The poems, The Unknown Citizen and Richard Cory describe the ideal person or citizen from their society’s perspective and how people in the society are perceived or characterized. Both poems examine the manner in which the modern society values people solely based on their appearance. W. H. Auden’s The Unknown Citizen describes a person who is average and well liked, deemed to be the impeccable citizen in the eyes of his government. Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Richard Cory depicts the life of a wealthy man who’s envied and idolized by his peers. Neither man is seen for who he truly is by the people who are describing him. The Unknown Citizen focuses on the lack of individuality, people who seem to live their lives to merely become conformed …show more content…
Because in both cases the men are portrayed from the society’s perspective, we can only get a glimpse of who they really are from the ironic outcomes. The unknown citizen is clearly overlooked as a person but never questioned on why he lost his individuality as he was classified as an ordinary citizen who made sure his appearance pleased the state. The overall irony in this poem is that the government seemed to know almost all the formal details, statistical information about the unknown citizen’s life, yet he was still, as the title suggests, was unknown to them. They did not care how this person felt; if he lived or died made no difference to them because he was just another random citizen complying with the system. “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd” (Auden …show more content…
This time the people in the community reflect their thoughts towards Cory’s and their lives by saying, “ I curse the life I’m livin’ and I curse my poverty and I wish that I could be Richard Cory” (Simon 755). People in this community clearly imagine Cory’s life to be easy and untroubled, based on the lifestyle they observe from afar. In Simon’s version there are a lot more details on the life that people presume Richard Cory is living, including his fame, his whereabouts and his material possessions. The one certainty is that in all three of the poems the men are depicted in a quite materialistic way. They’re distinguished from their emotional selves as the only focus is on the life they appear to