Analysis of Paul's Case by Willa Cather
Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case” is a story about a young 16 year-old man, Paul, who is motherless and alienated. Paul’s lack of maternal care has led to his alienation. He searches for the aesthetics in life that that he doesn’t get from his yellow wallpaper in his house and his detached, overpowering father figure in his life. Paul doesn’t have any interests in school and his only happiness is in working at Carnegie Hall and dreams of one-day living the luxurious life in New York City. Paul surrounds himself with the aesthetics of music and the rich and wealthy, as a means to escape his true reality.
In Paul’s true reality he has a lack of interest in school. His disinterest in school stems from the alienation and isolation he has in life. This disinterest in school reflects Paul’s alienation because of the unusual attention he receives there that he doesn’t get at home. In class one day he was at the chalkboard and “his English teacher had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand” (Cather 1). Paul, at the moment of being touched, stepped backwards suddenly and put his hands behind his back. In other classes he looks out the window during lectures and pays little attention to his teacher’s lessons. Paul, growing up without a mother figure in his life, is unaccustomed to any affection or care from his teachers that mothers tend to give. Therefore, his alienation is portrayed in his attitude toward school, and the fore...
Paul’s character relates to the central idea because he is an example of a person who was not accepted by others and fell down on a dark path of no
He begins to realize how he should not be afraid of everything all the time, and how he needs to start making his voice heard. Paul starts to accomplish this by helping students out of the broken classroom when the sinkhole forms in Lake Windsor Middle School. But, he still doubts himself. “I’m not saying I was a hero. All I did was slide around in mud and tried to pull people out. But I didn’t panic and run either.” This quote shows that Paul still doubts himself, but he knows that what he did was a good thing. As the story continues, Paul learns how he lost his vision. He now knows it wasn’t his fault, but his brothers. This realization was crucial for Paul to begin to gain confidence, and learn not to be so hard on
Paul suffered setbacks and dilemmas because he never knew his mother as she died around the time of his birth. Therefore he is lacking the maternal guidance of emotional stability that every child needs to grow mentally. Paul is withdrawn from society, and he resorts to the arts and music to feel comfortable and free from his disassociation and sense of loneliness. One should not be confused and believe that his father was not loving or caring of Paul because his father did what he could to support Paul and to do all he could to get Paul out of problem situations. He just was not very keen on Paul's needs, especially his manners or clothing. The narrator described Paul's clothes as being "a trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn" (67). Men are not the gender who is as observant and uptight about people's attires. Men tend to desire less than women do, and this was inflicted upon Paul since it was his father who was overseeing Paul's limits on material well-being. It takes more of a female's point of view to judge if something looks perfect, and Paul and his father did not have this type of direction around. A master of Paul's noticed "what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawn and wrinkled like an old man's around the eyes, and stiff with nervous tension . . ." (69). The wrinkles apparently came from the stresses that ruled Paul. HE was constantly dealing with the pain of no mother and his nervous tension was that he knew how he did not fit in with all the other boys his age. He lacked the maternal stability and reassurance that most children had in order to be string mentally and emotionally. This stood out when he was aro...
... mechanism” to cope with his everyday pressures. Unlike the girl in “Boys and Girls”, Paul never did accept society’s idea of an educated, school-orientated adolescent. Rather, the lesson he learns is that he could have compromised, dealing with social pressures imposed upon him by simply “losing himself” and imagining a world of his own.
Paul’s is their insider knowledge of the workings of the school. Students with seniority possess the best/most information available on subjects such as who are the best teachers, which characteristics are prescribed to each dorm, what boys (and girls) to stay away from, and how to behave in given environments. Students who come into the school with a preconceived notion of the workings of the school are shunned and rejected. New students do not possess the experience required to make assumptions and proclamations of the inner workings of the school and its residents. For example, Evan Williams, a ninth grader discussed in the book was chastised and cursed at for acting as though he knew about the school’s inner workings when he had no prior experience at/of the school except for what he learned from his family
Every encounter Paul has with someone he creates a new identity to bond and connect with them. Throughout the play Paul creates multiple personas for himself, he realizes that he is an empty vessel with no past and only memories of what he has done during his different personas. Paul loses control over his multiple personas which cause them to overlap with each other. Which causes him to feel lost and in search of help, when Ousia offers this help he gladly takes it which end up putting him in prison and never to be seen in New York.
To a significant extent, the statement “Religion is a set of variously organized beliefs concerning the relationships that exist between humanity and the supernatural dimension” represents the lived expression of Christian adherents as it is the principle beliefs and teachings of Christianity that shape the everyday lives of adherents by helping them to maintain right relationships with God and others. Specifically, this response will explore how significant people such as St Paul of Tarsus have shaped Christianity so that adherents focus on the intention rather than the letter of the law, so as to obtain a contemplative outlook. As well as how Christian adherents across the breadth of the tradition respond to their baptismal commitment in daily life, and how adherents honour this commitment to God when responding to issues concerning environmental ethics.
The Professor’s House was written at a very dynamic point in Willa Cather’s life. Every thought and emotion she experienced was poured into, and made a part of, the character of Godfrey St. Peter. Through St. Peter, we can observe the many trials and myriad emotions that Cather was experiencing at this point in her life. Though by nature Cather was a quiet, reserved person, in her novels she leaves all her feelings and thoughts out in the open. She invites the reader to share in both the joys and the sorrows of the characters, thereby sharing them with her.
That had happened because of a traumatizing experience when he was in kindergarten. His brother, Erik, and Erik's friend, Vincent, had sprayed Paul's eyes with white paint. (Pg. 264) Before Paul had remembered that incident, Paul had always thought he was foolish. On page 35 it explains why he thought he was irrelevant. It says "I was the boy who had not listened and who was now paying the price." That shows that Paul had always thought low of himself because his parents never told him the truth. This decision made Paul feel weak and miserable because he had always thought it was his fault. On page 265 Paul gets his parents to admit what had actually happened to make him blind. They said they didn't tell him the truth because they didn't want him to hate his brother. What Paul mentions was quite sad. He said,"So you figured it would be better if I just hated myself". (265) In that scene, his mom and dad both broke down crying. All along, Paul had felt guilt in himself for something he hadn't done.
Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case” is a short story about the struggles of a teenager named Paul. The focus of the short story is how Paul deals with being “normal”, and his longing to be among actors and singers. The story deals with themes such as obsession with money and fame, and narcissism and alienation. Michael Salda’s “What really happens in Cather's `Paul's Case'?” is a literary criticism of “Paul’s Case” that examines the ending of the story, and the ambiguity of the main character’s suicide. The literary analysis focuses on whether Paul kills himself, and if the most of the story is inside Paul’s head. Most readers would interpret a story such as “Paul’s Case” literally, but Salda decides to interpret the story in a more figurative way,
Paul believes that everyone around him is beneath him. He is convinced that he is superior to everyone else in his school and in his neighborhood. He is even condescending to his teachers, and shows an appalling amount of contempt for them, of which they are very aware.
Paul believes that he was tricked into joining the army and fighting in the war. This makes him very bitter towards the people who lied to him. This is why he lost his respect and trust towards the society. Teachers and parents were the big catalysts for the ki...
In ‘Paul’s Case’ Paul has created a fantasy world in which he becomes entranced, even to the point of lying to classmates about the tales of grandeur and close friendships that he had made with the members of the stock company. This fantasy falls apart around him as “the principle went to Paul’s father, and Paul was taken out of school and put to work. The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorkeeper at the theater was warned not to admit him to the house” (Cather 8). The fantasy fell apart further when the stories he had told his classmates reached the ears of the women of the stock company, who unlike their lavish descriptions from Paul were actually hardworking women supporting their families. Unable to cope with the reality of working for Denny & Carson, he stole the money he was supposed to deposit in the bank to live the life of luxury in New York. Only a person who felt backed into a corner would attempt something so unsound. After his eight days in paradise, he is again backed into a corner by the reality of his middle class upbringing, and the dwindling time he has before his father reaches New York to find him. The final way out for Paul is his suicide, for which an explanation would be “In the end, he fails to find his security, for it was his grandiose “picture making mechanism” that made his life so deardful.” (Saari). With all the securities of his fantasy life finally gone, his mental instability fully comes to light as he jumps in front of the train to end his
In the beginning of the story, Paul seems to be a typical teenage boy: in trouble for causing problems in the classroom. As the story progresses, the reader can infer that Paul is rather withdrawn. He would rather live in his fantasy world than face reality. Paul dreaded returning home after the Carnegie Hall performances. He loathed his "ugly sleeping chamber with the yellow walls," but most of all, he feared his father. This is the first sign that he has a troubled homelife. Next, the reader learns that Paul has no mother, and that his father holds a neighbor boy up to Paul as "a model" . The lack of affection that Paul received at home caused him to look elsewhere for the attention that he craved.
In conclusion, the point of view in paul’s case provides a sort of feeling to this story that could not be shown. If the point of view where any different, the readers would not understand why paul killed himself or why he enjoyed frustrating his teachers and making people nervous. Or why he was so kind and let go at the theater. Who would not know the reason he stayed awake all night in the basement rather than just go to his room and confront his father.