Individual vs the Group in Literature

One of the major poems suggesting first that there is a sense of social class in America and second that the hierarchy masks reality is Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Richard Cory." In this poem, one of the favored of the town, someone whom everyone looks up to and who seems to have everything that everyone else wants, proves that we can never really be sure of what is going on in the life or mind of another person:

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head

The poet constructs this poem in a way that hides the theme until the last line. Prior to this revelation, the poem seems to be only a character study, though there are indications that it is more than this by the fact that the observations are offered as coming from the people of the town as

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(1630). The smell of the cheese is more fascinating to the boy than the proceedings until he is called as a witness, and at that point it is apparent that he has knowledge of the crime and that he will lie because to do otherwise would bring down the wrath of his father on the boy. This happens anyway because the father later says he knows the boy would have told, but at the time the boy says to himself that he will lie just as his father wants. Snopes is a small man in terms of his personality and his lack of ethics. He sees any new job as a case where the employer owns him for a time. The lessons he teaches his children are hard lessons that children should not have to learn, for he is trying to turn them into newer versions of himself, seeking the rest of the world as the enemy. Snopes is a true racist as well, and he denigrates blacks because that is the only social group to which he can feel immediately superior. The boy emulates the father to a degree and seeks the father's approval, though he rarely gets it. Seeing the story through the eyes of the child, the reader experiences not only what the boy observes but the sense that the boy is always walking a fine line by trying to appease his father, a man capable of
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Richard Cory, Snopes South, Battle Royal, Alice Hindman, Raisin Sun, , Tom Willard, William Faulkner, McKay Die, Sherwood Anderson, richard cory, people pavement, father boy, black society, social class, white power structure, imperially slim, white power, otherwise bring, power structure black, night home, guess ain't queer, ain't queer, night home bullet, home bullet head,
Approximate Word count = 2426
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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