An unfolding of Edward Arlington Robinson's "Richard Cory"
             Throughout "Richard Cory" we are seeing this rich and powerful man through the eyes of the less successful men who don't know him well and admire him from afar. But at the end of the poem they realize that even though Richard Cory was so rich and powerful, he really wasn't happy. The poem is ironic because the first fourteen lines are telling us how wealthy, admired, and perfect Richard Cory is and in the last two lines he kills himself. But throughout the poem we are only seeing him from the narrator's point of view as an outsider. We see how the townspeople envy him and isolate themselves from him. The poem is telling us that life is full of surprises and that sometimes we only fully understand something at the end.
             "Whenever Richard Cory went down town" The first line introduces Richard Cory to the reader and is explaining a little about how his life is by saying he goes down town. In the second line we see a separation between Richard Cory and the rest of the people and we see that the narrator has a limited view of him and doesn't know him well. "We people on the pavement looked at him:" To the people on the pavement Richard Cory looks like he is on top of the world. The third and fourth lines tell more about how the people see Richard Cory "He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim." Sole to crown can mean head to toe but crown can also have a reference to him being like a king. We are seeing his demeanor and appearance, which is physically good-looking and well dressed.
             In the next stanza we continue seeing Richard Cory's external qualities. In lines five and six we see the narrator contradicting himself. "And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked;" We see he is saying that Richard Cory "always" poss...