Who Are We to Judge
Sometimes it is easy to form an opinion about someone based on what you see from the outside, but by no means is this an effective way of assessing the way someone is inside. Just like you cannot judge a book a book by its cover, you cannot judge a person without getting to know them. Both Edwin Robinson's, Richard Cory, and Wystan Auden's, The Unknown Citizen try to do this. Who is to say that their analysis of the two characters is correct? The two poems are based only on what is observed, not what is known. Richard Cory is structured in a very consistent, easy to read manner, but is as harsh and radical as the form is classical and neat. The poem is an extended description of a man, a very rich, successful man, named Richard Cory. The narrator of the poem spends a good part of the poem, the first three stanzas, doing nothing but genuinely praising this man. In the first stanza, Richard Cory is portrayed as the envy of all those around him, the object of everyone's attention. He refers to Cory as a "gentleman from sole to crown", and even uses language that sounds suited to describe royalty when he calls Cory "Clean favored, and imperially slim." The second and third stanzas go on in much
In comparison, just as Richard Cory was told from an outside standpoint, The Unknown Citizen was written in the same way. This time, instead of the story being told by someone looking up to him, admiring him, it is told from the perspective of an unemotional, unexcitable individual. Just as the end of Richard Cory showed us that things are not always as they seem, how is anyone able to judge what type of person the Unknown Citizen was. Nobody can, the description is based on the statistics that were gathered, not the person himself. What someone can see on the outside is not the same as what is within, the part of the person that makes them unique. The speaker of this poem seems to be a government employee or an official from the State. He is someone who strictly follows rules and regulations. He makes sure that the unknown citizen obeys the rules and does everything in order. He shows no emotion in describing the events and records of the unknown citizen. His routine is highly emphasized. To the speaker, statistics are extremely important to grade and categorize the unknown citizen. the same way. In the second stanza, the narrator describes Cory's social standing. In the narrator's eye's, Cory continues to be the perfect, polite gentle
Some common words found in the essay are:
Unknown Citizen, Richard Cory, Good-morning Cory, Cory Clean, Judge Sometimes, unknown citizen, richard cory, stanza narrator,
Approximate Word count = 848
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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