A Deconstructive Analysis of Edwin Robinson’s Richard Cory

Abstract

This literary research focused on the deconstructive analysis of the poem of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Richard Cory. This theory claims that language is everything and that language never leaves us with the reality of the referent. The Deconstruction criticism of the text in this paper followed three stages: Verbal, Textual, and Linguistic. “Richard Cory” is one of the poems written by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The poem talks about people's high and low social status in a particular community, physical appearance, and the reality of life. From the title to the poem's content, the readers can have different interpretations and meanings of it. Results have shown that Richard Cory's poem has gotten new meanings and interpretations based on the researchers' ideologies and subjectivities. This study concludes that the newly discovered and given meanings of “Richard Cory” can still have another alternative meaning based on another reader’s or person’s point of view.