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.

Critic:

This literary piece was classified as a narrative poem. This literary piece was observably as deconstruction theory. When we say deconstruction, there is nothing outside the text. The text really interprets what is really the scene or happening at the real setting; as it says, there is a reality at the text as a reader knows it. As you observe the poem, it tells us that there is perfectness in the life of the character here. It tells us that he is richer than a king… and yet, at the end of the lines, it tells us that behind that wealth that he has, he still didn’t feel the real joy of life that is why he takes his own life. The sense of this poem really happening on the present situation. It was observably in the society that wealth cannot buy the satisfaction of a real joy can bring.