Tyler Smith

Pre-AP English 1 6th

May 6, 2015

RICHARD CORY vs THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

The poems Richard Cory and The Unknown Citizen detail the lives of two dead men living in surprisingly similar situations. Richard Cory tells the tale of an aristocratic gentleman, envied and honored by all around him, while The Unknown Citizen was an ideally average government pawn who made no effort to bring out anything in himself but the facts the State knew him by. In appearance, these men had little in common, but that they had, by society’s definition, no reason to be in grief. In their deaths, however, they challenged these beliefs through their characterization, the point of view that describes them, and their social statuses.

In the cases of both characters, their authors’ accounts of their lives, absent of the all-important “fluff” detailing their interactions with others, create a view of their identity. To illustrate, in ‘Richard Cory’, descriptions of the titular character range from beliefs of the less privileged of him as a form of godlike or kinglike power and that he “glittered when he walked”, while others still seem surprised that “he was always human when he talked”. These people would not ever know of Cory’s state of being or mind because they look so far up to him that he could not safely climb down from the position. Their treatment of him as regal simply shows the error in man’s belief that being better off inherently means that a man is more pleased or content with himself or his life, making him “glittering when he walked” a result of his ‘happiness’ flowing over unto others, for “they thought he was everything”. It was likely this ‘lonely at the top’ complex made others keep themselves away due to thinking that they were not ‘worthy’ to associate with him, distancing Cory from society and kickstarting the process that made him so lonely, and later leads to his suicide. Conversely, ‘The Unknown Citizen’ shows little of its eponymous protagonist (if he could be called that), besides that he “served the Greater Community” and did little else than that to personify himself. The end question’s decree of “Was he happy? Was he free?” shows a connection to the citizen’s status as an idealized metaphorical “robot slave” of the State. He may have been ‘programmed’ with identity, but his will never overcame the ‘program’ that dictated his life into a simple arrangement of orders and compliance, and nothing above or below. Like Richard Cory, the citizen’s refusal to deny the social complex that consumed him made him end his life in a state of grief.

The opinions and observations provided by the sources of these men’s lives are just as important to their legacy, and their appearance from society’s point of view. For example, in ‘Richard Cory’, the society mistakes Cory being “rich– yes, richer than a king” for a form of ‘scouter reading’ on his ‘happiness level’, something their shallow views couldn’t provide. They see him as a hero for the “people on the pavement”, and mistake him for such. Aside from pushing him into loneliness and eventually (though unintentionally) spearheading his demise, the outlying folly of these “people on the pavement” is that, despite the clear message his death gave, they continued with their foolish beliefs and even went as far as to wonder what ‘possibly could have been wrong’. To them, Cory had no need for strife. In a similar case to Beowulf from the aptly named epic, he suffered through the guilt that came from his society misrepresenting him as a hero. In the end, this mistake killed Cory, like Beowulf’s mistake killed him. In ‘The Unknown Citizen’, an equal and opposite example appears from the State’s depiction of society and its people. The examinations of the political bureaucrat on the facts and stats that, to him, made up the citizen’s life are full of blatant straightness and over familiarity as if he were simply reading a business report as opposed to writing a pre-obituary statement. To the bureaucrat, the role of the citizen was simply to be an extra number for the State, nothing less, nothing more, as evidenced by ‘Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd”, and the The unknown citizen, in turn, played his role beautifully. Because of this, the false ‘perfection’ established in the citizen’s meaningfulness was just as poisonous to him as the detachment of Richard Cory from his own society.

This ‘perfection’ is what drives the meaning behind each man’s life and death, both from standpoint of their worlds and their authors’. Richard Cory was born of aristocracy, and because of it suffered from distinct issues as envy, misery, perhaps pride, at one point. All of these eventually came to crash around him and end with a simple message of his reason to exist. Richard Cory was created, both in the poem’s context and by the author, from the need for an example to change the minds of those who believe wrongly that higher status dictates the need or lack of need to separate an individual from the course of the community. The Unknown Citizen was born from anonymity, into anonymity, only to die in anonymity.The citizen was very ordinary, abnormally so, and he is remembered by as much as his tax payoffs and insurance policies. His allegory is aimed at those who would be content to sit comfortably and assume that simply being themselves is enough to warrant an identity. He went through life with this mentality and left with only a tag: JS/07/M/378. He and Cory are memoirs to the existence of such beliefs, challenging them in their own separate ways.
Both works establish these men differently, but in their final purpose they both assume the identity of an allegory, to warn of the effects their respective lies have on the whole of a community. “Richard Cory” does it with impact and flair, like the nature associated with it’s main character’s defining social group. “The Unknown Citizen”, like its titular character, leaves much open to interpretation and the imagination as far as the gritty details. Both poems, however, serve as a reminder of the pollution that so easily corrupts the human population.