Position:Home>Poetry> POEM: Richard Cory?

Here's the poem, which you should have posted with your question!.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim!.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked!.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place!.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head!.

Nothing in the poem tells anything about Richard Cory's attitude toward the poorer people in the town!. There's a little bit of information about the way he behaves toward them, but nothing about his inner feelings (although there's quite a bit about their feeling toward him)!.

You have to explain these lines:

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread

What is it you don't understand!? The townspeople, not being wealthy like Cory, have to work for a living!. The light they're waiting for could be any kind of reward, or any kind of revelation about the meaning of life, or any kind of sudden uplift that would free them from their humble state in life and raise them to Cory's level!. Meat is more expensive than bread, so line 14 means that they went without the things they couldn't afford in life and cursed the things they could afford -- that is, they cursed their relatively humble station and didn't appreciate what they had because they were too busy comparing their lives unfavorably to the rich man's life!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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