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Richard Cory


            The common wealth, the poor working class, the higher class, or are they the same? Edwin Arlington Robinson portrays the common wealth and the higher class and shows how each class views each other in the poem. Robinson excellently led up to a disturbing and unsubtle ending leaving something to be desired. The poem lacks closure but doesn't need it, if the reader is left wondering the author has done his job. Robinson also uses great connotation in his poetry.
             Robinson wrote subtly and without forewarning to the climax ending of "Richard Cory." The narrator spoke not only of Richard Cory's appearance but as the common wealth saw him. Robinson used pleasant imagery and similes to describe Richard Cory thoroughly. The first twelve lines only portrayed the side that others saw, and what Cory wanted the common people to see. The fourth and final stanza is when the tone began to change but in lines thirteen through fifteen, the reader still had no idea what was to come as the abrupt ending. The ending would leave us all in shock and wonder.
             To leave a reader or an audience in wonder can be an author's biggest goal. Robinson achieved this without a doubt, the short and abruptness to the ending contributed to this greatly. Robinson left all in wonder about why Cory would do this and left no hints in the first three stanzas for any kind of an explanation. Line fifteen of the 4th stanza didn't lead up to the end but left an obvious change in the language. This change in language told the reader something was coming but left the reader even then in wonder as to how it was going to end. Part of the wonder was put into line 15 by the connotative meaning that Robinson left for the reader's discrepancy.
             The connotations in "Richard Cory" were left by Robinson to add extra wonder to his poetry. He used excellent figurative language. Robinson used an interesting form of connotative language; he wouldn't use words with obvious underlying meanings.


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