Similarities Between Richard Cory And Suicide In The Trenches By Siegfried Sassoon

“Richard Cory” by Edwin Robinson and “Suicide in The Trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon are poems that are dark in subject. Both poems talk of men that have taken their lives without any explanation. Each of these poems reveal the struggles that were being faced during each of the time periods that they were written during. Through the descriptions and the words used in the poems Robinson and Sassoon illustrated the troubles that many people in their era were facing. “Suicide in The Trenches” was written in 1917 and published in 1918, which are the years World War I (WWI) was coming to an end. Sassoon was a Captain in the British Army during this time, therefore he had a firsthand experience with the tragedy presented in this era. In this poem, he described the image and the situation of a young boy that took his life during that war. He describes the young man that has lost his innocence and has probably lost his family as well. In WWI,

This time was full of sudden poverty and economic depression. In this poem, Richard Cory is a man that is admired by all the citizens that lived in his town because of his wealth. The narrator of this poem seems to be a part of those effected by the Panic, because of how exceedingly well they thought of Cory. The narrator gives the impression that Cory is the only wealthy person in the town, which would be common in this time. He had an outward appearance of being happy that all the citizens in the town aspired to achieve. The towns people place being rich and educated in the same category as what will make them happy. One hundred and fifty-eight national banks, one hundred and seventy-two state banks, and one hundred and seventy-seven private banks, along with countless businesses, failed because of this depression. Not many places had the funding to pay people, and there were few that were still considered wealthy at this point in