Richard Cory Group

Question:

fatin
fatin
Student
High School - 12th Grade

What is the message of the poem "Richard Cory?"

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Posted by fatin on Thursday January 1, 2009 at 2:24 AM and tagged with richard cory, themes.

Answers:

  1. parkerlee
    parkerlee Teacher

    eNotes Editor

    One is that wealth and power have their attraction to the crowd but tend to alienate the individual. Ask any high profile celebrity, and he or she will tell you it is not that easy to protect one's private life (including maintaining meaningful relationships within a small circle of family and friends) when in the limelight.

    Another is that things (or people) are often very different from the way they appear. In this case, a man whom everyone admired, emulated, or was even envious of was not "the success story" he was cracked up to be. Under all the glitter and hype, he was a very frustrated person who couldn't cope with the stress his image and lifestyle demanded of him. The reason he opted for suicide is not stated, but the reader could presume his "success" might have had something to do with it.

    Related to the two first messages or themes is another question - what, after all, is really important in life? Complying to society's ideals of perfection and being gratified by that or seeking and finding personal fulfilment by one's own standards instead?

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/richard-cory-edwin...

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    Posted by parkerlee on Thursday January 1, 2009 at 2:44 AM


  2. kmieciakp Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    One message is that the envious will sustains itself by neglecting the duty to its soul.  Envy shuns the good of reason and validates itself.  It is never wrong.  It does not repent or regret.  Envy idenitifies itself in the negation of the other.  Yet the more Envy turns its despair for another's success and its delight in another's failure into a work of art, the more Envy exposes its self-negating absence--in "Richard Cory," the final suicide is not only Cory's but the narrator's, silenced by his own hand, by the self-negating expression of his envious will.  

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    Posted by kmieciakp on Thursday January 1, 2009 at 5:51 AM

  3. english2328
    english2328 Student
    College - Sophomore

    I have to do Research Paper on Richard Cory with 8 sources to support the reason why Cory killed himself.  My reason is because he had a relationship with a fairden maid and in the result there was a child out of wed lock.  I could not find any critics that support for the statement.  Can you help me?

    Thank you

    Tram

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    Posted by english2328 on Saturday October 17, 2009 at 8:13 PM