolate Cory from the community. They experience his presence, ultimately, as a reminder of what they do not and cannot have—their desire to be him, in fact, to take his place from him replaces their idolization of him (almost with a sense of violent hostility).

      The narrator and the narrator’s community view Cory either as a glittering god to be worshipped from afar or as an enemy, the symbol of all they wish to have for themselves. Between these two poles exists the real Cory, a man who may strive to be “always human when he talked” but who ultimately takes his own life. Robinson offers the possibility that Cory’s suicide derives from the isolation and loneliness he experiences as a result of the strong, but disconnecting, feelings that his community exhibit towards him.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Richard Cory”

    • Lines 1-2

      Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
      We people on the pavement looked at him:

      The poem opens with the speaker's instant separation of Richard Cory from the speaker's community. Cory only goes down town as a visitor, but the speaker's community seems to be part of the down town landscape; in other words, they live there, and cannot come and go as they please.

      The speaker is also immediately identified with a community through the first person plural pronoun "we." Unlike the distinguished, attention-attracting Cory, who has the first line of the poem all to himself, no one in the speaker's community, the speaker included, will be given an individual identity in any way throughout the poem. Instead, the community appears as a collective—the "people on the pavement," a phrase which indicates that they are probably working-class individuals, and certainly not riding through the streets. To that end, note that "down town" is usually associated with the part of a city where business happens—and as such is usually more hectic, dirtier, and noisier than "uptown" areas (where Cory might be coming from). From the very start of the poem, even before it is established what makes Cory the object of their attention, the community's contrast with Cory becomes clear.

      The use of "whenever" also paints a scene that is routine: Cory repeatedly goes down town and the community watches him each time. This hint of repetitive, perpetual behavior will evolve throughout the poem.

      This first pair of lines establishes the iambic pentameter that will continue without variation for the entirety of the poem:

      Whenev- | er Rich- | ard Cor- | y went | down town,

      This consistent, familiar meter will prove significant in establishing in a sense of security and predictability, a comfort that will be shattered by the poem's final line.

      There is also a strong pattern of alliteration and consonance in the first two lines. Richard Cory's entrance features a series of softer /w/ and /n/ sounds: whenever, went, down, town). The community's description seems tougher by contrast, with its hard, percussive /p/ sounds (people, pavement).

    • Lines 3-4

      He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
      Clean favored, and imperially slim.

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    • Lines 5-6

      And he was always quietly arrayed,
      And he was always human when he talked;

    • Lines 7-8

      But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
      "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

    • Lines 9-10

      And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
      And admirably schooled in every grace:

    • Lines 11-12

      In fine, we thought that he was everything
      To make us wish that we were in his place.

    • Lines 13-14

      So on we worked, and waited for the light,
      And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

    • Lines 15-16

      And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
      Went home and put a bullet through his head.

  • “Richard Cory” Symbols

    • Symbol Meat and Bread

      Meat and Bread

      The speaker's community has been stricken by poverty. The speaker describes the day-to-day toil and sacrifice of the community as they wait for a better opportunity to arrive:

      So on we worked, and waited for the light,
      And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

      The contrast here between meat—an expensive food viewed as a delicacy—and bread—seen as simple, unappealing sustenance—symbolizes the difference between the lifestyle that the people long for and the one they actually lead. A table filled with meat is the lifestyle of a Richard Cory, unattainable to the speaker's community at the present time. Instead, these people lead lives that they perceive as being like the bread: enough to survive, but not enough to thrive and be happy.

  • “Richard Cory” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      Much of the alliteration in "Richard Cory" centers around the initial /w/ sound, the same sound usually associated with an exhalation of awe or wonder—the kind people might have upon witnessing Cory in action. This is particularly clear in line 12, with the phrase "wish that we were." When combined with broader consonance, these /w/ sounds suffuse the entire poem, and seems to accelerate into the final stanza: in lines 13 and 14, five words feature the initial /w/ sound, each used to depict the collective toil of the speaker's community ("we worked," "waited," "went without").

      Other sounds alliterate as well. For example, in line 8, the spark of the hard /g/ of Cory's "good-morning," the only actual spoken line quoted in the poem, finds its match in the similarly explosive start of "glittered," like little bursts of magnificence as Cory passes by.

      Returning to the final stanza, in line 15 the hard /c/ sound of "Cory," in the character's final mention in the poem, pairs with that of "calm," an ironic juxtaposition given that Cory's unrest that is about to be uncovered. The final line also partners three initial /h/ sounds—"home" and "his head"—as if to hammer home the brutality of Cory's action. Indeed, there is a powerful contrast between the gentle alliteration of the /w/ sound, the poem's last picture of the suffering but united community of the speaker, and the brittle, hard sounds that accompany Cory through the final two lines.

    • Anaphora

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    • Assonance

    • Caesura

    • Consonance

    • Diacope

    • End-Stopped Line

    • Enjambment

    • Hyperbole

    • Irony

    • Metaphor

    • Polysyndeton

  • “Richard Cory” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Crown
    • Clean favored
    • Imperially slim
    • Arrayed
    • Grace
    Crown

    • "Crown" here means "head" (as in "Jack fell down and broke his crown"). In the poem, the speaker describes Cory as being gentlemanly from "sole to crown," i. e., from "head to toe" (but in the other direction!). The use of the word "crown" also, when partnered with "imperially" and "richer than a king" helps to create the sense of Cory's innate majesty.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Richard Cory”

    • Form

      "Richard Cory" is made up of four heroic quatrains, four-line stanzas that follow an ABAB rhyme scheme. The expected meter of heroic stanzas differ by language; in English, as seen in "Richard Cory," the accompanying meter is iambic pentameter. The punctuation of each stanza is such that each stanza comprises a complete sentence ending with a period. This establishes a sense of momentum that hastens the poem to its shocking ending: it is as if the speaker shares these ideas in four big gulps of thought, and the final two lines, part of a larger sentence, catch the reader by surprise.

      Heroic stanzas can also be called elegiac stanzas, linking this poem's form with the traditional form of an elegy, which usually mourns the death of an individual. In this way, the heroic stanza form of "Richard Cory" foreshadows Cory's death.

      The consistency and predictability of the form, along with the regularity of the meter and rhyme scheme, create a sense of safety and reliability that is then shattered by the twist of the final lines. Since the form is so solid, familiar, and unchanging, the reader does not expect the jolt of instability provided by the content of the final stanza, in which Cory commits suicide. Indeed, the juxtaposition of the comfortable, recognizable form with the violence of the final line strengthens the impact of that ultimate shock.

    • Meter

      The entirety of "Richard Cory" is written in iambic pentameter, each line consisting of five iambs (two-syllable feet with an accent on the second syllable). The iambic pentameter is precise and strict throughout. Examine how this iambic pentameter plays out in the first line more closely (scansion of all sixteen lines would look the same):

      Whenev- | er Rich- | ard Cor- | y went | down-town

      This exact metrical pattern contributes to a sense of predictability throughout the poem (the rhyme scheme does the same). By the end of the second stanza, perhaps, there is no threat of variation; it seems clear that the poem will offer no surprises in its rhymes or meter. This proves to be correct, but the shock of the final lines comes across through the poem's content, not through any variations in meter or rhyme. In fact, it is the juxtaposition of the totally unexpected suicide of Richard Cory with the expected iambic pentameter chugging along nicely (to accompany the "calm summer night") that gives the final line its jolting effect. Whether in a life that seems straightforward and well-structured or in a poem that seems to play by the same rules, it's impossible to know what is bubbling all along beneath the surface.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "Richard Cory" follows a strict ABAB rhyme scheme throughout each of its four quatrains. All of the end-rhymes are full, perfect rhymes that fall on the final stressed syllable of the line.

      While "arrayed" and "said" in the second stanza are not an exact rhyme in spoken English now, it is possible that "said" could have been pronounced with a hard "a" sound in 19th century American English. If the words did not rhyme when read aloud at the time of the poem's composition, the off-rhyme then also introduces Cory's only spoken line in the poem, a sudden shift in expectation that alerts the listener to Cory's impending majestic speech.

      The consistency of the rhyme scheme contributes, alongside the steady meter, to a sense throughout the poem of predictability and reliability. The speaker shatters this feeling in the final line of the poem, like a bullet piercing a calm summer night, with the announcement of Cory's death. The poem's rhyme scheme supports an unexpected theme of the poem: even when things appear to be going along splendidly and easily, great unrest may be boiling below the surface.

      The poem features minimal internal rhyme. However, in the first stanza, the second syllable of "pavement" finds rhyming echo in the next line's "gentleman." This gives a subtle emphasis to the speaker's definition of Richard Cory as a gentleman, as if the internal rhyme is a refined bow to the people of the pavement as Cory is introduced.

      Internal rhymes also appear to accompany each end-rhyme in the first stanza (but only the first stanza). "Down town," of course, in itself contains an internal rhyme, and the phrase "imperially slim" pairs "im-" with "slim." In the introduction of Cory's personage, these additional rhymes serve as extra buttresses for the great man's regal entrance.

      Small other internal rhymes like line 11's

      We thought that he was everything

      help to propel the poem's momentum but do not significantly interfere with the solid sense of rhymes marching forward at the end of each line.

  • “Richard Cory” Speaker

    • The speaker in "Richard Cory" appears to be a member of the impoverished downtown community that is so envious and admiring of Richard Cory. The speaker uses the first person plural ("we" or "us") in a number of lines (lines 2, 11-12, and 13-14) but never uses the first person singular. This endows the speaker with an exclusively communal identity. In other words, the speaker does not exist as an individual separate from the speaker's community. The speaker characterizes the community as people indistinguishable from one another. When Cory appears in their midst, only he stands out.

      In the first stanza, the speaker describes the community as "we people on the pavement," a phrase that is used to contrast the downtown throng from Cory. The speaker's community belongs to the pavement, but Cory merely glides in for a visit.

      In the third stanza, after extensively expressing praise and admiration for Cory, the speaker clarifies that these feelings, now mixed with envy, are shared by the entire community: everyone wishes that they could have Cory's qualities and live his life.

      In the final stanza, the speaker provides a clearer portrait of the community through a list of what "we" did, in toil: worked, waited for a better day, and lamented the simpleness of the life available to them. Still, in contrast to Cory, who is isolated in the final lines and in his final moments, the speaker describes a united, determined community. They may be miserable, but at least they have each other to share in that misery. Unlike Cory, the speaker describes the community as one that is capable, against the odds, of surviving.

  • “Richard Cory” Setting

    • The speaker establishes two clearly distinct settings in the poem: the "down town" world of the speaker's community and the neighborhood of Cory's home. With the exception of the final couplet, the poem takes place in the speaker's neighborhood, as suggested by the speaker's self-inclusion in the characterization of the downtown community as "we people on the pavement." While there is no description of this setting, it is clearly a community beset by poverty—the people forego eating meat to save money while waiting for an escape from their situation, all the while wishing that they could live Cory's life.

      In the final lines of the poem, the speaker conjures up Cory's distant neighborhood (maybe "uptown") as Cory returns home to take his own life. The juxtaposition of the "calm summer night" and the violence of the gunshot suggests a peaceful, wealthy community jolted by this sudden disturbing act.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Richard Cory”

      Literary Context

      In the late 1890s, when Edwin Arlington Robinson's wrote "Richard Cory," most leading American poets were avoiding the comfortable verse forms, like the heroic stanza to which Robinson still clung. Robinson had little interest in the free verse, modernist tendencies of his contemporaries. Supposedly, when asked why he did not take up looser verse forms, Robinson exclaimed, "I write badly enough as it is."

      Even for Robinson, "Richard Cory" is a tightly-structured poem, and deliberately so. Only few other short works, like "Miniver Cheevy," share this poem's ironic tone and brevity. Robinson was particularly well-known for his sonnets and for several book-length poems like Tristam, for which he won one of his three Pulitzer Prizes.

      "Richard Cory," in its heroic stanza structure and its loose elegiac themes, can be traced back to early modern influences like John Dryden's Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell and 18th century quatrains like those in Thomas Grey's Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard.

      In the more than a century since the poem's composition, the character of Richard Cory has also inspired a number of adaptations, including a 1965 song by Simon and Garfunkel and a 1976 play by A. R. Gurney, which attempts to imagine the motives for Cory's suicide.

      Historical Context

      When "Richard Cory" was published in 1897, the United States was just beginning to recover from a pair of economic depressions, the Panic of 1893 and the Panic of 1896. The former was the more severe, causing several major railroads to declare bankruptcy and hundreds of banks to close. Unemployment rose to over 18%. The latter's effects were less widespread, but it did have one particular deleterious impact: a number of bankers committed suicide in Chicago when the National Bank of Illinois failed.

      The despair of the laboring "people on the pavement," with only bread to eat, seems to stem from these recent events in which the struggle to find work and food became viscerally real across America. Robinson's awareness of the pressures of economic depression on the wealthy may have found its way into Cory's story as well.

      By the time that Robinson was writing "Richard Cory," however, the country's fortunes had begun to turn around. The "light" that the victims of the Panics of 1893 and 1896 had been waiting for was finally starting to appear for some.

  • More “Richard Cory” Resources

    • External Resources

      • "Richard Cory" by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel — Watch a video of Simon and Garfunkel performing their 1966 song based on the poem. While the song closely follows the structure of the poem, including the last line, the lyrics also imagine more information about Cory's wealth (the son of a banker, Cory "owns one half of this town") and a backstory for the narrator (a worker in Cory's factory). Following Cory's suicide, the narrating worker, despondent in his own way, still expresses a desire to be like Richard Cory.

      • The Children of the Night — Check out The Children of the Night, Edwin Arlington Robinson's 1897 book of poetry in which "Richard Cory" first appeared.

      • Edwin Arlington Robinson's Life Story — Learn more about the life of the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson from the Poetry Foundation.

      • "Richard Cory," a Song by the 3D's — Check out folk group The Three D's 1964 setting of the poem. Unlike Simon and Garfunkel, this treatment of the song simply sets the complete text of the poem to music (although there is a creative interjection in the middle of the final line).

      • Dramatic Reading of "Richard Cory" — Watch this dramatic reading of "Richard Cory," presented by student Michelle Cheng.

    • LitCharts on Other Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson

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