Richard Cory Imagery

A Midsummer Night’s Death: Rhyme Scheme, Imagery, and Point of View in Edward Robinson’s “Richard Cory” “We thought he was everything.” (11) The collective speaker of Edward Arlington Robinson’s ultimately dark poem, “Richard Cory”, battles with the fact that a man who seems flawless has deceived everyone around him. This brings readers to wonder, would one even recognize a soul in distress when the vessel is seemingly perfect? The use of rhyme scheme, point of view, and imagery highlights the sad truth that appearances are not always what they seem. Deceiving appearances are forced upon readers themselves through Robinson’s choice to use a commonly used meter, ABAB rhyme scheme. The majority of the poem uses this pattern and it makes it

This means that Richard Cory is not a part of whatever the town or townspeople are a part of. This gives a reason as to why the people within the town saw only the outward appearance of Richard; they weren’t close enough to him to see what was really going on. The use of regal-related words and phrases alludes to the possibility that Richard Cory could have been of a higher class and when he did come into contact with the lower classes, all they saw was the celebrity he was made out to be; not the human being he actually was. This theory is established in the very first line of the poem when the speaker says “whenever Richard Cory went down town” (1). The word whenever suggests that Richard Cory did not live in town, more specifically, down town; the part of town with the businesses and working people. Whether Richard Cory was of a higher class than the speaker or not, he was definitely separated in some way from the town and that eventually led to the speaker’s surprise when Richard “put a bullet through his head”

Appearances can be deceiving is a phrase we hear often, but we don’t always know exactly what is meant by it as we have never experienced it. “Richard Cory” allows us, as readers, to experience it. The poem not only physically makes you feel what the speaker and the rest of the antagonists felt when they heard Richard Cory took his own life; but it shows you as well. With the help of rhyme scheme, word choice, and point of view, Edward Arlington Robinson demonstrates, through his poem, that appearances are not always what they