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Poetry Comparison: The Waking And Richard Cory

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The Waking and Richard Cory are two poems in different times, places and settings but still similar in many ways. Both these poems have themes of wealth, beauty and the meaning of life. Though the major difference in the theme is the idea of mortality. The Waking by Theodore Roethke and Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson are both poems that use a variety of poetic devices to carry their themes and messages.

Richard Cory is a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson in 1897. It tells a story of a handsome and wealthy man named Richard Cory who is admired by people in his community but takes his own life due to feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. This poem is written from the perspective of the people in the community and shows the disconnect between their perceptions of Richard and his …show more content…

The poem also has themes of growth and change and the struggle to find meaning in life. The poem “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson and “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke are both poems about the lives of men, but the two poems differ in their approach to the subject. In “Richard Cory”, Robinson paints a picture of a man who is admired by all those around him, yet in the end, he takes his own life. The poem is written from an outside perspective, with no insight into Richard Cory's inner thoughts or feelings. On the other hand, “The Waking” is written from a first-person perspective, allowing readers to gain insight into the speaker's thoughts and feelings as he reflects on his life and what it means to him. The speaker in “The Waking” is more introspective than Richard Cory and comes to terms with his life through self-reflection. The two poems present different perspectives on life and how one can come to terms with it. Both Richard Cory and The Waking deal with themes of beauty, wealth and the search for meaning in life. Richard Cory is more of a straightforward narrative poem and tells the story of one man, while The Waking is more

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Through these poems, the reader can also see that Richard is smiling and positive, showing his kind heart. Though portrayed as a cruel kid through the media’s eyes, Richard has many traits that show that he’s actually a very sweet kid. The media views him one way, but through the poems we are able to see the real Richard. During Slater’s interview with Richard’s school friends, everyone shares their experiences with Richard, which proves that he isn’t the bad kid the news makes him out to be. At the school, many of Richard’s friends came together to share their experiences they had with Richard.

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In his poem “an Echo Sonnet, To an Empty Page” poet Robert Pack introduces a narrator and his alter ego who exchange questions and answers that subsequently reveals the poet’s prospects and attitudes toward life. The narrator, or “the voice,” seems like a timid man who is afraid to plunge into his own life, because he fears the future and inevitable consequences of his mortality. The “echo,” which is the narrator’s alter ego, or a persona, answers the the voice’s questions in a way that drive the voice to take a certain prospect in life. Pack designed the poem masterfully in a way that it utilizes the traditional form of a shakespearean sonnet and an addendum of on “echo,” which communicates a cleaner and more direct message to the readers. Furthermore various literary techniques such as symbols, extraposition, and imagery add to the meaning of the poem Through form and literary techniques, Robert Pack emphasizes, through the answers of the “echo,” that no matter how frightening life seems to be, it is important to take a “leap.”

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In the second stanza of the poem, Cory is contrasted between his “regal self-image and Cory as the restrained communicator who patronizingly bestows favors upon his lowly brethren, the townspeople” (Kavka 152). The difference is expressed by the lines “ And he was always quietly arrayed, / And he was always human when he talked” (5-6). These lines are used to ensure us, the observer, that Richard Cory is still human in a rather remorseful way (Kavka 152).

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He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.

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The speaker of the poem believed that “He fluttered pulses when he said ‘good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.” The reader understands that Richard Cory was greatly admired. The folks would stare at him and thought him to be charming. From this, one can infer that this man had everything going for him. Not only does Robinson illustrate Cory as a perfect man, but also paints the image that, “He was rich-

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“Lucinda Matlock” by Edgar Lee Masters and “Richard Corey” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are two poems that contrast each other primarily through the lives and deaths that Matlock and Corey. Lucinda Matlock lived a long enjoyable life with a large family that dealt with a lot of death throughout her life. Matlock was a free-spirited girl doing activities including the following: dances and playing snap-out. She found her future husband, James, in a romantic fashion during a beautiful moonlit summer night.

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Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edgar Lee Masters, prominent American poets, wrote contradictory poems “Lucinda Matlock” and “Richard Cory.” “Lucinda Matlock” is a poem from Masters’s novel Spoon River Anthology, a series of epitaphs from the perspective of the deceased. Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory” significantly contrasts with Masters’s poem “Lucinda Matlock” in various aspects concerning how each character views life. Robinson writes in “Richard Cory”—a poem about a wealthy, well-educated, admired man living a false life.

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Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony. In his description of the chilling scene, Wright employs personification in order to create an audience out of inanimate objects. When the narrator encounters the scene, he sees “white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes,” and a sapling “pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.”

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This is also a person who people admire. The Bishop is different than Cory because the poem mentions how this man has had a troubled past. Bond tells us how The Bishop is blind and has experienced racism throughout his life. This makes the themes of the two poems very different and practically opposite. In Robinson's poem we see a man who is set up to be a success but turn out to be a failure and in Bond's poem we see a man who was set up for failure but becomes a success.

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