Richard Cory: Construct and ideology
Richard Cory is a narrative poem written by Edwin Arlington Robinson, first published in 1897. The poem describes Richard Cory as a wealthy, well educated, mannerly person and admired by the people in his town. In this analysis, we look at how the speakers construct Richard Cory and how ideologies help the meaning of poem. First of all we need to realize who the speaker in the poem is. On line two we have “we people”, in the third stanza we have “we thought” and in the last one we have “we worked”, showing us that the speakers are people in the town where Richard lives. Because of this, we need to have in mind that all adjectives in the text came from those people and Richard Cory doesn’t speak about himself anytime. With these adjectives the speaker builds the Richard Cory’s image, as we. In the first stanza, line three, we have “He was a gentleman from sole to crown”, this image reinforces the construction of Richard’s image. These characteristics lead us to the question of ideology present in the text. For those people, all things will be possible when they will get money and status, so they dream about it all the time. “To make us wish that we were in his place” creates a reality completely different for most of people in town. Richard is a representation of all dreams and everybody in town talks about him in a way that idealizes him as someone who has everything. In the end, there is the frustration of that ideology: everything that people in town wanted and considered so perfect and beautiful collapsed at the moment when he “went home and put a bullet through his head”, all this caused astonishment in every reader as well. Ultimately the reader reflects upon the intensity of the poem, created by the contrast of the somber people of the community, on the one hand, and the brilliant heroic stature of Cory on the other.
Students:
Anderson Andrade Santos
César vieira dos Santos
Douglas dos Santos Fonsêca
Karlúcia Santos Rodrigues
Lígia Alves Lunguinho Santos
Literatura Inglesa 1 
First of all, congratulations for all that constructed this text. This is a kind of text that represents many of ideas in the Richard Cory poem. This is clear when it says : “Richard is a representation of all dreams and everybody in town talks about him in a way that idealizes him as someone who has everything. In the end, there is the frustration of that ideology: everything that people in town wanted and considered so perfect and beautiful collapsed at the moment when he “went home and put a bullet through his head”, all this caused astonishment in every reader as well.” Looking more close, we can say that Ricard Cory is a ilusion we created for ourselves and we maybe could saw him as a perfect model of life. But, at the same time, the poem show us that we are wrong because Ricard Cory is a dangerous model of life when the poem says that he commits suicide, for instance. Therefore, we can say that: this poem is a political cartoon of its time. An political cartoon of people in this time. So, it is a very good poem to remember when you need putting someone are bragging on the spot…
It is an amazing text! The way you guys proceeded to make us get your ideas across is nice. Richard is an example of how ideology could affect our self-steem, and this thing happens right after his death. How to get by without a thing to use as a symbol? That’s something we usually do with religion or other beliefs…
I think you did a nice work! Congratulations =)
Paulo B.
“Construct and ideology” has the objective to show us the people’s opinion about “Richard Cory”. People feel the necessity to get money, because they think they could be happy, but the poem “Richard Cory” is ironic about this subject, because without a specific motive he puts a bullet in his head. So, we can see dissatisfaction in Richard and the surprise of the people about his death.
The analysis “Construct and ideology” was perfect.
Maria Betania