Richard Corey, Harlem and Preludes - Assignment Example

Aristocratic charms such as ‘clean favored’, ‘imperially slim’, ‘quietly arrayed’ etc, make him more desirable to the working-class people. However, at the same time, one more thing that underlines the image of Richard Corey is satiety. He is “everything” (Robinson). But the irony is that the townspeople are not farsighted enough to view the pain of satiety. Ultimately, they continue their work for their survival, but Richard Corey commits suicide on “one calm summer night” (Robinson).

Critical Response to “Harlem” Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” often sounds the forlorn whispers and sighing of a looser, even if it is not viewed on historical background. Though the poem deals with the history of the Black in America, the only reference to its historical background is its title, “Harlem”. Therefore, the dream or the goal that the poem deals with refers to the American Dream. With a series of rhetorical questions, the poet upholds the reality of the dream in the American context.

Critical Response to “Preludes”TS Eliot’s “Preludes” resonates simply with the poet’s hopelessness and delves deep into the despair of human existence. It pictures the pain of isolation and despair in human life. The poem reveals more of the problematic obsession of the speaker with decay, despair, and desolation rather than the universal viewpoint of an average human being. The speaker’s soul sags under the burden of the absurdity of human existence.

Here life is depression, pain, hopelessness, and aridity. The speaker never speaks of the reasons for his depression. But how he renders the absurdity of his surrounding tells a lot about them. Connect “Preludes” to “Araby”. In what ways are they similar? In several ways ‘Preludes’ and ‘Araby’ are similar to each other. Both of the two texts deal with pains and sufferings in a man’s life. However, ‘Preludes’ tells about the pain of existential meaninglessness, whereas the story, ‘Araby’ describes the pain of disillusionment.

In addition, both ‘Prelude’ and ‘Araby’ deal with the lack of spirituality of the world. In ‘Preludes’ the surrounding, which the speaker of the poem provides, is completely devoid of spirituality. Also, the story ‘Araby’ speaks of the lack of spirituality and idealism of the real world. The idealism of the young boy of the story simply vanishes only when he faces the harshness of the real world. However, the speaker of the ‘Prelude’ is aware of the lack of spirituality from the very beginning of the poem.

Write a paragraph connecting “Richard Cory” and “Harlem” to themes discussed in our study of The Great Gatsby. All three texts, “Richard Cory”, “Harlem”, and “The Great Gatsby’ can be connected with the theme of dreams and goals of human life. In the poem ‘Harlem’, Langston Hughes only asks what happens if a dream is deferred and tries to implicate that the result of a deferred dream can never be good. Through a series of questions, the poet says that it may dry up, stink, and vanish like a sore.

So a dream, whether it is the American Dream or the dream of human life, should never be deferred. But unfortunately, the poet does not say what happens if all the dreams of human life are fulfilled. The answer necessarily lies in the poem, “Richard Corey”. Here Richard Corey is “everything” and “rich –even richer than the king” (Hughes). So the fulfillment of all of his goals and dreams of life pushes him towards suicide. But the working-class townspeople who go without meat, still survive through their work.

Anyway, surprisingly the questions in the poem of Langston Hughes are answered in another way.