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Individual vs the Group in Literature

A major conflict in society and in literature is that between the individual and the group, between the individual and his or her society. Many writers delve into this theme in different terms, but often the conflict can be discerned in terms of class differences. It is true that Americans like to think we do not have social classes, but in fact we do, shaped less around questions of birth as in Europe and more around economic distinctions, racial differences, and even the job one has. These sorts of distinctions are important in the way the individual seeks to assert him or herself and the way society wants that individual to be in several stories and poems to be discussed below.

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 they observe one they see as higher on the social scale than themselves. This is evident from the first stanza:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

The speaker is one of the "people on the pavement," a reference to the common people who inhabit the town and who look up to Richard Cory whenever they see him. There is ...

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Individual vs the Group in Literature. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:32, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700645.html