10, No. In any case, to return to the text, consider how Cather finishes her paragraph after the words “flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence.” The undertow of retarding stresses in these words emphasizes the barren constraint of Paul’s life, the prose mirroring, as it were, the chafing repression that holds the boy’s libido in check. Taken from her The Troll Garden collection the story is narrated in the third person by an unnamed narrator and from the beginning of the story the reader realises that Cather may be exploring the theme of hostility. (a) Explore Peter’s contribution to the issue of prejudice and It was the last of seven stories in her first collection, The Troll Garden, which launched Cather’s literary career. He (or she) has to guess and conjecture—just like we do. An editor . Although “Paul’s Case” did not receive much critical attention when it was first published in 1905, it has become Cather’s most frequently reprinted and read short story. Willa Cather was born near Winchester, Virginia, on December 7, 1873. Self-imposed Estrangement in "Paul's Case," by Willa Cather a. a red carnation b. a button c. a pen d. nothing 2. He buys carnations again on his last journey to the snowy hill above the railroad tracks. We learn that at school Paul is perceived as “contemptuous and irritating” and insolent. We are the…. The events of the story take place in Pittsburgh and New York in the beginning of the 20th century. He comments on Paul’s mother’s early death and states that “there is something wrong about the fellow.” Through his eyes the, reader sees how pale Paul is, with his face “blue-veined” and “drawn and wrinkled like an old man’s about the eyes.”, Paul’s father, a widower, is the major authority figure in Paul’s life, representing the values of hard work and the “American Dream” Paul despises. 4.54), his dictis impenso animum flammavit amore. Where Paul sees grey ugliness, Arnold sees a respectable neighborhood of white-collar workers, full of children and plans for the future. The story’s major themes revolve around questions about Paul’s character. Critics ascribing genetic or social causes for Paul’s behavior agree that he is “destroyed by his own illusions,” as Wasserman puts it. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. In this respect, it is 2, Gale Research, 1989, pp. . As Paul progresses through each stage, he views death differently as he transformed from a student to a neurosurgeon, neurosurgeon to a patient, and eventually becoming a father, where he needed to take full responsibility as an adult. Born in the middle of the second Industrial Revolution, Cather grew up during a time when new scientific knowledge of physics and chemistry helped build gigantic new industries. Encyclopedia.com. The following paragraph demonstrates how solicitous she could be for perfection in such matters: There were a score of cabs about the entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. . He had been suspended a week ago, and his father had called at the Principal's office and confessed his perplexity about his son. Part of the fascination of Paul’s story must inhere in just this tension. Short Stories for Students. In "Paul's Case" such industrial leaders appear in references to the "iron kings" discussed on Cordelia Street on Sunday afternoons. Symbolic Analysis on Paul's Case 4941 Words | 20 Pages. Nevertheless, in a well-established literature the rhetorical mannerisms of certain authors are usually distinguishable after long acquaintance. He recalls it merely as “simple” and “astonishingly easy.” In fact, he has a sense of relief at his “courage” which, before the theft, he had doubted. . Art is a religion for Paul; the narrator describes the theater as his “secret temple.” In the story, beauty can be powerful, fascinating Paul and allowing him to feel free. Paul lives richly, but inconspicuously, bearing himself with quiet dignity. Corley, Lemke and Lovejoy (2002) agree with the importance of the two contexts defining theological hermeneutics as, the process of thinking about God, thinking after the event of revelation in the... Music and art are merely a means of entrance, a “portal of Romance.” Again Cather hints at religious dedication: “Paul had his secret temple. He associates Cordelia Street with everything that is wrong with his life and as such wants no part of it. Something that is noticeable by the fact that in order to advance in life Paul decides to rob his employer (Denny & Carson). In the story “Paul’s Case”, point of view plays a huge role in the telling of this short story written by Willa Cather in 1905. Currently you have JavaScript disabled. He wants everything quickly and again with as little effort as possible. 36, No. Cather’s neighbors included immigrants from Sweden, France, and Germany, as well as Americans who had moved to Nebraska from large cities in New England and small towns from the South, as the Cathers had. There he realizes his dreams of buying expensive clothes, staying at the Waldorf, a grand hotel, attending the opera, and becoming “exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be.” When his crime is discovered, Paul cannot face returning to the “ugliness and commonness” of Cordelia Street and commits suicide by jumping in front of a moving train. After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers. A young Pittsburgh student named Paul, progressively sickened by the numbing routine of his bourgeois family and dreary school-work, absconds with a thousand dollars to New York City. He has a “cold bathroom with [a] grimy zinc tub” and over his bed hang “the pictures of George Washington and John Calvin, and the framed motto, ’Feed my Lambs,’ which had been worked. . and hair of live snakes who turned to stone those who looked at them. When Cather adopted masculine dress and the name “William Cather, Jr.” as an adolescent, she, like Paul who dresses as a dandy, was rejecting the restricting conventions of her day. In the story “Paul’s Case”, point of view plays a huge role in the telling of this short story written by Willa Cather in 1905. The badge of Paul’s fidelity to his dream, his talisman, is the red carnation he wears in the buttonhole of his shabby coat as he confronts his teachers, which they (correctly) interpret as a sign of his unrepentant attitude (“flippantly red”; “the scandalous red carnation.”) Cut flowers become a motif: Paul notes that the “prosy” male teachers he despises never wear violets in their button-holes. At fifteen, she signed her name “William Cather M.D.” When she entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1891, she wore her hair short and dressed in men’s clothes. Though architects and writers create two completely different objects, their worlds are not all that different. Wanting a life different from the one we are born into is a large part of adolescent longing. In Paul’s Case by Willa Cather we have the theme of hostility, respect, freedom, escape, corruption, determination and commitment. Cather uses a similar elision in another sentence: He had only to glance down at his attire to reassure himself that here it would be impossible for anyone to humiliate him. He dons his uniform “excitedly” before entering the hall to become a “gracious and smiling” model usher. They are expensive. Narrator Point of View Third Person (Omniscient) The narrator in "Paul's Case" might know everything—like the fact that the teachers are "in despair" about him (1.8), but it … Susan Rosowski, in The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism, argues that Paul loses himself to the temptations of romantic fantasy. Charley is a young actor, the “leading juvenile” of a Pittsburgh stock theater company, and a friend of Paul’s. He uses art as a means; the sounds of the orchestra or painted landscapes are avenues. He feels that “this time there would be no awakening,” which is either a delusion or a foreshadowing of his suicide. “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather is, as the subtitle states, “a study in temperament.” The story chronicles a few months in the life of Paul, a student at Pittsburgh High School, who would rather be at the opera than in class. The narrator in "Paul's Case" might know everything—like the fact that the teachers are "in despair" about him (1.8), but it sure doesn't tell everything. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. A quality that one can remember without the volume at hand, can experience over and over again in the mind but can never absolutely define, as one can experience in memory a melody, or the summer perfume of a garden.” There is no better description of the achievement of “Paul’s Case” than these words, which remind us that language, even when silently read, evokes the memory of sound, and the resonance of imagined music.
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