The Unknown Citizen, Richard Cory and I'm nobody! Who are you?

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Recommended: Poetry as a form of social comment

What it means to be a person who is in the fast lane and well known by everyone that controls them is that they are not human but a living robot that is told what to do to keep society happy because of their actions. In various poems and writings the poets describe what it is to be high and mighty but on the inside alone and sad, and some tell how it is better to be that quiet unknown person that is unique and themselves. A number of poems deal with the different places of people on the outside and their self feeling on the inside, also the why it is better to be yourself than to have everyone control your life.

When a reader interprets this poem for the first time normally they would just assume that Emily Dickinson was just saying that she was alone and was a nobody, but when the poem gets broken down Dickinson tells that she is happier being a nobody rather than a somebody. In the second stanza of the poem Dickinson says, “How public-like a Frog-“(Dickinson 529), means that like the Frog at night that croaks and is known by everything by just the sound of its loud, monstrous calls of the wild, a person that is a somebody is always known and heard by everyone being waited upon to hear the “croak” of that person just to make everyone know they are still there. In the first stanza Dickinson says, “Don’t tell! They’d banish us you-know!”, that if the general public saw them, that they would be the outcasts and unaccepted by everyone, and the person that is somebody would be told to put down their ways of being nobody; or it could be that they would never be bothered by the general public and be left alone from the controlling ways to be somebody and be free.

Richard Cory is a man of high standards and is looked upon by all peo...

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...do give and hassle because he does not interfere with the education system.

All three poems tell about how it is better to be nobody in society vs. being a somebody that is looked up to and is made to live up to the standards of everyone else’s expectations. Emily Dickinson says that nobody life is better than living life that you are told what to do, Robinson says that living a life of expectations is useless if you are alone and looked upon like an idol, and finally The Unknown Citizen is about living a good life and being unknown by everyone due to your good doings according to the governments standards. The authors of the poems all agree on that a somebody is a person that is treated great and is adored but can be horrible on themselves on the inside, and a person that is a nobody lives a quite life that they can be themselves and free from a controlled life.

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